“Buckle up.”

As she said it to me for the last time, there were tears in my eyes. I clearly couldn’t spend one more day in the office, ‘buckling up’.

She was older and incredibly accomplished. I had hoped for a framework, some understanding or even compassion. Instead, I got ‘buckle up!’

At least she was consistent, she didn’t change this advice in the many years we worked together. Like a doll from Toy Story, with the string pull and one pre-programmed response, ‘Buckle up, buckle up, BUCKLE UP!’

In the beginning, her words were joyful and enthusiastic, “Buckle up!” as one frontiers woman might say to the other, as they galloped over a hill to discover a new town.

But by the end, even she knew it was bullshit advice. I had been betrayed and outplayed by a male colleague.

There’s a lot of posts now about narcissists and psychopaths and thank God because it gave me language I didn’t have.

I now know about DARVO.

Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.

It’s the end game of an abuser when confronted. They flip the script so fast that the person telling the truth ends up on trial.

And I’ll take this further, at the time, it felt as though this male colleague wanted me dead. I felt he wanted me to have another stroke or commit suicide. He smirked with visible delight as I broke down in meetings.

There was no penalty for him lying. Instead, it was the truth that got me in trouble.

Once I eventually did report my grievances to a boss, I was treated as a HR liability. My work life became unbearable and I eventually had to leave.

Dante understood something that HR never will: a man who lies to destroy you causes more damage than one who hits you. In the Inferno, murderers occupy Circle 7; while fraudsters and manipulators are in Circles 8 and 9 - the lowest, darkest parts of hell.

Dante was a smart boy. He knew that violence acts on passion but fraud corrupts reason itself. To construct an entirely false version of reality and make other people believe it - that requires thought, planning and patience. HR understands crimes of passion, it has no framework for a grifter with a spreadsheet and long game.

There IS a silver lining though - a whole double rainbow and pots of gold.

Carl Sagan wrote in The Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark:

“One the saddest lessons in history is this. If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back”.

I got it back. And then some.

I no longer lie to myself.

I rarely lie to other people.

I tell the truth, even when it’s painful, especially when it’s painful.

That’s power.

If I could give advice to my younger self it would be,

“Tell the truth. Tell the truth even though you won’t know what’s going to happen to you. Even though it’s terrifying. Only good can come from it.”

The truth will set you free.

John 8:32

Using hypnosis, I now help women recovering from corporate jobs and building a kinder, more creative life. I only take a handful of people each month. It’s €350.

You can book here

Interested, but not sure it’s for you? Book a free 20-minute Clarity Call. No pressure. No sell. Just an honest conversation about what’s going on and whether this work fits.

Book your Clarity Call

Cosmic Camino is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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Part 1 of 7 on the emotions running our lives.

By 2024, after eight years in a company I co-founded, fear had been carved so deeply into my brain I was painfully afraid of everything. I’d lost track of who I was.

My business partnership had stopped working. The sustained fear stimuli I was exposed to daily had me in chronic ‘Fawn/Freeze’.1 This is a protective response when escape or fight seems impossible.

I took anti-depressants for the whole eight years. My spirit was shutting down, I was so far from my purpose, people and path.

By the end, I could hardly speak in meetings or on Zoom, so I had as few as possible. I hid.

Then my fear circuits did their job and propelled me right out the fucking door.

Like every emotion, FEAR has a job. It helps us recognize danger and respond.

I resigned from my job, my board seat, directorship - everything.

I’d built a production company valued at many, many millions and vanished into thin air. Poof. Like so many women, I logged out on Friday and didn’t return on Monday. I didn’t have the nervous system to do anything else.

I owe FEAR a great deal.

And this is why we don’t dump FEAR into the garbagio.

We acknowledge it, thank it for the awesome job it’s doing and say, ‘I’ll take it from here’.

However, it’s not that easy. Even though I cognitively knew I was safe the second I left my job, it’s taken me two years to feel any sense of confidence or security in the world again. I believe many women are operating with the same over-activated FEAR system I had. I intend to change that.

This is the first of seven essays, each with its own self-hypnosis track.

Over the next few months we’ll move through Jaak Panksepp’s seven emotional command centers: FEAR, LUST, RAGE, CARE, PANIC/GRIEF, SEEKING and finally, PLAY. (The all CAPS is Panksepp’s)

I’ve mapped each one onto an energy centre in the body (a chakra) and a solfeggio frequency.2

This essay is FEAR, root chakra and 396Hz in the audio. This mapping is my work, not Panksepp’s.

The whole seven is a journey from survival to creative I call the Cosmic Camino: a pilgrimage for when life feels impossible. When you can’t see how to put one foot in front of the other, but you KNOW, in your Soul, NOT THAT WAY. Not again, not ever.

This series is for women.

Women stuck in jobs, relationships and whole setups that are killing them.

Women with creative dreams flickering inside their hearts, strong and smart women that somehow feel powerless to change their circumstances.

You are not powerless, you are an infinite being who can bend time and space. I mean that sincerely.

