My Story: The Ultimate Interweaving
Note: This page is a work in progress. When writing and editing have been completed, I’ll record a voice-over and send out an announcement. I wanted to share what I had in advance so you could get a glimpse of my story when I relaunched my Substack.
Scotland
I was raised in a remote part of Aberdeenshire in Scotland, living in a cottage on a hill surrounded by the forest my father tended, with deep purple mountains brooding in the background.
I spent the majority of my first year in stillness out of necessity. I had a traumatic birth that resulted in hip dysplasia (and an undiagnosed crushed heel), so I spent my first year in splints.
So you could say I learned how to rest early in life. (Decades later, my nickname amongst my spiritual peers would be “Priestess of Rest.”)
Thankfully, I recovered enough to escape these binds and soon explored the world around me, getting lost for hours in the garden or hosting elaborate tea ceremonies with my spirit guides using my stuffed toys as totems.
At two years old, my mother recounted that I came running into the kitchen one day, disturbing her conversation with a friend, to show her excitedly some music notation I had written.
My mother was impressed, but her friend shut down the enthusiasm by saying, “She probably just copied it from the TV.”
My mother thought, even if that was true, that at that age it was still impressive. This was the first stirrings of music in my life.
Shortly before my family and I departed for England, I had a profound mystical experience around the age of four. I was walking behind my mother down the one street in our local village to the shop.
It was a bright, sunny day, and the fields to the left of me, leading to the mountains in the background, kept drawing my attention.
As I walked at my own pace, not rushed by the adults around me, I tuned into the spirit of the land. I felt deeply connected, and I skipped with joy. It was my first peak experience.
I described it years later as playing in God’s playground (but isn’t that all of life anyway?). Either way, it was a profound moment that stayed with me to this day, over forty years later.
Early England
At six years old, I began to lose my hearing. It got to the point where I was learning to lip-read naturally, without anyone teaching me.
I remember getting defensive as people around me acted as if there was a problem with that.
I spent endless hours with my head tilted to one side as I had ear drops put in multiple times a day. I went to many doctors, hospital appointments, and ended up having grommets put in twice.
Eventually, my hearing improved enough that they left me alone, but my right ear wasn’t at the same level as my left by their standards.
I continue to have “tinnitus” to this day in what I have lovingly called “my magic right ear.”
However, since the ringing and tone shifts based on my level of consciousness and my connection to Divine Spirit, I know it’s more than just some clinical leftover from my early years. It’s another way the universe speaks to me.
Around the age of eight, my connection with movement and music deepened.
I began dancing ballet. I was awarded two Russian certificates and performed in two different week-long productions at the Mumford Theatre in Cambridge.
I also began learning piano and got my first musical instrument: a Yamaha keyboard.
I loved plugging in my headphones and being in a private world where I could make as much noise as I wanted.
This was also around the time I started swimming and roller skating, so I was making full use of my body.
However, I was also learning my body had something to say about all this increased activity.
My mother told me in hindsight that I would sit on the floor in the evenings, watching TV, and hug my legs while rocking back and forth because I was in pain.
I was doing too much. My body knew it, but the demands of life had other ideas.
The Screeching
My mental health took a downturn, and the pain and fatigue increased.
I started to experience anxiety and depression. (I’ll not get into the specifics of any early trauma because of those involved, as it’s not just my story to tell.)
Because my vibration lowered, I also experienced a lot of negative psychic experiences, to the point where I shut down my abilities. I couldn’t tell anyone this at the time.
I got tonsillitis nine times in a period of two years, perhaps because I was shutting down my voice, and this was my body’s way of releasing the building pressure.
It was holding in everything I was suppressing and avoiding. And it was a lot. It became a vicious cycle of ignoring my body and it screaming louder at me.
I gave up many hobbies to cope with the limitations of this time.
One thing I did stay true to was music, because it kept me sane.
At thirteen, after I had stopped playing the piano, I took up the violin for a couple of years. After the necessary screeching phase of improperly resined bows, I wasn’t half bad.
But then I was introduced to the love of my musical life…
My First Guitar
The first song I ever played on the guitar was “Wild Thing” by The Troggs, using three notes, E, F, and G, all on the low E string.
But it was a family affair!
My sister played the F note, I played the G note, and my father plucked the string and played the open E (we beat Walk off the Earth by decades! 😂).
We sang together and played all day long. I was hooked.
