How permaculture and motherhood led me to become a sacred sexuality and ecstatic birth coach

I have been gathering my strength and courage to share the story with you of how this came to be as I know there is healing within it not just for me but for others that find themselves confused, misunderstood and wanting more for their life, their relationships, their children and our planet too.

It is a story about love, it’s a story about rage.

It’s a story about freedom and a story about hope.  

It's a story about stepping up and creating the reality that we wish to inhabit.

It's a bit of a read, but if you're curious, stay with me.

Since I was a small child FREEDOM was the most important thing to me. to let me be, to breathe, and journey FREE. Any commitment felt like trappings....school, work, relationships, even my own birthday celebrations! I wriggled out as best I could, politely declining the invitation and running or cycling to the sea burying myself in sand and water, and when I was old enough to far away seas, lands, peoples and places.

My love for freedom has taken me cycling for months across south east asia, climbing up mountains in the dark just to see the sunrise, it has had me live in a hand built yurt in the woods without electricity for 3 years, and it has had me create an acro yoga school to support others to find freedom, joy and confidence in their own bodies and play.  It has also asked me to excavate the darkest layers of my own being to find a deeper sense of truth, love and freedom that is available wherever, whenever and with whomever I am with. I am very thankful for that.  

It's our fears and hidden longings that take us deeper to our truth

I was always terrified to become a mother. 

Although deep in my heart I always knew it would be the greatest adventure I could ever take, the thought totally terrified me.

I feared that motherhood would stop me on my path. that I would feel strangled in my own life, tortured by the trappings of domesticity and family obligation. I feared it would break my body (after hearing many traumatic birth stories it really didn’t sound great) and that I would no longer be able to practice and devote myself to the arts that had found me and helped me when I was most in need.

It was a shock when I discovered I was pregnant with my first son Onni. 

I collapsed in bed, asleep for 24 hrs after a summer run of festival performances and workshops. I was days from the next festival lined up.

My body said STOP.

Change of plan.

Maybe another festival is not what you need right now!....

What! This did not feel like me at all… this is what I love doing...this is what I live for!.....what was happening to me?

When the realisation finally dropped, reality felt pretty cold and terrifying. 

As well as my deep rooted fear of losing my independence, freedom, and the possibility of on going far flung adventures,  I was in a moment of personal crisis that did not feel baby friendly. 

My marriage to a man that I loved so deeply, was rupturing in a mess of depression and confusion. We’d been riding these waves for years and despite unending love and various attempts at therapy our lives were shadowed by disconnection, avoidance, disappointment and emotional exhaustion.  It had been a long time that neither of us knew which way to turn and these last weeks had been particularly turbulent, it had felt like the end was inevitable.

This was not how I envisioned bringing new life into this world.

But now this little spec of chaos had planted itself within me and it seemed to have its own plans of existence. 

As soon as I gathered some strength to crawl out of bed (this miraculous secret still held untold close to my chest) I did what I always did when I didn’t know what else to do...I ran.  

Well biked actually... by myself, with a tent and a little bag of food, I took two days in the wild to be with myself, this new growing life, and this life changing news.

I was scared. Life was not as I wished it to be.  The world was in a toxic mess and so was my relationship.  This was not what I had imagined when I fell in love and prescribed to the happy ever after fairy tale I had absorbed through childhood…..I had found my Prince, why had it all gone so wrong?

This was a wake up call, things were getting very real indeed. Running was only going to take me so far this time, the truth was very alive and it was not something I could leave behind.  I was being asked to step up in a big way. Even though I was terrified I accepted my challenge. I wanted to be the mama of this little unknown life.

As this tiny seed grew I meditated. I filled my womb and this unfurling bud with love and gratitude. I let it know how much I wanted it despite the confusion I found myself in. I somehow knew this tiny being had come as a peace messenger and as a teacher of truth.

As we sat together and grew I fell in love. With my baby, yes, but also with me as mother.