It’s all real - all of it. Timelines, magic, miracles, all of it.

You are here to live in joy and do the thing that only YOU can do.

“Be who God meant you to be,
And you will set the world on fire.”

- St. Catherine3

We’ll start at the beginning.

FEAR is a primal terror. Our brains come pre-loaded with it. Every mammals does.

Lab rats born and reared in completely safety have the same fear responses as those in the wild when a cat hair is placed beside them.4

“Never, in his brief cave life, had he encountered anything of which to be afraid. Yet fear was in him.

It had come down to him from a remote ancestry through a thousand lives.

It was a heritage he had received directly. . . through all the generations of wolves that had gone before.

Fear! - the legacy of the Wild which no animal may escape. . .

So the gray cub knew fear, though he knew not, the stuff of which fear was made.

- Jack London, White Fang (p.52)5

So we’re all born with this free-floating fear; and over time, this system can become highly sensitized. Brain scans now show, if you have been frightened badly enough, for long enough, your brain physically changes.6 It’s one of the reasons C-PTSD survivors are now able to sue their abusers for psychological and neurological damage.

As we grow, our fear grows with us.

We learn to be fearful of certain situations and people. It’s protective. And we live in a world where fear is deliberately pumped into the airwaves. It’s on our phones, the front page of every newspaper, in company emails.

Our parents hand us their fears too. My mother pestered me into studying law when I wanted English, because she couldn’t see how writing would pay the bills.

Now, this legend went on to found The Playhouse in Derry, raised £4.6 million for its restoration and got an MBE for her services to Art.7 Safe to say she conquered a great many of her own fears with sheer bloody grit - another quality, thankfully, she passed on.

Known as the “Rat tickler”, Jaak Panksepp, the Estonian-American neuroscientist, is best known for his work playing with rats and his conclusion that all mammals share seven core emotional systems: in addition to FEAR, we have PANIC/GRIEF, RAGE, LUST, CARE, PLAY and SEEKING.8

I first heard that neat little list in 2024, at the Marino Institute in Dublin.9

Sitting in a 120-year-old, Christian Brothers’ classroom, studying for my hypnotherapy diploma, I started taking notes, and the seven systems began to look a lot like the seven chakras. In fact, as I scribbled in the margins of my book, it became obvious that each of Panksepp’s seven emotions mapped onto one of the seven chakras! And - wait a fucking minute - onto a Solfeggio Frequency too!

FEAR, it seemed to me, lived in our root chakra, as well as our brain and body. And I wondered: if I created a harmonic resonant frequency, in deep trance, while offering corrective emotional experiences around the clients specific fears, could I create real change in the person’s life?

Could this be the least amount of intervention for the most amount of transformation?

My husband, Paul, agreed to be my guinea pig.

Paul graduated from art school thirty years ago.

He has a God-given talent and sadly, hadn’t touched a pencil or brush ever since.

We did our 1:1 consultation. I took him through my whole ThetaSync Self-Hypnosis process: 60 minutes of well-angled questions. Some fears were familiar. What if people judged his work? What if he wasn’t any good?

Then something less obvious emerged.

Whenever Paul sat down to draw, he felt he was letting his family down.

Time spent on art felt like time he should be giving to us.

This man loves us fiercely. Imagine trying to enjoy drawing when picking up a pencil feels like a betrayal. Panksepp’s CARE system, associated with nurturance, gave me a way to think about that conflict.10 Paul cared deeply for his family and struggled to make time for himself.

Two self-hypnosis tracks. That’s all it took.

This work is stupidly simple. And comically effective.

The first track recalibrated his CARE system, the greater need. The second brought his FEAR back into line. Paul listened for 25mins every morning.

Nothing else was required. Nothing.

The before and after on this one couldn’t be more beautiful.

Paul is now a commissioned portrait artist.

He has shipped work to perhaps the most famous film director in New York. He has an Etsy store. He’s talking with galleries in Kinsale. He’s even developed a Studio Grid app for artists because there wasn’t one good enough on the market and he needed it.

A talent left untouched for decades is now part of his daily life. To me, that feels miraculous.

People have different ways to get there. Hypnosis & frequency is my way.

However, back to our emotional systems.

LOVE is conspicuously missing from Panksepp’s top seven. Why? Because LOVE, I think, is our natural state. It’s what we are underneath all the bullshit and conditioning.

Align the other emotions and that’s what we’re left with: LOVE.

And on our journey to LOVE and freedom, we must encounter FEAR. You CANNOT AVOID IT. We’re afraid of stuff that will absolutely happen! Some people won’t like us. Others will steal our work and pass it off as their own. Others still will take umbrage and attack us. All of this is inevitable.

The only way to reduce the pain is to accept that fear is part of us. It has a job to do. Just don’t let it to hijack your nervous system in the process.

Seamus Heaney’s last text to his wife, minutes before he died, was two words: Noli Timere. Be not afraid.11 If I ever to commit to a tattoo, it’ll be that one.

BE NOT AFRAID.

Fear kept me trapped for years. Please don’t do that.

