Being a woman who has survived traumatic experiences all my life, made me realise just how it impacted on my life and my loved ones around me witnessing me becoming so ill I lost myself and thought I had nothing to live for .
Eventually from finding the right support network and the best people to help me ,

gave me the strength and courage and opportunity to explore and express my thoughts and feelings and process just what I had lived through and survived.

It taught me how to cope and overcome everyday challenges such as flashbacks, depression , anxiety, nightmares, extreme pain and fear .
After experiencing many forms of trauma based therapies , the main two that benefited me the most were

Complex Post Traumatic Stress EMDR and RESCRIPT Therapy and ART therapy.

These forms of treatment enabled me to develop coping strategies and techniques to face thoughts, feelings and emotions and memories so enmeshed and couldn’t separate or process .

It was through these treatments that I rediscovered skills and learned new hugely effective and beneficial ones as well .
I gained my self esteem and self awareness, I gained insight and confidence and learned how to understand what happened to me wasn’t my fault and that from years of constant different forms of abuse, I accepted it as being the norm and knew no different.

As I started to become well and stable and self aware of my abilities and capabilities, I wanted to become part of something that helped other people who had experienced similar situations as myself.

I wanted to educate myself further from what I already had to deliver a way of helping other people to heal and rebuild their lives and themselves from their experiences of trauma.

I started delivering workshops online voluntarily teaching creative activities of all forms using recycled materials and resources we had around our homes and make use of them to save money and also make things that would be most useful.
It became so popular during lockdown when we had to isolate because of Covid restrictions, I saw this s something that could be developed into something much more than just an activity to occupy some time .

It made me want to educate myself more in delivering therapeutic activities to distract and to help process thoughts and feelings people couldn’t verbalise .
Art of any kind became a coping mechanism in managing overwhelming pain and suffering mentally and emotionally.

From this I went on to deliver workshops on a regular basis in the community for people to engage in activities using any form of media , items and projects to just create.
I noticed not only did it continue to help me but was hugely beneficial for others as well.
I knew that this was the way for me to go and so ever since I have been constantly educating my self by going back to studying and achieving more qualifications.

I was encouraged to turn my life experiences into a career path and now I work regularly with all walks of life and age groups, with the use of creative activities of many different forms to help people work through their challenges with mental health and trauma.

I am so inspired and determined to make a difference to help others heal that I turned to making it my life’s mission to gain as many new qualifications and skills so I can provide professional support.
That is why I am here doing this course as it will open more doors for me to develop and deliver professional approaches and applications to the work I love doing so much