Descending To Reclaim Ourselves, And Introduction To Working With Me
Updated: Oct 5
Hello, my name is Ami and I am a trauma informed somatic therapist & grief tender who has been sitting with people for over two years now. The above is my formal or professional title and qualification which to be honest I find rather limiting. I also have complicated feelings about the word therapist, as I actively choose to not pathologise people and have no interest in being a clinician.
So perhaps guide or companion for the abyss ;) might be a more suitable title.
I am familiar with the Abyss. My own lived experience has taken me there many many times and will likely continue to do so, as it will for most of us. After so many visits or perhaps descents you start to get curious about it, maybe even start to build a relationship with it and one day you might even discover that this is a rich and fertile space. After all, everything germinates, fertilises and begins to grow in the dark before it can grow into the light of the world.
And I have already gone way too deep for an introductory blog post.
Or have I? Perhaps deep is what you are looking for?
This website says that I work with people who are experiencing grief, perhaps neurodivergence and chronic illness which is absolutely true but I would say that truly I work with humans having a very real and sometimes difficult experience of being human and want to know themselves better. Even the parts they have been conditioned to hide away in shame.
I myself had a messy, chaotic and yes traumatic childhood which defined huge parts of my adult life as well as my sense of self. I will not sit here and write that I am healed but perhaps I am a little further along that journey than some and combined with my professional qualifications, my lived experience rounds off how I support people quite nicely.
Before becoming a guide for the Abyss (something I have been in training for long before my professional training began) I was a very successful wedding & portrait photographer and business mentor. I built up my 6 figure empire before hitting a huge burnout and receiving my diagnosis for Autism and chronic illness.
And while I do not wish to romanticise disability or minimise the immense struggles that come with being less able in the systems we live in, I am grateful that my body said no. My life now is very different. I own very little, I live in my van, travelling the UK being as close to nature as I can, lots of walking, time with friends and family, wild swimming and moving much much slower.
While there are still plenty of challenges, I love this life and for the first time feel like I am fully inhabiting myself and the magic of this world. Which for me is the whole point of being here.
Healing (anyone else tired of this word?) for me is about becoming more alive. It’s about being able to fully participate in this life, even the hard bits. It’s about coming back into relationship, with ourselves, each other and the more than human world.
And there are so many different ways to find our way back to ourselves and working with a therapist is definitely one thing that can support that journey.
So what might working together look and feel like?
Initially we will be getting to know one another and create resources that offer you some steadiness. In grief tending we call this building the banks, in more clinical language we might use the term regulation but I strongly dislike that word or concept as it’s too controlling. Resource and building the banks creates the foundation for movement & expression. That anger you have been suppressing or that grief that feels too huge to come into contact with, they do not need ‘regulating’ they need a vessel, a space where you can feel able to let them move. That’s where we begin.
And I have so many tools that can be shared, simple and accessible practices, playlists (we all need to dance more), embodied anatomy (it’s hard to hate a body when you learn how amazing it is at keeping you alive) rituals, education around our nervous system and of course a space where each week, all of you will be welcomed.
Something that feels important to say is that I do not believe that healing happens in isolation.
It’s always held within a wider context; community, systems, land and collective experience.
The way I work honours that and I do not position myself as someone who can ‘fix’ you.
I am someone who walks alongside you as part of a wider web of care. To support you in staying curious and deepening your capacity for all of this magical and sometimes terrible life.
I love my work and my clients. Our sessions are spaces for the grief, the rage, the silly (yes we laugh a lot, humour is required in the Abyss) and the mess. I am deeply honoured that I get to sit with people while they bravely descend to reclaim themselves and come back to aliveness. I would love to see if I might be able to support you on your descent into the fertile darkness.
You can of course book a clarity call with me if you feel ready.
Much love
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