Please don’t waste another day of your life in a job that’s hollowing you out. It only gets worse. The trap gets harder to escape. I’ve spent the last two years rebuilding my life, my confidence and my spirit. This time my work is clean and free. Joyful and creative.

That’s what I want for everyone reading this. Freedom.

By writing this essay, and the six that follow, I am facing my own fears. I am standing on the shore as a financial tsunami gathers on the horizon. We are living in difficult, seemingly impossible times but I am never going back into an office.

I am writing.

I am writing because I get to decide whether that wave takes me. I get to choose how it hits the shore.

And let me tell you, if it even fucking makes it, it will have all the menace of a golden retriever.

This week’s track

This week’s self-hypnosis is for FEAR in general. The free-floating kind that sits underneath everything. It works on the fears that run most of us: being judged, failing, and running out of money if we jump.

It’s for paid subscribers.

If you want to go deeper.

Some fears are too old and far too specific for a general track. If you have the means and want to go deeper, I work one to one. I only take a handful of people each month. It’s €350.

You can book here

Interested, but not sure it’s for you? Book a free 20-minute Clarity Call. No pressure. No sell. Just an honest conversation about what’s going on and whether this work fits.

Book your Clarity Call

The track for paid subscribers will be emailed separately.

Thank you. I love you. I hope it helps.

Today I turned down a well-paid, secure TV job. It would have solved every financial problem I have. And I said no because of Cool Tuesdays.

My husband Paul and I have a thing called Cool Tuesdays. I suppose it’s a manifestation ritual. Once a month we go out for brunch. Casually, we drift about Kinsale: the cute and colourful, coastal Irish town we live in. And we pretend we have all the time in the world to wander about in Craft Fairs and coffee shops. West Cork is a cool place to live. Like we just parked the boat, without a care in the world.

We chat, present tense, about what we’re doing, now we’re making it up. For me, I’m always writing a screenplay; while location scouting in Ireland for the last one - which Netflix paid a record breaking amount of money for, obviously. We talk AS IF this is our lives. Paul’s always working on a high-profile portrait commission; someone with the most lived in face, someone he admires.

Now, if I’d taken that TV job, no more Cool Tuesdays. Or school gate, which would have been far, far worse.

And, most importantly, I’d not have learned the lesson from my last chapter which was, I think: when faced with the choice between security and liberty, choose liberty, otherwise you end up with neither.

The TV job would have solved a lot of problems for us, financially. But it would’ve also meant going back into an office, four days a week. No, thank you. To come this far, and only come this far? HARD PASS. I’m trusting the process, even though some days the process scares the shit out of me.

And the name I’ve given this process is the Cosmic Camino.

Because it’s a daily pilgrimage I’m walking from fear to freedom, since burning all the bridges and almost dying by stroke, twice. I learned everything I know about frequency from those strokes - I’m so grateful.

These essays are where I’m ‘showing my work’, as Austin Kleon1 would say.

I’m gathering all my field notes from the past sixteen or so years and sharing what worked for me - energetically & spiritually. I’ll share turning points, trade secrets and also the days when all that happens is I get punched in the tit...again.

No one can do our awakening journey for us, or spare us from it.

It’s a journey we must take for ourselves - but we can compare notes - these essays are mine.

Why am I writing it now?

Well, because I’ll be 50 next week. And I feel so fucking alive and awake now that the past 50 years are starting to look more like one giant runway than a series of losses and victim stories. Yes - a tonne of bad stuff happened. I have stories, with receipts, that would break your heart. I’ve survived enough trauma to qualify me for a sit down with Oprah. So does everyone! I know loads of people like me! No one cares - we just have to get on with it now.

And persisting feels impossible some days, so this newsletter is where I hope to meet other eldest daughters - born in the 1970s - also exiting the Matrix and finding new ways to be in this world.

Yes, I know I know nothing. In the grand scheme of things, we’re all best guessing. However, no one gets home until we all do, so I’m writing about what seems to work for me.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Give what you have.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

To Someone, it may be better

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Than you dare to think.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.3

So expect talk of frequency, truth, cosmic lessons, trust, miracles, and most of all ART. Creativity is the antidote to fear. The Cosmic Camino is, at its heart, a creative process. And one I’m using to write my first screenplay.

Here’s some other things being on the Cosmic Camino has taught me:

- Timelines are real - millions of them are available, everyday. Every decision, big or small, moves them through you.

- Hypnosis is real - the key is in the theta brain wave state. I use it daily.

- Frequency, vibration, resonance, entrainment, all POWERFUL.

- Crystals - go get some - I believe they contain the information you need to make things happen AND the energy to do it.

- Prayer - how we message God.

- Intuition - how God messages us.

- Heaven really IS a place on earth.

Belinda Carlisle knew this last one too.

But how does a 50 year old ‘Derry Girl’ know these things?

^{Derry Girls mural in Derry City by peaball.com}

Experiments. Trial and error. Fucking around and finding out, often to my cost! I went from co-founding and running a multi-million pound media company - the version of my life that looked, on paper, like the win - to a complete financial reset.

