First published in Elephant Journal, June 2025.
The Grief Beneath the Surface
Dear part that feels so crushed and sad,
I want you to know that I see you. I am now aware this is what you crave most of all: to have your feelings seen and validated.
I imagine you as a young, small girl sitting on a dark shore, looking back at a wild grey-black ocean under heavy storm clouds. This is the aftermath—and you are grieving the parts of yourself you had to cut off in order to get to the shore. In order to survive.
The sensitive parts. The parts that feel things deeply, intensely, passionately.
It wasn’t possible to survive the ongoing situation with them intact, so you amputated them and fled.
You survived.
But now you feel defeated.
Crushed. Almost dead.
You can’t anymore. You can’t take anymore. You can’t do anything anymore.
You feel overstuffed—holding the emotions of others.
You feel overwhelmed with anxiety that no one is helping you hold.
You feel crushed and defeated by the constant struggle.
You have no more fight.
You feel like you have nothing left to give.
You are so bl**dy tired.
But what upsets you most isn’t even that. It’s what happened to you.
The parts you had to cut off.
And the fact that you had to do all of this alone—without your pain being seen, witnessed, or stopped.
Even worse, that I haven’t seen you either. That I’ve been doing the same thing to you—when what you’ve needed most is for me to notice.
When Art Activates the Wound
As I said this to my part, something shifted. I felt a flicker of energy, of hope. She felt heard. I was doing something right.
She had been triggered during a rehearsal. I was playing a woman grieving infertility, exhausted by her struggle through IVF. The material from The Quiet House stirred my own grief, my own weariness.
Later, while doing abundance manifesting work on negative core beliefs, that same part surfaced again. This time, the pieces started coming together.
I found clarity.
I found the belief that had been running the show.
The Realisation: Manifesting Isn’t About Calling In—It’s About Making Space
A journal prompt had asked: What would you do if you received everything you wanted?
For me, abundance meant freedom and safety.
But the freedom to do what?
I realised: the freedom to play.
To play through acting.
To play with my children.
And that’s when the guilt came.
The criticism.
The self-judgement.
As I followed the thread, I uncovered a core belief:
That I must struggle and suffer in order to be safe and connected.
The Root: The Hidden Contract
It made sense.
I was the eldest daughter of a solo parent of two, navigating the waves of inherited trauma and chronic dysregulation.
Without realising it, I had made a silent vow:
I will carry your struggle and suffering if it means I can stay connected to you.
The illusion was that this contract guaranteed safety.
It didn’t.
But as a child, my nervous system was wired to seek closeness at any cost.
This was the fawn response in action: the hope that if I attuned to her pain, I could keep myself safe.
What I internalised was this:
Abundance, ease, and visibility = danger, guilt, and loss.
The Broken Record: Living Half-In
That belief became a loop.
Even after relocating to Lisbon, returning to acting, and following my creative path, I couldn’t fully step into the life I’d created. One foot remained in survival.
Sure, part of it was the natural adjustment to a big life change. But there was more.
A deeper resistance.
A belief that ease was unsafe.
Even though I was working hard to shift things, a powerless part of me quietly sabotaged the process.
For example: I didn’t consider promoting my therapy services locally. I was so focused on working with actors that it didn’t even occur to me. But when I finally did, clients came.
I saw then that I didn’t need to let go of being a therapist.
My calling was always to midwife creativity—to bring what’s hidden into the light.
We are all artists of our own lives.
And I’d been midwifing my own process all along.
Healing Through the Body: EMDR as a Portal
That small crushed part was carrying the full weight of my struggle wound.
Her loyalty to suffering had nearly broken her.
But when I witnessed her, when I validated her, and when I named the belief, something shifted again.
As an EMDR therapist, I offered her a rescue.
With bilateral tapping, I invited her story to unfold.
I imagined safe people intervening.
A rainbow dragon, a kind social worker—whatever she needed.
That’s the magic of EMDR. You get to rewrite the story.
And then I anchored a new belief:
“I am safe, worthy, and lovable in my ease, joy, and abundance.”
Rewiring the Brain: A New Belief System
That’s neuroplasticity.
The more we imagine ourselves safe in joy, the more our nervous system learns that it’s true.
These shifts take time—but they’re real. And I felt it.
Soon after, I began to receive more aligned clients.
The external began to shift as my internal world softened.
When the Breakdown Is the Breakthrough
I had heard over and over that what you want to manifest is already inside you.
But I didn’t believe it could be that simple.
And that?
That disbelief was the struggle wound speaking.
I didn’t realise that the emotional breakdown was the breakthrough.
That the messiness was a sign that something beautiful was trying to land.
In Tarot, it’s the Tower card before the Star.
Destruction before illumination.
Manifesting isn’t about forcing things to appear.
It’s about making space—by going inward, by feeling what’s real, by meeting the parts of us that were left behind.
So I ask you, dear reader:
What is right in front of your nose right now?
When you think about what you’re trying to manifest, how are you feeling—right now?
Or what are the most dominant negative feelings and emotional states showing up lately?
How do they connect with your deeper story—and with what you’re longing to call in?
Being Authentic is Your Portal
For all the programmes and ideas I’d developed, I couldn’t feel grounded in any of them.
I didn’t know how to access my own abundance.
Until I saw: it had been there the whole time.
Becoming the artist of my own life.
Sharing my story.
Midwifing my own creative process.
That was the portal.
The Wound & the Way
As a therapist and actress, I see now how common this wound is.
This struggle wound.
This inherited survival contract.
The guilt and shame at the idea of experiencing ease.
The tug-of-war between wanting to shine—and wanting to hide.
It’s hard for anyone to carry this.
But especially for those of us who long to express ourselves creatively.
And paradoxically, I think it’s the unseen child within us who wants that shine. Who wants to be witnessed and known.
So if something here resonates, I hope it offers a small light for your own path.
Because abundance doesn’t come from pushing harder.
It comes from being real.
From feeling everything.
From midwifing your own transformation.
Which—you don’t have to do alone, by the way.
And then?
You magnetise.
So dear reader, may you believe you are safe, worthy, and lovable in your ease, abundance, and joy.