This is me!

I grew up in a seaside town on a dairy. My parents didn't have much money so we all lived with my great grandparents on their old dairy until I was about 4 and my parents got their first council house.

I remember staying in the bedroom I shared with my brother when we first moved in it had dark blue wallpaper on it with owls and other things in little squares all over. It scared the crap out of me late at night when the lights were off.

I wasn't particularly happy in the new house as soon as we moved in I tried to make new friends but I stood on someone's toes and it all went downhill from there. I remember playin out in the front garden and then feeling a searing pain in my wrist. It felt like it have totally bent back in an unnatural way. It took me a few seconds to realise I had been kicked full force in the hand while I was sitting on the grass. I was lucky if I hadn't put my hand up I would have got it full force in the face.

The hot tears were streaming down my face and I couldn't stop crying. I was whisked off to hospital but luckily nothing was broken. That was the beginning of several years of being teased, called names, bullied by a bunch of girls all older, the ring leader lived in the street. i got more and more withdrawn and turned into a quiet, lonely girl, I thought I was ugly, I started believing what I had heard. I had no confidence, low self esteem and I struggled to talk if there was more than one person around. I felt alone.

When I left school at 17 I ended up in a YTS, it was the only job I could get as I was crap at interviews. I panicked, I always seemed to take things the wrong way and misunderstand questions. I think people thought I was really stupid. I wasn't. I hadn't done particularly well at school because I was always distracted. Who would be at the gate waiting for me when I finished. Would I make it home before something happened. I was in a constant state of stress, panic and fear.

My job only lasted 2 years before I got paid off when the business shut down. I didn't work for a couple of months and then I got a job at the local hospital. I was miserable there but I kept going as I couldn't seem to get anything else. I had grown up got married, got separated and I was still unhappy, depressed and anxious. It all came to a head after a wild night out one Thursday. I didn't make it to my work the next day, the one and only time I ever phoned in sick when I wasn't really sick I just wasn't fit to go for other reasons.

That was the day everything changed. My brother took me for coffee in the afternoon and told me I had to sort myself out, I could't go on the way I was and he was right. I had no idea what to do. I had been motivating and inspiring the people around me to do better and move up into other jobs and they were. It was just me who was stuck.

I remembered going for careers advice when I was young. They gave you a print out of all the jobs you could do with the qualifications you had. That was it I decided, I would ring them up and see if they would help an adult too. Nothing ventured nothing gained.

They let me make an appointment and I went and she printed off a list, loads of jobs I should be able to do based on the qualifications I had. One stood out more than all the others, Dietitian. I had always been a bit podgy but had lost a lot of weight. I had always liked to cook and count calories so I thought, why not, I can do this.

That was it I found out about the nearest Uni and I applied. I had no savings, a mortage to pay on a flat but I had decided, enough was enough and things were going to change. I got a reference from my boss. I needed it for the application. He gave me it and insisted on reading it out to me before he posted it to UCAS. It was amazing, I never realised he had actually noticed how good I was at work and how much effort I put in.

I left work about 8 months later. I had no idea how I was going to manage but I this was it, this was what sorting myself out looked like. Everyone thought I was nuts, worried about how I was going to pay my mortgage. I decided I had better prove them all wrong and let them see how well I could do. I studied hard, worked hard, sometimes in three part-time jobs all and once and I did it. I graduated from university in 2006 with a first class honours degree and won a prize for best academic performance.

It wasn't easy to get a job but I eventually got a permanent contract as Dietitian and worked my way up. I worked on a project, helped to create an e learning package and did a lot of other things. I always wanted a community job but when I eventually got one I didn't enjoy it, the caseload I had was mainly nursing homes, filled with clients who couldn't talk to you themselves. I was good at my job and what I did but I loved to talk to people and help people. I quickly got frustrated. At all the money that was wasted. All the time wasted in unproductive meetings. I hated the things that happened to the people I was referred to work with.

At one point I actually felt ashamed to work for the NHS because of what was happening to the patients and how they were being treated. There was a culture of bullying, I was having problems, no-one would help and I ended up deciding to leave. I retrained and set off to live hundreds of miles from home in Solihull and realised very quickly I had no idea how to get clients and make money on my own.

It was a steep learning curve and I tried a few different things. I was passionate about the therapy I was using for clients but it wasn't enough to see the great results they were getting, I had to make money too. I just wasn't making enough.

I took a few months out and went to stay in the US for 3 months. It was a great experience but I had to come home again to Scotland. I moved back down south for a few months as I didn't know what to do. What I was doing wasn't bringing in enough and I had got into debt but I didn't know what else to do.

I felt like a failure if I gave up and went back to Scotland for good so I struggled on a bit longer. I went home for the weekend and I ended up deciding to move back and stay. I got a part time job to tide me over and even thought about moving up within the company. It wasn't to be and probably just as well for me as I would still be there.

Over the years I've tried lots of different holistic therapies as well as hosted lots of workshops training people to be therapists. It what I'm good at and its what I enjoy doing most, training others and inspiring them to develop and grow. I love to read books on manifesting and I also dowse for self-empowerment and self healing. A lot of people probably think I'm nuts but I have had some amazing spiritual expereinces over the last few years and even though things were tough there are a lot of things I just wouldn't change.

I created a workbook for people who wanted to use the 55x5 technique to manifest. I bought a copy of my own book and used it myself. I ran workshops with another dowser and we helped a lot of people manifest a lot of amazing things.

For myself? Well I manifested a new job and started to get out of the debt I was in. I started to get back to doing some of the things I love. I started to put a lot of the things I had learned over the years into practice where I work. I never stopped being passionate about health as I had my own issues over the years. Now I help people access pure filtered water and help then ditch the bottles and contribute to less waste on the planet.

It has been a bit of a journey and it's still not over. I have had lots of adventures along the way and I'm sure I've got a lot more to come!

They say no-one reads articles, I'm not sure if that's true. If you do read this and get to the end then say Hi on one of my posts.