Why? Because I just couldn’t listen to any more bullshit - not from anyone, including myself. I did the work, and eventually the work required me to leave my company. I walked away from serious money because staying was costing me myself.

So - I didn’t take the fancy TV job today, because if I did, I’d have looped right back and my recent horrors would have been for nothing.

And while I can pinpoint the exact moment this pilgrimage began for me, July 2010 4 it’s a never ending creative & curious process. A process which led me into a period of deep, intense study.

“Only study what you WANT to study”. A Post-it note stuck to my Mac. Lover of a sticky note, I often depend on them to keep me right. And this one’s job was to stop me studying things I thought I should. For example, anything on IDEO or anything to do with leadership, sales, business, etc.

“Follow your curiosity!” Read another stickie. I cannot stress how hard this was. We have so completely and utterly brain washed ourselves into thinking we need to be certain things in order to have a good life.

So far, my curiosity has qualified me as an Institute for Integrative Nutrition Health Coach, a Hypnotherapist, Sound Therapist, Biofield Tuner 5 and a whole lot more.

The overriding thing I’ve learned is that there are certain immutable laws that govern this Universe. And they’re not hidden. It just takes discipline to see them and work with them. Everyone is capable of seeing but not everyone wants to do the work.

The paid tier of this Substack is for people doing the work. Everyone receives a monthly audio that combines much of what I’ve studied professionally: soma and emotion hypnotherapy with powerful sound frequencies: real live instruments, like my gongs and bowls, all played by me. These recordings have been life changing for me, my family, friends and now a handful of clients every month.

Mostly, I’m writing all this for myself. I need this. These universal truths and practices hold up for everybody but writing about them keeps ME conscious of this path.

And, finally, in turning up our own light, we help others see the light in themselves. We can’t hide anymore girls, we’re up.

There are no healers. I don’t trust anyone who calls themselves one.

There are only people who are so fucking free and aligned, with such a beautiful frequency that they cause a chain reaction in those around them. That’s it.

It’s how great art can wake us up and great comedy is so healing. Someone has transmuted their own pain and suffering into something good and it literally sends out a frequency that resonates with other souls.

So - if you are also waking up and alchemising the shit out of your life, Buen Camino! And upgrade to paid - I promise you it’s worth it.

Kit

PS - This month's hypnosis is Cool Tuesdays. You wake up in your perfect, ordinary morning and walk through the whole of it. Paid subscribers will have it in their inbox next week. Upgrade and it's yours too.

Subscribe now

There will come a time, for most of us, when the life we worked hard to build, reveals itself to be comically unsuited to the person we became in the process.

A crack will widen in the tectonic plates of your life; between who you really are on one side, and what you’re forced to do for a living on the other.

What I’m slowly learning is this: the only way to go from one version of yourself to a new one, is to completely let go. We need to release our tight fists and free fall - with open palms into God only knows what. We must let go of everything we ever thought we knew about ourselves. Yes, it’s fucking terrifying but I’m here to tell you: it’s temporary. You will survive it!

If you are in free fall, or about to leap, read on.

Our wake ups can happen slowly, or all at once. A betrayal that violently shakes you awake; the departure of our health - I’ve had two strokes - or just the low hum of a life not being fully lived.

Sometimes, in the most devastating cases, we can lose an entire family. A slow and confusing drift. The people we thought we knew turn out to be the villains. And we become the villain for them.

In 2022, because of a dizzying combination of all the above, myself, my husband and our two young children left our hometown in Derry, Northern Ireland and moved to Cork, on the southern coast of Ireland, rejoining the EU.

Moving the length of the country was hard. But the real leap was leaving my business. For nearly nine years I’d poured thermonuclear energy into building a successful media production company I was insanely proud of. I created dozens of jobs and brought millions of pounds of investment to Northern Ireland.

Like most entrepreneurs, I re-mortgaged our house twice, drained our savings and worked 80+ hour weeks. All of it for an imaginary payday: the company would sell, and we’d have millions in the bank. I was earning freedom for me, my husband and our children. It never happened. And every day the enormous sunk costs of it all kept me tied to a co-founder I could, unfortunately, no longer work with; and a company that was not recognisable to me.

So in March 2024, with no savings, six figures of credit-card debt, personal guarantees in the hundreds of thousands, I resigned as COO and stepped down from the board. I walked away from my life’s work, carrying serious personal debt and a nervous system in shreds.

If that business taught me anything (and it was worth the price I paid) it's to trust my instincts, always.

Because my soul was dying. My spark was going out.

Waiting for the money was costing me everything that ever mattered.

And I couldn’t keep the masks on. I was knackered. I couldn’t listen to any more bullshit - from anyone, anywhere. Especially myself.

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.” — Bronnie Ware, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying1

What did a ‘life true to myself’ look like? I didn’t know. I just knew ‘not fucking this’ and started from there.

