I have seen through my own experience just how important healing yourself can be.
For me, my healing journey began when I came to London. Being away from the social restrictions and expectations I had grown up with gave me the space to expand my mind and, perhaps most importantly, to allow myself to be truly me.
This is not about blaming anyone. Not society, not religion, not our families, and not the people who may have influenced us along the way. We are all shaped by our experiences, our upbringing, our environment and the people around us.
For me, healing has been about recognising what was never mine to carry.
It has been about looking at the experiences that shaped me, understanding the things I didn’t want to carry forward, and gently releasing what no longer served me.
Healing is a journey. It can be slow, fast, or somewhere in between. There is no right way to do it.
For me, it has been worth every penny.
I have spent thousands of pounds investing in my health because I knew that taking care of myself would help me become the person I was meant to be. Every course I took, every treatment I experienced, every step I took deeper into myself was about understanding the roots of my struggles—and, at the same time, discovering more of myself.
And I loved the journey.
The challenging parts.
The beautiful parts.
The moments when I understood something new.
And even the moments when I felt completely lost.
Every challenge felt like another step towards opening the door of the cage I had once believed I had to live inside.
And this is why I believe we should not underestimate the importance of the beginning of our journey—especially birth.
Whether it is your own birth story or the birth of your baby, our earliest experiences can be deeply meaningful. Giving ourselves the opportunity to understand and process difficult experiences can be an important part of healing.
And when we heal ourselves, we can also become more conscious of what we pass on to our children.
We don’t have to be perfect parents. We don’t have to have everything figured out.
But we can become more aware.
We can pause.
We can reflect.
We can choose differently.
We can give our children the space to be themselves.
There is more and more research, writing and discussion around birth trauma, attachment, nervous-system regulation and the ways our early experiences can shape us. We are learning more about ourselves all the time.
The pandemic, too, gave many of us an unexpected opportunity to look inward—to question what we wanted, what we didn’t want, what mattered to us and what we wanted to change.
Even though we had such divided opinions about what to do and what not to do, in many ways we were all experiencing uncertainty, fear, change—and, for some, an opportunity to begin healing.
So, if you are at the beginning of your journey, take your time.
You don’t have to rush.
You don’t have to heal everything at once.
Start where you are.
Look after yourself.
Give yourself permission to explore who you really are beyond the expectations that were placed upon you.
You are worth the journey.
And your healing matters.