I was wowed by my body's ability to grow this new beating heart, this new living, breathing, soul. 

As I sat still in nature I new myself as nature: as creation and as creatrix.

I felt wowed that in total stillness I was making the most amazing thing I ever would, ever could and that this mystery would show itself to me just by being. 

No thinking was needed in this creation process, my body knew what to do. And the more love, nature-time, and stillness I nurtured myself with, the easier and more blissful the growth journey became. 

I gave myself permission to be in and to cultivate a state of BLISS, despite the confusion of what I felt around me.

So my beautiful boy was born and I felt blessed beyond words. We were so fortunate to have a peaceful birth into water and both me and baby Onni were healthy.

But a secret that many of you don't know is that as I birthed I felt…

SO MUCH RAGE!!!

The intensity of the experience, yes…

But also the ongoing suffering of women, whose sacred essence as life bringers has and still is being disregarded and oftentimes abused, world over. 

The suffering of men too: the disconnect, the trapped emotions, the numbness. 

The savage abuse to our dear Mother Earth blindly being raped and pillaged day after day as she opens her arms and gives her bountiful gifts again and again and again despite constant abuse and neglect. 

I felt rage for the total waste of this precious gift of existence that this suffering and abuse creates. 

The reality of life and its potential felt so far from each other and I was swimming in the pain and torment of this division.

I was confused beyond words by the pain in my closest relationship and the strange hypocritical mess of the world I found myself in.

Neither felt like the place I wanted to be birthing my baby. 

I desired more than anything else in the world to bring this baby into a place of total love and joy and to feel myself as his mother also held in love and joy.

I fell so in love with my baby my heart burst open in the presence of this beautiful precious life, I melted in the miracle of his existence.

I also felt alone, a drift in a vast sea, drowning in wave upon wave of breast milk, puke, baby poo and mama tears. I didn’t want to share my truth with anyone as it all just felt too uncomfortable.

I was lost in the confusion of my shift of identity. No longer knowing who I was or how I was meant to show up in the world beyond the bubble of my jelly state of mama-baby.

I longed so deeply to make a magical life for my new young family.

I longed so deeply to feel alive, free, empowered and connected in my experience as a mother, lover and whatever else I wanted to be. 

I felt a long way from this.

I was exhausted, confused and totally overwhelmed.

Where to start?

I remembered a key teaching from a permaculture training I had taken: when planning a permaculture project: create zones and start your work with the central zone, learning how to create and nurture efficient life giving systems right from the centre, then move out zone by zone.

This made sense to me. I applied the same theory to my family life. Where was the centre?… my home, no. deeper....Well in my womb. This place of creation.

And in my sexual energy this mysterious creative life force.

I needed to go right in and understand, heal and learn how to harness this epically powerful resource.

I was totally amazed by what my body had done and was still doing as my breast milk nourished and plumped this pink and wiggly little love bug.

I wanted to know how I could also feel deliciously nourished in this experience instead of feeling totally drained and exhausted.

I wanted to honour my body, and it's amazing journey of pregnancy, birth and motherhood and also find out more about this insanely powerful portal of creation I had within me.  

At this time, it didn’t feel like I had the whole picture available to me. It felt like my education, even my yoga education was missing some very key elements specifically around my needs and potential as a WOMBan and about creating vibrant healthy relationships with myself and intimate partners. 

Without this insight it felt like life was never going to be full colour spectrum, I was always going to be in a place of half alive discontent.  My perception of mainstream society was not providing a narrative that supported me to flourish as mother, partner and wild, alive, being!  

I knew deep within that more was possible, and I wanted to know how.  

I was not prepared to raise my child and live my life as a miserable half shell of a mother, afraid to speak her own truth and express her insatiable longing for a more magical and fulfilling existence.

I saw an advert for a Jade Egg training and I was intrigued.. Jade egg is an ancient Taoist practice developing women's pelvic floor muscles alongside visualisations, breathwork and self touch, to move and activate energy from our reproductive organs through our body, nourishing our whole system. I knew this was what I needed so I took a deep breath and leapt...spending every penny of my overdraft to join the course….

