I felt broken, but I was not prepared for the breakdown.

My Repairenting journey started almost a decade ago. I'd been diagnosed with postnatal depression about a year after giving birth to my daughter , and no matter the drug or the support, I found myself rapidly suffocating under the weight of side-effects and responsibilities. On the outside, I appeared high functioning, successful and happy, however most days I dragged around this heavy weight of pending doom and gloom.  I was solo parenting whilst running my interior styling business and one thing I could never understand was how easy it was for me to step into any space, I mean any space, from an over cluttered disorganised family home to a $10m beachfront mansion, it didn’t matter the space, I could see the vision, I could picture the transformation and quickly engage in creating it, yet, no matter how hard I tried in my personal life, I could not find lasting peace within my own mind.   Behind the success and the magnificent spaces I created lay an endless battle within; a maze of doctor visits, mis-diagnoses, medications and therapists that often left me feeling more hopeless than healed.

I created beautiful, harmonious, spaces and yet for years in my private life I felt trapped in mental cycles of dysfunction which started to seep through every aspect of my life. I was yet to find out that what I was actually experiencing wasn't just postnatal depression, but a lifetime of shame, childhood trauma, chronic depression and generational patterns that felt impossible to break.  The irony wasn't lost on me. I could create stunning spaces that breathed life and possibility, yet I'd return home to disorganisation, disconnection and dysfunction.  And like a house built on a rocky foundation, the cracks ran deep, and when the pressure got too much, the walls of my life came crashing down.

I'll be honest with you, the cracks had symptoms long before I had any real language for them. I had been aware of them for decades. Cracks that hadn't been tended to because I thought they were just parts of me, my character, I didn't know where they came from or what to do with them. During my adolescence there was always the lateness, the scattered mind that couldn't hold still the moment I needed it most, a nasty critical voice inside running a relentless commentary on everything I was getting wrong. I'd pull away from people before things got too close or too real. I was never quite sure which. Relationships felt like beautiful rooms I desperately wanted to live in but somehow couldn't stay inside.

In my 20’s trusting people was hard and building anything that went deep took everything I had. So I'd always just keep going. To where, I was never actually sure. Like a ping pong ball, bouncing from one thing to the next in a constant cycle of collapse, reinvention and resignation. As I awkwardly moved in a world that seemed to not quite understand me and one that I longed to belong to, I was unaware that I'd self protected and self medicated my entire life. There was this deep and particular aloneness I carried even in rooms full of people. Because it felt safer to move away from things that were loving, kind, exciting and solid. At the time they felt fake, an exchange for something I’d be handing over later or in some cases I was so oblivious I’d walk right past the thing that was good for me. Moving away felt like independence.

I'd agonise over the painstaking decision to leave a party, a dinner, an event, and when I finally did there would be this rush of relief which would rapidly disappear in the void of aloneness. What I didn't understand then was that the leaving wasn't independence but fear of connection masked as choice. I searched high and low for the answers to “what's wrong with me”, and when I looked inside, all I could find were tiny little glimmers. Glimmers of potential that would burst like fireworks, on rare occasions, when no one was watching. Glimmers I had learned to ignore, to snuff out, because they seemed more dangerous than exciting because glimmers created happiness and joy and happiness and joy meant something bad would eventually happen.

After relocating to Australia from Scotland in my early 30’s, the never ending self improvement project began. It started one morning in the reception area of a doctors office. As I sat there, I started glancing around the walls looking at the signs telling us to get our flu injection and how to prevent this and that, when one particular poster caught my eye. It was an A3 poster with 9 squares of cartoons inside. As my eyes fixed on each one with an inherent understanding I realised each one except 2 related to me and as I read the caption below “This is child abuse”, it suddenly became clear to me that although I had a loving family, I was born into domestic violence. I had a few memories of situations I’d experienced but always managed to shove them down if they ever surfaced. Most of the time I had no recollection of my childhood. I’d shift uncomfortably as friends told funny stories of family dinners or holidays and I would remember being stuck in the kitchen listening to my dad yell at my mother in the other room or hear plates being smashed, or worse my mother. I grew up building my own complex architecture between fear and love, shame and joy, connection and abandonment, and I carried it all without knowing I was carrying anything at all. For most of my life I was high functioning, I’d become a well know successful hairdresser travelling around the UK training and inspiring others. I owned my own home at 25, had a pension, investments and savings. When I moved to Australia I study acting and studies visual arts eventually becoming an interior designer creating spaces for other people. All of these achievements happened while quietly suffocating inside my own life. I self-protected, self-medicated, reinvented, performed, people-pleased and eventually collapsed.