I left my job, my company, my home, my town, immediate and extended family, ‘friends’, etc, etc. Scorched earth policy. Once you draw a boundary in one area of your life - you’ll find it effortlessly extends to others.

The good news is God loves a vacuum. So for every shit show I exited, an equal and opposite one bloomed. My new friendship circle are the sexiest bunch of weirdos you’ll ever meet. Magnificent, wild, wise women. Friends and allies. Powerful and vulnerable, all at the same time.

Women steered by their own voices and their own lives - not by the media, or any more fucking grifters.

The Seduction of Doing Something

Being suddenly unemployed, after a lifetime of work, isn’t the buzz you think might be. I didn’t go quietly. I fought it. I scheduled it. I planned my way through it.

And then, a surprise even to me, I threw myself into hosting soundbaths. “TV Producer Turned Sound Healer.” I even made VIP Magazine! For a year I played my gongs, when what I knew I needed to do was just stop. Be still. Let the pieces of my dismantled, exploded life lie on the floor without scrambling to clean it or reassemble into something new.

Integration Isn’t an Event

You can torch your whole life in a few months. But putting the next one together? That takes years. Maybe a lifetime. It’s been four years since we moved, two since I resigned from my business.

Integration isn’t photogenic. There’s no before-and-after photos. Although I have quit drinking and lost three stone (42lbs).

Mostly though, it’s just me, day after day, learning to sit with not having the answers - or even a clear sense of who I am anymore. Uncertainty. I think that’s what it’s boiling down to. Being ok with not knowing how we’re going to buy a house, pay for schools, etc. FAITH is what’s required now and luckily for everyone, I have a fuck tonne of that.

This period of ‘nothingness’ also means letting go of the need to explain myself, to justify my choices, to make my path tidy for other people’s comfort. It means being okay with being misunderstood - even by people I love.

Most of all, it means resisting the urge to fill the void - new projects, new identities, new ways to hide from the rawness of being alive and uncertain. Although, I am writing my first novel, and it’s FIERCE GOOD. ‘Write! Write! WRITE!’ The voices in my head now say, which makes a nice change. And my bullshit detector is next level. Well, it always was, the difference is, I’ve learned to trust it now.

The Important Work of Nothing

Turns out there’s a word for this kind of behaviour:

This looks like slow mornings, my husband waking me with a cup of tea. Afternoons where I follow my curiosity, rather than starve it. Which, this very day, led me to crash my drone into a friend’s overgrown garden - I was trying to cheer him up by flying in some sweets. It’s a DJI Mini. It was not built for cargo. I’m not sure what I thought would happen. But HERE’s the thing: me, my sad friend, and my husband spent an hour in the rain, climbing trees to get it. I got to watch my husband shimmy up a tree and rescue a stranded drone. You don’t get that on the cap table. And yes - the sweets made it.

Evenings I usually write. Because I want to. Not because I have to produce content or establish myself as anything.

I stare out the window far longer than productivity would allow. My 12-year-old son does it now too - glorious to watch his nervous system reset after school by having a good old stare. It looks like sea swims and conversations with those wild women that meander for hours, going nowhere and everywhere at once. It looks like letting ideas compost instead of rushing them into a pitch. Not a moment of this time is wasted. And yet, to the casual observer, nothing much is happening. Except I have filled eleven A5 notebooks.

What I’m coming to see is that the nothing is actually everything. It’s the space where the new version of us emerges - before anyone forces, shapes or optimizes, before we’ve had a chance to breathe.

You can’t rush integration any more than you can rush the seasons. Spring comes when it comes, not when you’ve decided you’re done with winter.

What Grows in the Fertile Void

And while I’m here in this in-between, life keeps going. My children are growing into incredible young people. My husband, always a sexy saint, is finally getting the best of me instead of the worst.

Friends are all doing some version of this too. We witness each other’s unbecoming and becoming. We make room for the messy middle. We celebrate the days when not much nothing happens except that one of us said one more true thing out loud.

The greatest act of courage isn’t burning it all down. Any eejit can do that. The real work is sitting with what comes after. Sitting with it long enough to get it. To really fucking get it. Somehow, Paul and I are making the numbers work.

I wrote a business plan with God this time so it won’t be too long until the tide turns.

If prayers are messages from us to God, then intuition is God messaging us back.

And I find the more I listen, the clearer those messages get.

God is my co-founder now.

What I’m doing now looks a whole lot like nothing.

And it might be the most important work of my life.

P.S. If you’re somewhere in your own messy middle and your nervous system could use a hand, you can have a free hypnotherapy2 audio for Deep Sleep: The Cleansing Tide It’s one I made for myself with the Schumann Resonance3, REAL binaural beats and sexy crystal bowls.

This first one is free for everybody. After that, they’re for paid subscribers only. Every month, 20–30 minutes of real frequencies and self-hypnosis to help us on our way. Subscribe and you’ll get every one.

This one’s free, for everybody.

Deep Sleep: The Cleansing Tide is a self-hypnosis audio I made for myself, for the nights I needed to be knocked out. Twenty-two minutes and twenty-two seconds of sound, built to entrain a high-wired nervous system all the way down.