It was beautifully epic and well worth the investment.

It opened up pleasure portals and energy channels within my own body. It was literally giving me tools to light myself up from the inside out. I started to sample that much of my unquenchable longing that was never being met by outside sources, could in fact be met by me!...oh what a revelation.

Instead of needing to run or pick a fight which had often been the case (yes you guessed it nervous system stress responses fight or flight, EASILY activated by Sams nervous system response which was often times FREEZE), I could drop into the well of pleasure and potential available in my own body and create a new reality from inside out. 

I started to awaken and activate my WILD alive that struggled to find its shape under the names of 'mother' and 'wife' (which is hardly surprising since Mother is such an abused architype…just look at how we are treating Mother Earth for a living, crying example) but that felt abundant, juicy and creative when given the titles of Queen, Goddess and Creatrix that went hand in hand with this empowering work.

I was very sheepish about owning up to Sam about my ‘extravagant’ and somewhat abstract purchase.

What was amazing however was within two weeks of practising Sam (who had been super sceptical about this "woowoo" course!) was saying what a difference he was noticing in me and also in how I was relating to him; and I of course was then noticing beautiful shifts in how he was relating to me.

What a gift! 

Space, freedom and fun opened up between us where there had been pressure, expectation, painful disappointment and avoidance.

I was totally convinced by the power of this work and I knew I wanted to go deeper for my own journey and to serve my sisterhood in which I felt so much shared suffering.

 2 years after I took my first Jade Egg course, I made the leap and mighty bold investment and committed to a 650+hour training as a sex love and relationship coach.  This combined ancient wisdoms from Taoist and Tantric traditions with modern neuroscience and transformational coaching principles.

2 years on from that I’ve graduated and my life, love and freedom is blossoming on this path.

At the heart of this work is radical self responsibility, stepping into the knowledge that we create our own experience.  Stepping into the tools that teach us how to love ourselves in the ways that we so dearly want to be loved.  When we do this everything changes.

At the heart of this work is the knowledge that our sexuality is not just there to attract and please a partner and provide us with momentary escape from reality, but rather that it is a scared and life giving essence that can heal and transform our own lives in the most beautiful and expansive way, just as it can also create the miracle of new life.

It is empowering work that puts the paintbrush back in our own hands, transcending the tyranny of the victim and perpetrator dynamic and moving into a space of sovereignty, fun and oh so much pleasure!

As a mother this has been a total game changer. It has given me the tools to nourish myself as I nourish my babies. It has given me the tools to own my power as creatrix. Stepping into self responsibility of my own reality, and letting the changes ripple out from my centre point.

As a lover this has been a total game changer.  More than 10 years into our partnership I can honestly say we are in the most truthful, alive, passionate, supportive and loving place that is full of peace, joy, fun and possibility.  This is something I spent years longing and struggling for.  

We have overcome long stories of depression and anxiety and our relationship has become a place of healing and joy for us both, finding support together to liberate old stories and even heal ancestral trauma.

Professionally it has also been game changing, as I now hold space for courageous women to step into their pleasure and drop into their power, becoming the creatrixes of their deepest desires and longings. It’s such empowering and life giving work, and a total joy to share and witness the transformation that this brings to my clients; and if they have them their partners and families too.

I meditate on the ripple effect this healing will have. It is my dream that as individuals become empowered by their own sacred essence and potential as creatrixes, we will together create a new paradigm of existence, where the world becomes a gift that we feel so proud to be leaving to our children's care. 

I know that this vision is shared by others, we are creating it together.

It feels to me that as we heal our hearts, minds and bodies and step into our divinity we also are healing mother earth.

Through this work I know myself as a microcosm of the universe, so I have the power to change a LOT by changing myself and that feels fucking fantastic!

Yes another world is possible and we are the ones that make it so.