When Positive Change Feels Like Trauma — and the Body Waits to Release

There are times in life when we make a choice that is loving, aligned, and deeply intentional - and yet our body reacts as though something dangerous is happening.

This is something that I’ve been living.

A life shaped by adaptation - moving through illness, early experiences that required me to adjust and stay steady, and many years of holding things together - has shaped how my body meets change. Recently, I made a choice that felt deeply aligned, rooted in care, values, and presence for my child and my family. And still, my nervous system responded with anxiety and overwhelm. Tightness instead of relief. Vigilance instead of calm.

When the nervous system hasn’t caught up yet

Our nervous systems don’t respond to intention or logic. They respond to pattern, familiarity, and perceived safety.

When you’ve lived much of your life adapting - coping, managing, staying strong - the body learns that safety lives in holding it all together. Even when it’s exhausting. So when life begins to soften, expand, or slow…the nervous system can react as if something essential is being lost. Not because the change is wrong. But because it’s unfamiliar. To a survival-shaped body, choice can feel like a threat . Freedom can feel like free-fall.

When the body reflects what hasn’t been spoken

During this time, I noticed something else.

As I sat holding this decision - knowing it internally, but not yet fully voicing it - my cycle seemed to pause. It was only after I had spoken my choice out loud, naming it clearly and honestly, that my body softened. Soon after, my cycle moved again.

I don’t experience this as coincidence.

The menstrual cycle is deeply responsive to safety, clarity, and truth. When we are holding something in - especially something life-shaping - the body often holds too. When the choice was finally voiced, my nervous system settled. And my womb responded.

Our cycles are not just hormonal events. They are relational. They listen. They respond.

Trauma isn’t only what happened

Trauma isn’t only about past events. It's about how the body learned to survive. It’s the vigilance that once kept us safe. The identities that we built to cope. The roles that we held for so long...too long.

As those patterns begin to loosen, the body may hesitate. It may pause. It may wait for reassurance that this new way of living is safe. This doesn’t mean that something has gone wrong. It means that the body is asking for gentleness.

When movement returns

For me, the return of my cycle felt like a quiet confirmation - not of readiness, but of permission. Permission to stop holding. Permission to let the body move again. Permission to trust that the choice had landed. This season of my life isn’t asking me to be braver. It’s asking me to be slower, kinder, and more attuned.

For the women who feel this too

I work with women whose lives often look capable and functional on the outside, yet their bodies are carrying years of unacknowledged strain. Women who are expanding into something new. Women whose cycles shift during transitions. Women whose bodies respond before their minds can explain why.

If this resonates, please know this:

You are not broken. You are not failing. Your body is learning a new definition of safety.

And that learning deserves care.

May your journey be held in softness and hope,

Bethan xx

Finding Myself Again

A journey through illness, womanhood, and becoming.

I’ve carried this story quietly for a long time. Not because I wanted to hide it, but because I wasn’t ready to give it words. Healing has a way of revealing who we are beneath everything we do — and this chapter of my life taught me more about womanhood, resilience, and self-connection than I ever knew before. Today, I’m finally ready to share it.

My Story

Seven years ago, life cracked open in a way I never expected. I was 38 — a mum to a baby, a teenager, and a young adult — holding our family together while my husband served in the navy. Though he wasn’t away at sea at that time, the rhythm of military life meant years of finding balance while he was gone for long stretches, then finding it again when he returned.

When breast cancer arrived, that old strength — the one built from years of “keep calm and carry on” — came out in full force. Between hospital corridors and bedtime stories, I learned to live one breath at a time. I went through surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and hormone therapy, all while maintaining a sense of normality for my children and trying to be the anchor of our home.

When your main support is away for months at a time, you learn how to hold life with both hands — the love, the responsibility, the rhythm of home. Being that grounding presence for my family felt natural to me, something I genuinely cherished. And yet, even with all the love woven through it, there was a lot I carried quietly. Those tender; resilient coping patterns became the ones that I leaned on when illness came.