The whole thing rests on the Schumann Resonance: the Earth’s own electromagnetic pulse, around 7.83 Hz. I created it as a binaural beat using Eileen McKusick’s Schumann pair of weighted, calibrated tuning forks - one tone in each ear, so your own brain generates the frequency in between. Layered with that, a second binaural beat I built from C and G chimes. Crystal bowls for deep harmonic resonance; and some light gongs moving through it all - all played live and recorded, by me.

And underneath everything, my voice, guiding you down.

This isn’t background noise. It’s a powerful hypnotic intervention. Designed to carry you somewhere far quieter than you can usually get on your own. Only use this if it’s safe for you to go into a deep sleep.

Get comfortable, press play, and let the tide do the work.

And DO NOT under any circumstances listen to this while driving, operating machinery or anywhere your full attention is needed.

This is an eyes closed, lying down process.

After this one, the monthly audios are for paid subscribers.

Subscribe and you’ll get every one.

Subscribe now

If you need to step away at any point, do that. Crisis resources are at the end.

Here we go.

I have written two suicide notes in my life.

One, as a teenager. The other, as a mother with severe post-natal depression.

Here’s an excerpt from it:

I will not survive this episode.

I have been preyed upon my whole life.

I am an empty husk. A dependent on my husband.

A mental illness, crushing my beautiful children.

There is nowhere and no time I feel safe.

I’m too tired to go on.

I don’t want to live.

Needless to say, I didn’t kill myself. A miracle occurred. My Aunt Mary, who is not one for calling unannounced, took a notion and walked round to my house.

That’s a hard read. And if you’re still with me here, thank you.

Having sailed so close to the abyss, I wanted to understand more about why a perfectly healthy looking, happy woman would want to leave such a mess for the people she loved.

I knew all the historical reasons - but was actually happening in my brain while I was planning my exit? Why that morning?

My serotonin - the chemical responsible for impulse control, for being able to imagine a future - had flatlined. Studies on suicidal brains show reduced serotonin activity specifically in the prefrontal cortex, the decision maker that pumps the brakes. Mine had no brake pads left - I was metal on metal. At the same time, norepinephrine - the stress chemical - was spiking, creating a state of hyper-agitation that neuroscientists now identify as one of the strongest triggers for a suicidal crisis. Not sadness. Not depression. A kind of biochemical fire that’s extremely hard to put out.

And underneath all of that: my GABA - the brain’s natural “calm down” signal - was too quiet to hear. Because my cortisol, the stress hormone, had been running hot for so long it had physically reshaped my brain: shrinking my hippocampus (emotional regulation), and amplifying my amygdala (DANGER!).

This is what chronic trauma does. It rewires you.

It doesn’t make you weak. It makes you a person whose nervous system has been in a war zone for decades and is finally, and catastrophically, presenting the bill.

So how did I end up with a broken brain?

As a child, I learned my softness wasn’t safe. I had to be strong on the outside, strong on the inside.

And in 2010, two strokes left my basal ganglia a little worse for wear.

It was only when I met my husband that I felt I could be soft. And viscerally understood that we’re supposed to be.

Paul melted the hardness around my heart in a million different ways. I am fiercely loved by this man, and love him back the same way. Our children are the centre of our world. But one day, not that long ago, I came face to face with the very real thought that killing myself was the only move I had left to play. That everyone would be better off without me. I felt I would be unburdening my family. Not destroying their lives forever.

Jesus, forgive me.

Thank God I decided to stay on the planet for my family. I’ve been taking anti-depressants ever since.

And while I have the privilege of being in this body on this earth, the only thing I’m prepared to do now is become the truest expression of my soul.

Our Stars need to become more visible.

Lighting the field by creating writing that’s as close an approximation to the truth as I can get it.

Making every word count.

That’s it.

I will no longer participate in anything that violates my soul. I’ve become unemployable and I’m aiming for unassailable.

To write about my own healing and not talk about this would be reckless.

I think one of the last stages of the healing journey is meeting the monster you created to protect yourself as a child. Collectively, a lot of us are at that threshold now. Our Inner Children need us.

So. What do we do? What’s the opposite of suicide?

Turns out, it’s making Art.

When you create something, dopamine fires. Cortisol drops. The amygdala shuts up. And when your work is witnessed, oxytocin floods in - confirming you are not alone, you are not invisible, you exist and you matter.

Doesn’t even matter if it’s any good. That’s not up to you. Turn it over. As evidence of your soul. The more your soul is seen, the more you are seen - and can see.

It’s all energy. Flowing.

When you are witnessed, miracles occur.

Create, and have your work witnessed. Let it be of use to someone.

Yes - there will be critics. And there has to be critics, because what’s inside you depends on pressure to get it out. The pressure of the chrysalis is needed.

That’s what creating Art does.

Alchemy.

Trolls are different - they’re not critics. Don’t engage. Do not feed them, ever. Not one syllable. Some criticism may contain a modicum of truth; trolls only spit poison.

