08/06/2026
By the time I was 18, five major traumatic events had already shaped my life.
None of them were ever really named for what they were.
They fragmented and compartmentalised inside me, as if they had happened to another person.
Around that time, I was scouted by Models 1.
In front of the camera, I learned how to become someone else while, internally, I was falling apart.
Over time, the constant scrutiny and judgement of my appearance only deepened the disconnection with myself.
The unresolved traumatic events of my adolescence surfaced as dissociation, flashbacks and intrusive thoughts.
I suppressed them by any means necessary.
Money bought me things to change the way I felt.
Travel gave me a sense of liberty.
But neither changed what was happening underneath.
I was still carrying it all, and it influenced my choices, pulling me into situations that nearly cost me both my freedom and my life.
At 20, in Asia, I was arrested, assaulted, locked up, and extorted.
At 24, in South America, I was threatened with guns, blacked out, and nearly drowned.
It took me years to understand that all these experiences were connected.
I turn 38 this year. These experiences are in my past, and they are part of what made me the therapist I am today.
I know dark places, the way through them and back.
What was once a blank space I blocked out is now held with acceptance.
An appreciation of the resilience it took to survive those years and the self-compassion that followed runs through my work, my relationships, and the way I move through life.
