Lighthouse for freedom | Sacred space holder | Empowering inner wisdom & courageous living
I’m a coach and holistic counsellor as well as a writer. I support, guide and teach you on your journey to wild freedom as you tune into the wisdom within and cultivate the courage to follow your heart’s guidance.
You and your calling
Within you is something that wants to be experienced, expressed or created in your lifetime. It is your unique life that wants to be lived, your unique essence that wants to be expressed and given form in this world. It calls to you in many ways through lingering dissatisfaction, confusion, urges that seem illogical, yearning for adventure, or dreams that you ignore or dismiss as irrational or impossible often because you are scared of what it would require of you…
…to take a risk and step into the unknown into a life that looks different than anything around you and where the outcome is uncertain,
…and to reveal your heart and true self in a world that can seem so insensitive especially to a sensitive soul.
You hear the call or long to hear the call yet hold back because of fear, doubt, anxiety, confusion and self-criticism. You turn away and avoid for as long as you can until you realise that you can’t avoid it any longer. What is calling to you will keep calling to you and the fear, doubt, anxiety and confusion won’t dissolve until you step towards your longing.
This journey requires un-learning, re-wilding, and reclaiming your own instinctual nature, inner compass, inner maps and inner heroine. It requires you to embrace your fears, anxieties, self-doubt, confusion, resistance and self-criticism, and to redefine what safety, success and a meaningful life means to you in place of what may have been handed down to you.
We take this journey for the fulfilment of our souls, and because the world needs us more than ever to come home to our true selves so that we can live in harmony with the earth and each other.
My journey to wild freedom
My personal journey has taken me from living the life that I thought would make me happy to awakening to the voice of my soul through my heart and following it’s guidance…albeit reluctantly at times, such is my dance with my soul.
I spent my 20’s and early 30’s building my idea of the perfect life so that I could feel safe. I had a successful career working as an executive manager at an ASX-listed financial services company, a long-term partner I lived with in a trendy suburb, money in the bank, holidays, and a great lifestyle but I was desperately unhappy. I became increasingly depressed and cried every day on the way to work and on the way home. I was in deep despair wondering if this was all there was to life and if this is how I would feel for the rest of my life? It was a painful but beautiful invitation to awaken.
The universe conspires in our favour, although it doesn’t usually happen the way we think it should. My work restructured and I was offered a secondment on a project in Sydney, where I was able to rediscover myself by living alone in a different city. At the end of the project I transitioned into a product and investment focussed job that I hated. I called my manager in on his promise to find me a different role. Instead he asked me this question…
“What do you want to do?”
My world momentarily stopped while I searched for an answer that I couldn’t find, then panic set in for a while. This question turned out to be a gift that helped me to return home to myself and discover what I truly wanted in my life.
After my secondment finished, I returned to Melbourne and soon ended my relationship with my partner of five years moving out to start a new life on my own. I finally acted on my inner yearning to visit India and scuba dive the Similan Islands. I went alone and rediscovered pure joy and freedom.
My inner voice started urging me to travel and be free for a while. I had spent months clinging to the hope that my manager would come true on his promise and find me another role. But he didn’t. A week after I came back from my holiday, I quit my job for the uncertainty of contracting. Nine months later I packed up my life and said yes to that ‘crazy’ urge to travel and went to South East Asia for a year to follow my love of scuba diving.
That year changed the course of my life.
I wandered all over South East Asia. I scuba dived with manta rays, turtles, reef sharks, mola mola and whale sharks. I trained as a PADI divemaster and open water scuba instructor. Watching sunsets became my religion. I fell in love with the earth. I rediscovered wonder in the beauty around me and the freedom of following my heart.
For a few years I lived between Thailand and Melbourne. Then I discovered the ancient pilgrimage route, the Via Francigena, first walking a 120 kilomtre section through Tuscany, and two years later, after a sudden redundancy, I walked the whole route from Canterbuy in England to Rome in Italy.
