Where Victoria Began:

Victoria arrived at the Archetypal Apothecary path feeling very overwhelmed and in her head, trying to logically ‘problem solve’ her life.  She had been devoted to being a Mum for many years - which she had loved - but as she approached menopause she had begun to feel deeply lost and ‘purposeless’ and was longing to discover her more meaningful gifts.  

She knew she had a deep desire to be a healer of some kind, though she longed for clarity - she’d already trained in Aromatherapy and Reiki - but she also didn’t have the confidence to bring these gifts into the world, and was struggling to know the exactly purpose she was here for, which had her avoiding taking the next steps to express her gifts in the world, due to the fear of not being ‘perfect’ enough.  She also felt unsafe with being her full, authentic expression as a healer, having had parents who were shamed for their ‘wildness’ and spirituality.

Personally, she had always felt there was something ‘different’ about her, compared to others, and she shamed herself for her deep sensitivity and wildness.  She had spent her life trying to ‘fill a hole’ (to use her own words), and became a ‘spiritual seeker’ - but she used this to ascend above and evade her body.   She sought out healing ‘externally’ via ‘quick fixes’ - going to doctors, or other healers hoping that they would ‘fix’ her - with little lasting or deep transformation being created.

When she arrived in our group journeys, she was longing for ‘real’ personal healing. She had spent a long time building a shield around herself to protect herself from vulnerability and pain, and had suppressed her emotions, mistrusting herself, giving away her wisdom to others, and ignoring her body’s wise (yet inconvenient) calls.  She was feeling very ungrounded and disconnected from her Feminine body and her natural cycles and rhythms - because she had a lot of grief that was buried under the surface, longing to be seen, felt and loved.  

She feared the investment in herself (time, energy, financial), but she leaned into the edge of her healing and expansion.

She knew she wanted to learn to heal herself, discover her true gifts and deeper purpose and learn to express it into the world - and opened her heart to going into the deep, dark places within, to do just that, even though it was hard.  And so, she made what she calls an ‘intuitive decision’ - for once, allowing her heart to lead, over logic - to go deeper into the work of the Archetypal Apothecary path.

Where We Journeyed:

The Archetypal Apothecary Path has ‘3 Layers’ of ‘becoming’ a healer - 1) Self-Healing, 2) Discovery of Soul Gifts and 3) Expressing Gifts into the world.

Victoria has journeyed deeply and is currently still journeying with all 3 steps. Here’s where we have journeyed together, in our 1:1 work, including the 8 Elements and Archetypal Remedies of the Archetypal Apothecary path.

1) Self-Healing

Victoria’s journey began with learning to self-heal, and learning to tend the fear of even opening to that (Element of Opening).  We firstly distilled her unique Soul Map (which was once called ‘Soul Essence’ work), and did some work around her heart’s visioning for what she wanted to create in the next 6 months, initiating her into embracing her power to create life as she desired and open to magic (Elements of Opening and Majesty).  

From that, we developed an ‘Incantation’ for her to speak out her vision and who she was here to be, daily, as she began to work somatically and go into her body more deeply (Element of Embodiment), to reconnect to the wisdom contained in her cells.  She developed a relationship with the wild, as a grounding practice to help her get in tune with her own deeper healing wisdom.  She worked with magical ritual and embodiment practices to begin to go more deeply into connection with her body.

Through the process of grounding back to her body, more was revealed around some of the wounds and traumas she was being called to face and honour and work with - which she courageously began to work with by witnessing the sensations of her body, and loving herself in them, working with tending her nervous system, and hearing the Old Stories of her ‘inner little girl’, who had felt the fear of ‘going into’ these wounds (Element of Self-Illumination).

2) Discovery of Soul Gifts

It was in these wounds that we began to discover her core wounds, and the gifts that lay within them.  Victoria had experienced one of her first disconnections from her body as a maiden, during her initiation into womanhood at first bleed, when she had been told by the doctor that her body couldn’t be trusted and she needed to go on the Pill.  Her sensitive body had not responded well to hormonal suppression, and this rupture set to become the portal of reclamation she was here for - awakening her in her peri-menopause to something more truthful and discovering her purpose (Archetypal Folliculinum - or ‘Oestrogen’).