The same logic applies to anyone performing healing for profit without doing the work. I will never participate in half-assed ceremonies performed by YogaHuascaChick1111 and ShamanBro3000, selling “trauma release.” They are often doing more harm than good. Riding those waves can be tough - you shouldn’t be surrounded by dickheads whenever you do it.

Art is not self-indulgence - both my husband and I have to grapple with that daily.

It is a spiritual and neurological intervention.

Every word, every brushstroke, every photo or dance - creates a life worth living.

If you or someone you know is having a difficult time:

Samaritans: 116 123 (free, 24/7) | Pieta House: 116 123 or 1800 247 247

samaritans.org | pieta.ie

Here’s what happened.

My Dad died during a distance healing session. I felt responsible. It cracked me wide open.

The year was 2022. Everyone was still day drinking from Covid so I thought I’d give it ago too. And I’m glad I did. That wine helped keep me alive. But it wasn’t pretty. And the day soon came, a few months later, when I’d had enough of myself.

First things first, when applying the Marie Kondo method to your life, please know, it is a sublimely satisfying, slippery slope. At first, you sort out email newsletters and subscriptions, the detritus of a life lived online. This quickly escalates to the What’s App family groups - or indeed, any texting group that leaves you feeling sick when you read the messages.

I eventually took this digital detox quite far and went and got myself a whole new phone number because, in the end, some people just shouldn’t be able to add you in the first place.

Real life fake ‘friends’ came next. We all have them. The people who keep you orbiting them, in case you might prove useful later on. I had a considerable collection of these. And one by one. Off. You. Fuck. The best bit about this one is you don’t even have to tell them.

Flying along, at a good gallop now, I started making up rules and guidelines for my Kondoing. “Does this spark joy?” turned into, “Do I even give a fuck?”

And, as the answer to this was increasingly ‘No’, the stakes got higher.

First, was my beloved home city and extended family. I just couldn’t make it work. I moved back to Ireland after many years in London, hoping to give my children the sort of traditional Irish childhood I had: masses of relatives and trips to the beach. Nope. Application Declined. My authentic self was not welcome. Had I not met my husband, who LOVED my authentic self, I would have been slowly swallowed by shame. Thank you Paul for pointing out that my worth as a human being was not determined by the amount of bullying and humiliation I could quietly absorb.

“You can’t get any further away before you start coming back.”

The Truman Show

I heard this, many years ago, on The Truman Show. The travel agent was discussing the location of Fiji. It gave me an idea. Move to the exact opposite side of Ireland! The farthest possible point away. Dramatic, yes. Effective? Abso - fucking- lutlely.

So we did just that. It was terrifying. We white-knuckled it at the start. Then it got easier. Each passing day brought us peace. And once I’d filled the peace tanks, clarity clarity. Whoo! That was a good one. I had a 30,000ft view now. And it was SPECTACULAR. It is BLISS. I slept a lot. I felt safe for perhaps the first time in my life. And from this one relocation came an avalanche of goodies. I stopped drinking, lost over 2 stone (14kg) and feel joy every single day, dozens of times a day, like I probably spend about 80% of my day in a state of joy and awe at how beautiful this life actually is. All of us have made new friends. The kids have an abundance of love surrounding them. “Friends are the new family”. It really is true.

Now there was collateral damage with this one. Some of my family are the best in the world and I miss them terribly. I babysat them, and now they are having babies of their own and I really miss them.

“You can’t heal in the same environment that made you sick.”

With such a major win under my belt, I thought I had reached Peak Kondo and that would be the end of it. Nope, apparently I was just warming up.

What came next surprised everyone - but mostly me.

I did something I swore I’d NEVER in a million years do.

I left my job, in the company that I built, with my bare hands for nine years. With no exit - leaving many millions on the table and a fortune of personal debt, accrued in building the business, still around my neck.

“If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, accept it. And if you can’t accept it, leave.”

I thought this was a Gandhi quote - I’ve been saying it for years! Now I can’t find it attributed to him, or anyone. Anybody know?

Anyways, I didn’t like the situation, couldn’t change it, nor could I accept it.

That double resignation was a MF. God had to take the wheel for much of that time because I was sailing really close to the edge - and staying resolutely sober through it was tough.

But I got through it. And now I have super sober powers I didn’t have before.

To get through anything you just need to have courage, follow your intuition and tell the truth. And you level up - with extra powers - to do it all again.

So what have I learned in all this Kondo’ing?

Just two things that I am now building my entire life, and my family’s life, around.

One: the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s fear. And fear isn’t real. Write that one down.

FEAR IS NOT REAL it’s a frequency.

What you’re afraid of doesn’t exist. It’s an illusion designed to keep you obedient, broke and sick.

“Scientists have identified that brainwave oscillations of a particular frequency may serve to create a ‘fearful’ brain state, generating conditioned behaviors associated with fear” Fear Frequency Research

I promise you, the second you turn around to face your fear, it evaporates. The mere act of facing fear, dispels it. I was afraid of leaving my company. I clung to it like Kate Winslet on that board because of all the sunk costs. I was trapped. I did not own my own future. It was making me ill. I thought I needed to have ‘fuck you money’ before I told cretins to fuck off. Turns out you don’t - you can just say it anyway! And I think that’s what real wealth is.

