A river that kept flowing until a world was born

I didn’t know what it meant to be half Maltese and half English for a long time. That strange feeling of otherness whichever home I was in. And it’s only in recent years that I’ve come to understand what it means to carry both the coloniser and the colonised within me (Malta was a British Colony until 1964)— two histories flowing through one body.

It was in my motherland, aged 4, at the height of summer, that I had meningitis and left my body while the illness was at its peak, watching everything play out in the human realm, hovering between this world and the next.

When I was 18 I went to Cuba by myself for six months, called somehow by its fierce independence while searching to find my own. That time feels like a strange dream now: no mobile phones, no social media, rhythms of life I had never heard before— discovering myself in the reflection of this new landscape.

Then Cambridge University to study History, where essentially, I learned to write. I left with a first-class degree, which I’m proud of, because it came from a place of love—love for the human stories that deserve to be retold and live within our midst. And I didn’t just geek out, I let go and lived.

Around this time I started making short films, and they kind of worked. Getting under people’s skin, like the reminder of an unthought known. I even went to film school and learned how to shoot and cut 16mm celluloid. But I was depressed and anxious, and various things fell apart, and my big brother said “do you know what therapy is?”

I spent years talking, first 1:1 and then in a group, with an amazing Jungian Analyst called Biddy. It gave me the chance to develop in many ways that had been missed (youngest child by a long way, lonely high achiever) and to actively relearn how to relate to myself and others. We are plastic, I promise you! It’s possible to mend and heal.

And then I realised. THIS is what I want to do. So I spent TEN YEARS (yes ten years) training as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, specialising in group psychotherapy at the IGA in London, which I chose because of its progressive and social orientation— and I’ll tell you more about that another time.

As well as a sharp mind, I am also an intuitive. My traditional therapy training was solid as a rock, but too boxed in. I wanted more. I wanted ancient wisdom, I wanted counter-culture, I wanted alchemy. And life brought me my teacher, Nicky Clinch, who was on the cusp of pioneering BodyMind Maturation. I was one of the first seven women to train in her method, and it is the beating heart of my practice to this day.

More recently, I have been working with psilocybin in my own process and feel a profound shift in my own willingness to not know, to let go, and to trust.

I take my work seriously, but I’m a playful soul, and my favourite place of all is Chi Kung—which I discovered in the middle of a crisis when my totally brilliant husband had cancer, and we didn’t know if he would live or die.

The Chi said: you are not alone, you never were, and you never will be—because I am you and you are me. When I say ‘the chi’ I simply mean the connecting force of the universe. Chi Kung is my daily reconnection to the big flow of life, and it’s also a great health tonic that keeps me supple and strong and humble. Thalbert Allen is my teacher, and I practice and teach his unique style of Elemental Chi Kung.

I hope this gives you a little window into the path that I’ve walked and the space that I am. I’m not interested in building a brand. I’m interested in becoming a world.
And that world is made of everything I’ve lived. This is my work now—to guide others across thresholds I’ve known, and keep listening to the great unknown, for the rest of my life.