My work uses creative therapies to help my clients (women, teens and children 8+) to inner heal and allow their own inner light to shine.

As an Artist I create to inspire, and my subjects are often ethereal and tell a story - illustrative.

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I am of senior years. Born in 1956, my work life and ongoing studies encompasses many decades from matriculation HSC in 1974 to the current year, and includes operating my own solo businesses. 
Formerly, I worked 40 years in graphic design and illustration combined with 20 years part-time teaching of adults and young people over 20 years.
And since 2017 I have been practising as a qualified therapist/counsellor combining all my prior and lived experience and my latest studies - still using creative processes. 

I have a special interest in Grief and Trauma, and my professional development studies continue to expand on that knowledge and application. I have lived experience of both and have travelled the inner journey from both sides. This allows me to hold space for my clients in a way that helps them to release their own grief and stories, in order to heal from the inside out.

Each client has individual needs and responds to different processes

• Sometimes clients only need to have a heart-to-heart discussion, and they realise that they are doing better than they realise.

• Sometimes it's a matter of working through Mindfulness and CBT or ACT exercises that help a client.

• Often clients work with the creative therapies to identify blocks that prevent them going forward and then add tools of Mindfulness and Cognitive Behaviour processes in order to expand their understanding.

• Others will go further, exploring a Soul Journey by using inner journeying to help them heal the broken or missing parts within.
   

Each client is an individual. And always, safety and inner calm/peace is the priority.

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Optional: Spiritual healing processes
For some clients, if appropriate, I use rhythmic inner journeys (accompanied by a repetitious drum), to explore their inner landscape. Deep inner healing requires the soul to be sober - not influenced by drugs or alcohol. I work with spiritual inner healing but I do not call myself a shaman, although I am qualified as a Practitioner in Shamanic Transformational Mask, which is about the many masks we all wear and how to identify and transform them through creative processes and journey drumming. My Christian background includes a deep inner faith and experience of God although I no longer affiliate myself with anything. My DNA blood family heritage has a great deal of Irish Celtic connection, as did the great mystic Irish poet John O'Donohue - a great man of God.

I am a surviver, former victim of child sexual abuse by persons known to the family but in authority. The church is included in that. Hence my journey is remarkable in that I have kept a deep inner faith of God, who I felt I knew before I was three years old. I believe my faith was what kept me going despite my initial disassociation from all the horrendous experiences, and despite the horrors I later remembered as it was not intended that I live. My faith  prevented me somehow of relying on artificial substances. My own facing my life and journey through healing of the effects of trauma, did not begin until my late fifties after falling very ill from no physical cause and going into therapy of my own. So, yes - I do know what it is like to be both client and therapist. My lived experience and inner faith now help me to hold space for the women and children who come to me with a desire for inner change, inner healing.
Learning to live in the present, not the remembered past or the projected future.

Each person has a spiritual inner landscape, regardless of their faith. A person may have a deep inner faith in God or another religious faith, but inner journeying - which is a form of mindful meditation as an altered state of consciousness without drugs - can offer opportunities for healing on emotional, spiritual and physical levels, helping to address past traumas, release negative energies, cultivate inner balance and harmony and restore parts of themselves that feel lost or hidden. These short inner journeys are always done sober by both myself and the client. 
History shares that in the traditions of Celtic Shamanism, for example, the ancient and most effective way to journey was by drumming or rattling. This creates a meditative and relaxed state that is also alert and aware. The person themselves are in full control. Safe and gentle. As the drumming carries the journeyer’s mind into an altered mindful state, some cultures refer to the shamanic drum as ‘the horse on which they ride on’. I like that.

There are many parts to all of us. And sometimes parts get lost, or hidden or put into safe keeping, as protective measures by us when we are very young. Many times healing has come from the inside when someone journeys to their inner landscape. Accessing their own inner wisdom, knowledge and taking back one's power result in helping the person restore the fragmented parts. John O'Donohue talks about the restoration of the parts of the soul in a very natural way. I, too, work very naturally and always in a safe way. Healing the soul is a passion for me.

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