Two: Tell the truth. Truth is the only thing that is real. Write that down too.

TRUTH IS THE ONLY THING THAT IS REAL.

We all know the truth, all of us, all the time. It vibrates at a specific frequency that we instinctively recognise. But we ignore it! And we turn off our internal alarms because we’re afraid of something. Afraid of loss, afraid of being judged. Jesus Christ, women all over the world are raped because they didn’t want to offend the weirdo offering to help with their groceries.

And wake up! Ok, three things. Waking up is real too and it’s a never ending process. You need to go through it to get it though. Reading about Waking Up - while cool and all - doesn’t do the trick. That’s like reading the score for Mozart’s Piano Concerto No 11 and expecting to be able to play it when you sit down for the first time.

So how do we get there? Practice.

Change the game, before it changes you.

In 2022, I used a quartz crystal and concentrated intention to send my Dad’s soul on a rocket ship out of here. I was guided, and energetically aided, by my late Grandfather.

Crazy pants? Yes. True? Abso - fucking - lutely.

What had happened was…

Way back in 2010, I was a burnt out TV producer/director - working on a high-profile documentary series for the BBC and Nat. Geo. My main joy in life was telling people what I did for a living and driving round in a convertible Mercedes. It was a life of high stress, gruelling 100hr+ weeks, lots of smoking, drinking and Adderall. No friends, no partner, no family - just me, trying to impress a boss who didn’t give one fuck about me.

I look back now and feel so sorry for that girl. So completely alone. Lost. And about to have two massive strokes.

In June 2010, I successfully delivered the TV series and went on holiday. Along with umpteen Irish aunts, uncles, cousins and my mother, we set about relaxing in the foothills of Portugal.

A few days into our sojourn, 7th July, lounging by the pool, reading Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, I set off to find a charger for my phone.

“Everything that happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time.”

- Marcus Aurelius

Wandering about the villa, my thoughts started to collide with each other. My body lurched wildly from side to side, eventually turning in ever decreasing circles, until I finally came to a halt on a sofa. Unable to speak or walk, my family quickly diagnosed me with ‘sun stroke’ and tucked me into bed.

Left alone, with nothing but my thoughts, I closed my eyes, and waited to die. What happened next defies explanation.

My soul ‘Big Banged’ into existence. Entire galaxies were being born and dissolving in and around me. I was everywhere and everything. I do not have the vocabulary to describe what was happened. ‘I am’ is about as good as I can do. I’ve never tried to explain the Offside Rule to a Golden Retriever but I think that might be easier.

‘I am’. Pure consciousness. Peace. Joy! And for a few hours it was bliss. I had a direct connection to the main frame. I WAS the fucking main frame. Source. God. Universe, whatever you call it. The difference between me and ‘it’ was hardly worth discussing.

For 3 days, I phased in and out of this field of infinite, universal consciousness until I had another stroke. The fun was over and I was finally taken to the hospital.

I survived, however, life afterwards was excruciating. I attempted suicide several times. Failing that, I choose alcoholism. I should have been far more grateful to be alive. 30% of my ischemic stroke types die within 28days. Another 60% within five years. 1

Suffice to day, I’ve now survived fifteen years, and counting. I’m sober & healthy. I married an absolute Saint, Saint Paul to be precise and we have two beautiful children - despite a doctor telling me, “Don’t ever get pregnant, it’s too big a risk.”

What’s this got to do with my dead Dad?

Well, I’ve spent the past fifteen years trying to figure out what happened during those three days between the strokes. Where was I? What was I? And how can I get back ‘there’? We all know we are only experiencing a fraction of reality: an infintisemily small slither of what’s available to us. But why is that? Well, I still don’t have a fucking clue. No one does. But it’s starting to look like our brains filter reality. And the good news is - I’ve learned how to twiddle the knobs on my filter - and you can too! We can connect with universal consciousness because we already ARE it. We just need to get out of our own way.

And on 8th May 2022, I got so far out of my own way that during a distance healing session with my Dad - his soul lit up the room I was in (5 miles away) and he died. Big stuff, eh. I don’t believe in coincidences, something I did that day helped his tortured soul let go. I found his body five days later - and that’s a whole other shit show for another day.

My point is - we’ve all come here with a message, as unique as our fingerprints. And I think this is mine. Writing about neuroscience and awakening.

I couldn’t do it before because I would have been showing you open wounds. And that’s not good for anyone.

What I have now are scars. And a LOT of things to say about frequency, alignment, truth and miracles. I’ve deliberately dismantled my previous experience and certainties to make space for new ways of seeing and being.

It’s an unending journey, I am still in my own expansion - a pilgrimage of sorts.

GRMA - "Go raibh maith agat" is an Irish phrase that means "thank you," literally translating to "may you have goodness".

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