It took me 85 days to complete including 7 rest days. It was the one of hardest and most beautiful journeys I have ever undertaken that challenged me physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually. I walked
alone for 78 days
through 4 countries—England, France, Switzerland and Italy
across 2 mountain ranges—the Alps and the Apennines
on bitumen, concrete, gravel, grass and too much sticky clay mud
through too many streams
on busy motorways with semi-trailer trucks passing within inches
in scorching sun and pouring rain, whipped by wind, shivering and mesmerised in snowfall and through thunderstorms with lightning flashing all around me
into Saint Peter's Square with Peter and Paul (yep, like my very own apostles.)
I walked the Via Francigena to honour the healing of childhood and ancestral trauma, and the complicated grief from my mum’s death. And I walked to answer the question of what I wanted to do with my life that will bring me alive every day using my unique gifts to make a difference in the world?
On my Via Francigena pilgrimage, my life slowed down to a maximum of 4 kilometres per hour and I spent 85 days walking out into the unknown countryside, held and often challenged by nature, relying on my intuition and listening for the voice of my soul. I heard its whispers although I initially doubted and dismissed them for not being clear enough. Sometimes we want to see the top of the mountain when we’re still at the very bottom needing to take the first step towards the peak. But the whispers persisted and I answered their call.
You and me
My calling in this lifetime is to support you on your journey to wild freedom as you listen to and follow your heart’s guidance and courageously cross the threshold from the known into the unknown world that is calling you with all the fear, trepidation, anxiety, confusion, excitement and ultimate joy that step holds.
I write to remind you of the innate wisdom and unique essence that lives inside of you.
I offer a safe and sacred space to support you as we listen deeply to the call within. I honour your sensitivity as a source of great wisdom and power.
I shine a light on the dark places you can’t see, offering insight and perspective when appropriate, encouraging your belief in yourself and the highest possibility of your life.
I help you find your own wise way to answer your questions and to transform fear, anxiety, self-doubt, confusion and self-criticism.
I offer this support through coaching sessions, and my writing via my blog, newsletter, and my forthcoming book about my heart’s healing and seeking journey on the Via Francigena, The Path We Make: a journey of the heart on the Via Francigena.
My skills, gifts and experience
I draw upon all areas of my life, including my leadership and management experience from over 15 years in the Financial Planning industry where I managed and coached back office teams and supported the integration of business acquisitions, my own awakening and healing experience, along with my natural gifts of intuition, insight and empathy. I have completed a Bachelor of Commerce and a Diploma in Holistic Counselling and I’m a member of the International Institute of Complementary Therapists (IICT).
As a gifted problem solver, I use my intuition and perception to get to the root of an issue and identify practical and implementable solutions. It is this gift that helped me to excel into executive management positions in the corporate world.
After spending so much time in nature, scuba diving and my pilgrimage, I know the true value of slowing down, silence, asking for guidance and listening. Feeling held and supported by nature or a trusted other is healing and nurturing. When we truly feel safe, anything is possible. Our time together is an opportunity for you to experience this too.
I have been interested in spiritual and personal development since my late teens. Over the years, I have studied meditation, reiki, theta healing, pellowah, buddhism, women’s wisdom and feminine embodiment practices, pilgrimage and holistic counselling. I am currently studying Narrative Coaching with Dr David Drake.
The journey continues
Aligning with my deepest callings, embracing fear, anxiety, confusion and uncertainty to live fully alive in the wild unknown is my continuous practice. The journey never ends. We only every arrive somewhere to leave again. Borrowing from the poet John O’Donohue…
I’m learning to “live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”
Whilst our life’s journeys may look very different, my sincere wish is that whether we cross paths through my website, writing or coaching, that I touch your heart in some way, and leave you feeling encouraged and inspired to live boldly. This would be my deepest honour.
Wishing you much courage on your path,
Kym xx
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