WHAT LOSING MY WHOLE IMMEDIATE FAMILY BECAUSE OF DRUGS TAUGHT ME ABOUT LIFE:

When I was 3 I went to foster care for the first time. When I was 4 my mother went to prison for dealing heroin. My father was a violent alcoholic and drug taker also. I grew up between foster homes and moving back and forth to each parents house.

When I was 11 my 14 year old brother was murdered by my mother’s heroin dealer and 9 months later my sister committed suicide overdosing on heroin.

She was his twin. I was admitted to hospital myself several times as a youth for taking my mother’s pain killers attempting suicide and as I faced homelessness at 14 once again.

I was then taken into the care of a guardian (a member of my family) who began abusing me. My mother finally passed away at age 51 when I was 18 and then my father at age 46 when I was 20.

I have 2 surviving brothers still alive. One with mental illness (including PTSD) and one with chronic drug addiction.

All of my immediate family members were also sexual abuse sufferers. All of them…experienced significant trauma.

I am the only one who stands without addiction. Why I share this…is because drugs taught me something deep about life. The devastation drugs caused in my life, gave birth to a deep deep passion within me to help heal not only myself but others.

To heal people overcome pain, suffering and trauma NATURALLY and without drugs. The pain that I experienced…I have used to give me the burning desire to overcome adversity without forming addiction.

I became a Holistic Counsellor, Natural Therapist and author of The Sacred Psychology of healing, Self Care Medicine, Heal Yourself and Moving Beyond Pain…because I used this suffering as compost to feed the garden of my soul!

My passion is helping people overcome pain naturally in all of its forms…because I have been there. I have done this. I developed numerous illnesses and had surgeries that I came to learn were only ever created by my soul. My energy.

Since learning how to heal naturally…I have a burning desire to share this with others. This is my story and through this I have found great purpose and inspiration to work compassionately with those who suffer.

I discovered a universal truth and order that all things carry their opposite. And through that, I became empowered. I learned to use my lessons and experience as stepping stones on my way rather than allow them to get in my way. Obstacle became obsolete as I learned to look at them like bugs on a windscreen that need not distract from the direction I was heading in. The voice and the vision on the inside became louder and more profound than the voices and opinions on the outside that saw so little for my future. Because I saw great meaning and purpose!

I learned to go within so I could rise above rather than feel that I was without. This is where I found my riches. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain and persisted every day with my mission of refining my vision, goals and plans for the future. It is in doing this that I discovered that planning is essential in imagineering our future. I became a master of my own life and manifested whatever it was that I ever wrote down. I used the worst of my experience as compost to give me a deep drive. Like an arrow held back by the archer, the more struggle I had, the greater my strength became to take me further towards my goals. I look at my life as though a journey that provided me great resistance training to build strength in character. A strength and wisdom that cannot be taken away. Because if my life taught me anything…it is that there are two things that can never be taken from us…it is our love and our wisdom.

I immersed myself in personal development books and learning. My natural health passion and studies taught me that life is a balance of yin and yang. Whatever it is that we want, is on the other side of triumph. I have spent my whole adult life deep in study, giving my every hour to my dreams of authoring, writing and sharing so that I may leave my legacy. And since becoming a mother, I have been blessed in a way that I only ever dreamed of. All of the love I could have ever wanted and beyond, has filled me with the greatest sense of gratitude and completion that I can only hope to share.

It is my great honour to use my experience to shed light on what is possible for others. Through simple, small and consistent changes, I have been able to transform my own life story. My message to you is that though your dreams may seem far, it is often just above the darkest grey clouds that they highest mountain peaks rest. All we must do is persist and keep going.

I hope that in learning my story, you can awaken the healer within you. To understand it is truly possible to overcome pain. That there are so many healing alternatives that can help you overcome trauma and suffering naturally without forming addiction.

I have done it. And so can you! Love Leah x