I remember the day it all came crashing down…

I remember the day it all came crashing down…

 “ I believe that was my first 'adult' initiation into what I now know to be "soul".”

~ Nicole Barton

I remember the day it all came crashing down. I sobbed in the toilet at work - I'd had a drama over stock not coming in on time for the brand I managed, sales teams chasing me, customers angry, and I was drowning in spreadsheets up to my ears (which I *hated*), trying to sort it out. My head felt like it exploded, everything was fuzzy and I couldn't breathe.

At home life wasn't much less grey - I'd suffered with an infection after a minor op, my beloved granny had died, and I had just bought a house that needed so much renovation that myself and my then partner couldn't live in it, so we were up to our eyeballs in dust.

On top of that, just prior, I'd worked full time, whilst studying for my MBA *and* having a part time job.

You could say I was the kind of girl who had an "I can do anything" attitude; the kind that said "I can do anything, so let's just do it all - just pile it on my plate and I'll get to it." Which very often led to emotional meltdown as I realised that I had no boundaries and wasn't as robotic as I'd assumed.

I was the kind of girl who worked until 3am answering every email with perfectionist detail, double checking I'd signed my name correctly, or not misspelled someone's name on the email, in case they got upset.

I was sensitive.

I wanted to get life "right."

I wanted to fit in and make everyone happy.

I wanted to be loved and approved of.

I wanted "success".

And although I was rising into my career and creating the outer trappings of that - ticking all the boxes - buying and renovating my own house in my early 20's, getting married with an expensive, picture perfect wedding, having the rising professional career, my *inner world* was in chaos on this hamster wheel.

So, going back to that moment of sobbing in the toilet - that was my real low point. That was when I was so exhausted - physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually - I just *knew* that I couldn't do 'this' anymore.

The next day, I was so ill I phoned in sick. I couldn't actually move off my bed, and I was terrified. My legs were like lead, and my partner had to literally pick me up to carry me to the toilet.

I'd bent so hard that I no longer recognised myself and I couldn't even walk under the weight of the responsibilities I'd taken on (in effort to be loved).

I'd been here before - when I was 10 and I'd missed a whole year of school - and I look back now and see that this pattern of wanting to create the 'perfect life' had had me literally strive to make everyone else happy but myself - at the cost of my health.

I believe that was my first 'adult' initiation into what I now know to be "soul" - the reclamation of the lost parts of myself that had been pleading to me to be seen, heard, felt - yet I'd numbed, unwilling to hear the truth.

Especially the part of me that felt I had to please everyone to be loved. That was the younger part of me that needed the most love.

And though there were many more initiations, and each dark period taught me something new, it was one of the biggest and most liberating times of change I can actually remember.

I quit my job, and I retrained, starting my own business as a holistic therapist, and from there I grew and evolved over the years.

That was over a decade ago now, and what's been created from there is sometimes hard for me to even believe.

I have become an entirely different woman.

Firstly, I completely magically healed myself with homeopathy (which is the lineage of my Archetypal Apothecary path), and since then, I've followed the call of my heart and body wherever it asks me to go. I've travelled the globe by myself (I was terrified to do this, so I literally just booked the ticket to go after a therapist called me a victim), trained in + taught yoga in Bali (twice), learned the science + art of healing, got divorced, moved cities, healed a paralysed face that doctors said wouldn't heal, become vegan and gluten free, found my soulmate, become a mum, bought another beautiful period home and created a business doing the kind of *pinch me* work, helping others, that I once felt was an impossible dream, to my own schedule and to incorporate room for a juicy, delicious life - and written for a plethora of healing + spiritual magazines.

I share this because from where I was, mid-initiation, in the mundanity of my dull, grey life, this would all have seemed *impossible.* As much as I was a "can do" kind of girl, I was also a "this is impossible" kind of girl, mid meltdown.

I thought that I was destined to a life in the same four mundane walls - and even the medical world saw me as broken, with no cure.

I share this to give hope if you're a woman who feels the burden of life, the busyness, the lack of self-care, the overwhelm and the stress, the strain of people-pleasing, the lack of confidence, the burn out. I share it for you if you're numbing yourself to move through your daily routine.

I share it for you if you feel lost, and at the mercy of your mundane life, whilst feeling a knowing in your bones that you can't keep doing this for much longer.

Because one thing I learned is that we have the power to create whatever we desire. We are the creatrixes of our lives - and we can choose them to be mundane, or we can choose them to be magical.

It is absolutely *possible* to heal all of this - and to love yourself back into your body, to open your heart to more magic, to more passion, to more aliveness, to more fulfilment, to more purpose.

It requires us to learn to welcome home parts of ourselves we have never known - to love parts of our little girls who have hidden away, keeping us small because it feels safer. It requires us to learn to return to the softness we were born with before our cultural conditioning kicked in.

And that, my love, takes courage (though I'll be honest, I never felt courageous in each of my changes).

Yet no matter how much courage it takes to muster, it's beyond *worth* it for knowing that we get to choose magic.

If you're feeling like there must be *more* for you too, and you'd like to heal and reveal a more meaningful, magical life, message me - I'm here to love you as you peel back the layers and find *you* again, and I'm happy to explore what might help you in that.

All my love,

if you've any questions, send me an email.

Nicole x

PS - I'm sharing some 'then + now' photos to show the journey. I have so much love for that younger part of me who didn't know her power. I think it's the 'dead eyes' vs the 'alive eyes' that give away the potency of this work for me.