I learned how to leave myself early.  As a child, I learned not to have emotions that felt too big. I learned to wait my turn, to be the good girl, to achieve, and to pay close attention to what the people around me needed.

I wanted to belong. Like every child, belonging meant connection, and connection meant safety.  So I became extremely good at adapting.

I learned to say everything was okay even when my body felt that it was not. I learned to override my needs, soften my reactions and make myself easy to be around. I became highly aware of other people’s moods and increasingly disconnected from my own.

Fawning became a familiar nervous-system pattern for me. Staying useful, agreeable and emotionally manageable helped me feel safe, but it also taught me that connection could come at the cost of self-expression.

Burnout in 2018 became the moment I could no longer keep living at a distance from myself.

It led me into breathwork, coaching, yoga, nervous-system education, and the deeper question that now sits at the centre of my work:

How do we build a relationship with ourselves strong enough to create a life that actually feels like our own?