For a little while, I would borrow my Dad’s guitar, read chord books, and play around with strumming progressions. Then this happened on my 15th birthday:
We were inseparable. I played for hours every day for four years on this baby.
This is when I really began to dive into the world of songwriting. During this period, I wrote approximately 48 songs (that’s one song a month on average!).
My drive to write was fuelled by the need to express the despair I was in.
By this time, I was experiencing chronic pain and fatigue. I was suicidal, self-harming, and stepping over the threshold into eating disorders.
I was hospitalised three times in a mental health rehabilitation ward and nearly left this earth plane multiple times. I was almost lost in that darkness.
I honestly think music and writing saved my life.
Without it, I would have had no other outlet to vent the emotions and physical pain I was in, and it may have pulled me under and swallowed me whole.
However, because I was writing and playing so much, I didn’t realise how good I was getting. The first time I noticed I might be onto something was when I wrote a song for my GCSE music practical examination.
A few friends and I were performing Animal Farm, and I wrote a song for the horse Boxer called The Unexpected End.
It was about the betrayal he felt when he was taken to slaughter when he got ill, as if his only value in life was his capacity to do back-breaking work. It was something I resonated with.
I remember performing the song on stage at school. Afterwards, I got a strong round of applause, and people gave me that look of surprise when they weren’t expecting that kind of raw honesty to come out of me.
I knew I had them.
The Band
The year before I switched schools to do A Levels, I was in my first band. I got sucked into a love-bombing friendship with a narcissist.
He was one of the more popular kids in the school, and I was surprised he was interested in being my friend.
We both had a strong interest in music, and soon we started collaborating.
Of course, we did his music and not mine. I ended up being his guitarist, but I was fine with that because I was too self-conscious with my singing and didn’t like being a front person as he did.
However, it did mean I had to switch from being a rhythm guitarist (my natural preference) to being a lead guitarist, which was such hard work for me. It would take me hours just to get basic riffs down.
We would practise in empty classrooms at school, and other students would sometimes drop in to listen to us. We also did a spot of recording at a friend’s home studio.
We had a couple of gigs before it all fell apart. The first was at a party where we were hired to improvise blues on the guitar. It was actually really fun as I got to play rhythm for once, and he did the lead.
Then we had our big gig at a local venue. Somehow, my friend had got us a spot and managed to find us a drummer at the last minute on the day who agreed to improvise live and play with us (he did well considering we did not practise together).
Everyone we knew knew about the gig. When we got there, I was so nervous. My stage fright was so intense in those days, but at least I wasn’t singing, so I could handle it better.
There had to be a good 50 people in that venue when we performed. My friend was all dressed up like David Bowie, and I was in my usual borderline goth look at the time.
The performance went well, but it took everything I had out of me. I even fucked up the lead intro to one of the more popular songs, and I knew I was going to get an earful after the set.
While I was on the stage, however, I could just do my thing.
Afterwards, people came up to me and said, “You sang really well, but you were just a bit too far from the microphone.” I was confused.
I didn’t really pay attention to the fact that I was singing along. I had NO idea people could hear me!
I felt so self-conscious that so many heard my voice. I didn’t take the compliment.
In the days that followed, I came to realise just how depleted I felt having given so much to my practice to get to the point I could perform at that gig. Now it was over, I could start to see the red flags.
This relationship was driving me into the ground. I knew I had to walk away.
So when the summer holidays hit, that’s what I did.
Sixth Form College
While on vacation, before I switched schools, I started to experience deeper levels of chronic fatigue and pain. Between this, my depression, and my eating disorders, I could barely get out of bed and function. My body forced me to rest.
By the time I started attending sixth form college, I had managed to pull myself together enough to be there in person, but I was nowhere near 100%.
Adding to all this, the social anxiety of a new school, new teachers, new classmates, and my ex-band member walking around the halls threatening me and spreading rumours — it wasn’t exactly an easy start to the term.
But there was a silver lining, or so I thought. I had dared to pick three topics that I was actually interested in for my A levels.
Not the subjects I was conditioned or pressured to believe would be the best for my future, but things I cared about: art, performance, and music.
I was excited to take my creativity and expression to the next level. Except it was more like two or three levels I was being asked to jump at once.
I had not been adequately prepared for the education I was to receive, particularly in music (for more about this, see my video, Overcoming DAWophobia).
I felt so behind, and I was barely able to hold myself together. I was quietly drowning, and it wasn’t until it reached a crisis point that I had to admit to my music teacher that I couldn’t keep up.