Two years after finishing hormone therapy, my body spoke again. I’d been asking for help for months as strange, frightening symptoms appeared, but I was told it was nothing. Eventually, an emergency MRI revealed a benign tumour and a sack of fluid the size of a lemon pressing on my brain. Within days, I was in surgery. Then another hospital stay. Then recovery — again.

But this time, those old coping strategies didn’t work. “Head down and carry on” had no place in brain surgery recovery. I had to surrender. To stop surviving and start listening. Healing became an invitation to presence — to feel, to rest, to soften, to receive.

Now, at 45, I look back and see a woman who has walked through fire and learned to find stillness within it. This journey has been lonely, humbling, and sacred all at once. But through it, I’ve learned that healing isn’t about returning to who you were before — it’s about becoming the woman your soul always knew you could be.

I’m still finding my way, still learning to hear my body’s whispers before they become screams. But I’m here — present, softer, wiser, and deeply grateful.

To any woman walking through her own storm — please know this: You are not broken. You are becoming.

Thank you for holding space for my words. This journey has shaped every part of who I am today — as a woman, a mother, and a practitioner. It taught me to listen deeply, to soften where I once braced, and to honour the quiet wisdom within my own body. If any part of my story touches something inside you, please know you don’t have to walk your path alone. You are welcome here, just as you are.

Why I’m Sharing This Now

I’m sharing this now because my work is evolving, and I want women to understand the heart that guides it. My lived experience — the illness, the surrender, the rebuilding — is the foundation of the space I now hold for others. As my business grows into deeper embodiment coaching, energy healing, counselling, and mind–body connection work, it feels important to share where that passion was born. This story is how I found my way home to myself, and that journey is woven into the heart of the work I share with others.

From Fear to Compassion: How My Healing Journey Shapes the Work I Do

🐞A gentle path from fear to love—nurturing fertility and women’s healing through compassion

Throughout my breast cancer treatment, I was given countless medical figures, predictions, and outcomes. I remember being prepared for the worst-case scenarios—being told what devastation could unfold. I was also given glimmers of positive news, but in those moments my mind could rarely hold on to them.

At that time, I had two teenagers and an 18-month-old baby. The fear of leaving my husband and children was overwhelming. It was so heavy that a numbness crept in—a protective shield against emotions too big to face.

And yet, somewhere deep within me, I could still feel the remnants of who I once was—the strong, fearless woman I had always known. That part of me whispered a powerful reminder: “They don’t know me. They don’t know what I am capable of.”

This realisation changed everything.

My desire to survive opened up in a new way. Not by going to war with cancer. Not by fighting against my body. Instead, I began to soften. I learned to love myself in a way I never had before.

🌸I discovered compassion.

🌸I discovered surrender.

🌸I discovered what it means to feel strong while remaining open to possibility.

It was no longer about pushing, battling, or forcing. It was about holding myself tenderly—trusting that gentleness could be just as powerful as grit. In fact, it became my greatest source of strength.

This experience has profoundly shaped the way I work with women today. So often, women come to me feeling disconnected from their bodies—whether through fertility struggles, pregnancy trauma, or the emotional weight of waiting and hoping. The body can feel like it has let them down, and the mind can become trapped in cycles of fear and doubt.

What I bring to this work is not just a set of skills and therapies. I bring a lived experience of what it means to walk through fear, to surrender control, and to discover compassion as the doorway to resilience.

Through reproductive reflexology, trauma release, reiki, and embodiment coaching, I support women to reconnect with their bodies, not through force or demand, but through gentleness, trust, and compassion.

Because true strength is not always about pushing harder—it is often about softening, opening, and learning to hold ourselves with love.

✨ This is where healing begins.

✨ This is where fertility flourishes.

✨ And this is where you can begin to feel at home in your body again.

May your journey be held in softness and hope,

Bethan xx