This is where my Repairenting story begins. An ordinary Tuesday morning on the same road I drove day after day, the same school bag on the seat.  I had no other choice but to pull over that day because something building for a very long time, finally said: ENOUGH!. At a time when everything on the surface seemed perfect.  I was the owner and director of a successful property styling business that I’d birthed within a few weeks of birthing my daughter. The creativity poured out of me, as did the love for my child and the desire to create a beautiful life for her. It was a short lived moment in time, as underneath, a darkness snuck in, capturing my joy, my connection and my ability to just be.  Slowly sinking into post-natal depression, it stole my time, my rest and my peace of mind.

Within a few years and a few medications later, I was dealing with the ups and downs of severe side effects, a relationship breakdown, solo parenting and the surfacing of my own complex childhood trauma.

So here I was, my early 40’s feeling utterly broken but nothing prepared me for the breakdown. I had been crumbling for decades, so when I finally had no other choice but to let go, it happened quickly at 8.17am on the morning school run.‍  ‍After another painstaking sleepless night, another episode of “rapid cycling” from trialling yet another medication, another well rehearsed Mary Poppins parenting morning, running on empty towards yet another panic attack.  Only this time I thought I may actually die, on the side of a busy morning road, engine running, hazard lights on. As I turned off the engine I felt my seven year old daughter’s tiny hand reach into mine and before I could open my mouth to reassure her, “Everything is alright”, I heard her say “Muma, I think you should call an ambulance”. The psychologist at the hospital called it a nervous breakdown, I called it a life saver. It was the breaking down of everything my head, body and heart had been carrying for decades; haunting, cycling, exhausting, over demanding parts that took up so much space, I often wished I could smash into a million pieces just to get some relief.

Determined to find a way, I sought help from holistic therapists and integrative health doctors. I studied psychology, brain and attachment science, gut and hormone health through the works of visionaries such as Dr. Daniel J. Siegel, Dr. Gabor Maté & Dr Giulia Enders. ‍ I wanted to understand how the mind works and how our childhood and adolescence environments impact our development, our thoughts, our behaviour, perceptions and decisions and essentially our life outcomes.‍

I learned that the post-natal depression was due to hormonal imbalances and nutritional deficiencies.  I learned that the adverse side effects from the SSRI’s was because my body couldn’t process them properly and I was on the wrong medications for my system.  Hense the horrific side effects.  I learned that a diagnosis of Bi-Polar II Disorder was in-fact an auto-immune disease called Hashimoto’s.  And I learned I had MTFHR gene, Pyroleuria and over methylation.  No wonder I was feeling broken.  I learned that some of what had happened to me and what I’d witnessed in childhood was abuse and I had experienced episodes of CPTSD along with shame spirals and trauma triggers most of my life.  I spent the following few years mending my gut through cleansing with colonics and balancing the gut microbiome.

I eliminated foods from my diet and introduced nourishing food as medicine. I regained equilibrium in my chemistry by balancing my hormones, introducing supportive vitamins and herbs adnn learning mindfulness techniques. As I gained strength and vitality i found I could gently sift through the well of grief from the abuse and the rupturing of my family. I found pieces of a broken childhood that were buried under a deep well of grief and little by little, I repaired my past, infusing golden threads of love like a tender kintsugi artist.

I was on a quest to strengthen my interior, my mind, body and spirit by implementing everything I’d learned.  I wanted to repair and heal my past so I could become an emotionally mature and secure guide for my daughter. Because although I, the woman was healing there were seasons in my parenting where it wasn't enough. I was reacting from places I thought I had healed. Finding my mother's pain and my daughter's struggles colliding with mine in ways I couldn't always separate. In one of those seasons, at my most exhausted and most desperate, I asked God what to do. And what came back to me, quietly and completely clear was this. “Jen. Every mother is first a daughter”. I understood. I could not give my daughter what I had not had myself. The healing needed to move backwards before it could move forward. To repair the daughter in me, the one who hadn't been seen, hadn't felt safe, hadn't been taught how to belong to herself, before I could show up fully for the daughter in front of me. That is the work I did. And it changed everything between us.

Fifteen years as an interior designer taught me that a well-designed home transforms how we live, and my personal journey taught me that a consciously designed mind transforms who we become. The most important renovation I have ever done is the interior one. And so because of this, I became a Reapairenting coach and Mindest mentor . I know what it is to rebuild from the ground up, to design a life from the inside out, and now I am here to help you do the same.  Taking a good look inside our design and truly facing our fears, addictions, trauma and grief, is one of the most courageous things we can ever do.  And those who dare to release the resistance and surrender into what must be seen, felt, and understood, are yet to discover one of the most profound and rewarding gifts of all.  Freedom!

I hope in joining me, you find a resonance, a sense of belonging and the wisdom within yourself. My wish is that you feel inspired, unburdened and most of all seen, heard and connected through this work.