I eventually quit music and later performing arts too (the course wasn’t quite what I expected), and I just focused on art, which I loved.
My teacher was a perfect match for me at that time in my life, and I was able to complete and pass my course.
When I left the art studio for the last time, I had no idea where life would take me next.
Losing Myself in Love
I think because I had failed so epically to follow my dreams at A-level, I became more susceptible to the previous pressures for my career.
I decided to study computer programming in a job center program. I stopped playing the guitar. I worked as a cleaner for a year, pushing my body like crazy, and then the universe guided me into contacting my local university.
It turned out that with my art credentials and my recent programming course, I had just enough credit to get into university. So I applied and got in weeks before the term started.
It was a bit of a whirlwind change of course as I thought I was done with higher education.
Six weeks into my Computer Science degree, I met the man whom I would eventually marry.
At the time, I was so desperate for love because I didn’t love myself that I took it anywhere I could find it. I never stopped to question if this was right for me.
I was the perfect target for the high-level, charismatic narcissistic manipulator that he was. He was a master at it. I fell for his love-bombing hard.
Within months, we were living together, and I had lost contact with all my friends. Within five years, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. I stopped going out and adorning myself. I did what he wanted, and he took full advantage of my naivety, love, and money.
This would be the pattern for the next twenty years of my life, escalating as my soul and body tried many ways to get me to see the truth of what was happening. I was being abused.
Denmark
On the day when the financial market crashed in 2008, I moved to Denmark with my husband.
He had decided that he wanted to move and had spent a year drilling it into my head to convince me to go. I had been on the verge of leaving him during this time, but I wasn’t strong enough yet.
So I left my homeland and everyone I knew behind and went on this adventure.
We were fortunate enough to find a home, and for me to find a job, but with the precarious economic situation, there were a few months where we didn’t know if we were going to make it.
I settled into a routine of working, traveling 3 hours a day, learning Danish, cooking, tending to animals, and cleaning my home on the weekends. There was no time for rest.
I became reliant on time-release opioid painkillers for years, and even had three corticosteroid injections in my tailbone. The only way I could keep going was to silence my body.
Even then, I couldn’t hold a job for more than 2-3 years before burnout took over.
During this time, I barely played the guitar, even though I bought myself a new one. I was working night and day to meet his needs, making the most money I'd ever made in my life and taking on the most debt, too.
He was a black hole that could never be satisfied, no matter how much I tried.
Then he was diagnosed with a rare form of blood cancer, and the abuse soon escalated and became physical. The last two and a half years together were a living hell.
I tried to leave, and he hunted me down. So I tried to live out the clock, to stick with it until he passed. But my life was in danger constantly.
Until one night, it escalated so much that I realised that I would not survive it if I stayed even one more night.
So during a routine trip to the vet, I secretly packed a bag, and a friend took me to a women’s shelter. I walked away silently into a new life.
Becoming a Body Oracle
At forty, I completely started my life over. I was living in a new (temporary) place, I had left my marriage and nearly everything I owned behind, and a month before all this, I had started a new job. (And oh yeah, it was two months into a pandemic!)
It was like I had thrown my entire world into the bin.
After being in such a controlled environment for so long, I had to figure out who I was again. What I liked and disliked. What I wanted from life. Who I was outside of codependency.
I remember going to the shop for the first time to buy food for myself and realising that I didn’t have to get the usual staples, I could make different decisions for myself.
I felt lost. It took me ages to decide what to buy.
I no longer had someone telling me what to do, so I had to go within to find myself again.
Over time, I learned that I had a strong ability to listen to my body to the point where I could consult it like a divination tool.
I also started writing songs again on the donated guitar in the building. Music was always part of the real me. It was no surprise, really, that it returned.
After a year of healing at the woman’s shelter, my deepening intuition helped me strengthen my inner core, find my voice again, and acquire an idyllic new home for myself.
Sunstone Studio
About six months after moving into Sunstone Studio, my body finally crashed.
It was like it had been holding things together until I finally had a permanent place to stay, and once that was done, I was finally safe enough to fall apart so I could rebuild myself.
As my relationship with my body developed, and I gave myself the time and space I really needed to heal, I noticed something: my pain and anxiety reduced, energy blocks dissolved, and my physical capacity increased. I also had greater emotional resilience and more peace and alignment in my life.
Within six months, I had stopped taking painkillers (or any allopathic medicine for that matter).
I also began to explore possible new paths for myself.
… to be continued.