It became clear that her deeper purpose was to be a peri-menopause guide, guiding women through their own reclamations of Feminine soul as they, too, journeyed just behind her in their own healing and reclamation of purpose.  As most women do, when their unique Archetypal Remedy becomes clear from their core wound, though, Victoria resisted this soul gift - despite feeling the truth in it - feeling the fear that it was ‘too big’ for her - ‘who am I to do this?’, ‘how can I guide other women in this?’, ‘what can I possibly add?’ - so there was then a lot of healing around welcoming the ‘bigness’ of her gift (Element of Soul Alchemy).

She began the journey of invoking and working with embodying her unique remedy - Archetypal Folliculinum (Element of Invocation) - more deeply for her own personal healing and deeper embodiment of her true inner wise woman.  She embodied her inner ‘crone’, doing her own research to come off hormonal suppressants including HRT that she no longer felt aligned for, and reconnect to and trust the wisdom of her body (something that would later be revealed as a pivotal choice in her journey).

She worked deeply with reclamining her Feminine softness (Archetypal Rosa) and her Feminine soft-power (Archetypal Aurum), learning to create her life softly, yet intentionally and consciously (Element of Manifestation).

3) Expressing her Gifts and Birthing her Soul Business

As she embodied the expression of who she was more and more deeply for herself, she began to feel called to begin developing and distilling her own path and sharing her story into the world.  She also discovered a deep soul call to learn to work with the Archetypal Apothecary as a ‘Practitioner’ (which is something that is currently offered by ‘invitation only’, and isn’t required or aligned for everyone).

Simultaneously, alongside the deeper energetic healing work (because that really only becomes *more* needed as we begin the work of creating a soul business), we began the process with diving into some of the more ‘business’ elements that are woven into the journey.  We started to distill her ‘client avatar’ (the dream woman she was here to serve), and began the journey of mapping out her own unique ‘healing path’ and ‘point of view’ that she was here to serve to other women and journey to guide them through, grounded in her own embodied experience of her journey so far - illuminating her ‘tools’ she had embodied along the way (including her earlier Aromatherapy and Reiki).  We illuminated where she would guide women from (Island A) and where she would guide them to (Island B).

She then began to test this path that she was designing by sharing her wisdom via social media posts, but up came the fears of being judged for her wildness, which was something that she had feared from how her parents were shamed for their own wildness. We journeyed into healing and alchemy of her ‘wildness (Archetypal She-Wolf) and her temptation to come from ‘logic’, rather than ‘trust’ her wild, ‘truthful’ expression in her writing and video creation (Archetypal Quartz), With that deeper energetic self-healing, she created some beautiful, truthful, poetic, soul-stirring social media posts.  On beginning to heal some of her wounds around being seen (Archetypal Phosphorus), her posts began to get attention from her community, and had women praising her courage for expressing so radiantly who she was.  Women began to celebrate her finding herself and ask her how she had done this - she is becoming gently magnetic.

Where Victoria is Now:

Victoria has become an entirely different woman to the fearful, armoured woman I met almost two years ago, who felt lost and was totally disconnected from her body, stuck in her head, lacked confidence in her capacity to become a healer, second-guessed herself, and felt all the fear of stepping into her authentic, wild and magical expression.

She’s learned to work with the Archetypal Remedies in her Soul Plan for her own deep self-healing, and to trust her own healing wisdom.  She’s learned to cultivate an inner safety in her body and nervous system, so she can share her truth, fully express her ‘wild’ heart, and claim her magic.  

She has deep clarity on the deeper purpose she is here for in the world as a Peri-Menopause Guide - she knows her unique gifts, and what she’s here for, and the healing she needs to do to become her gifts - and she has begun to share her authentic story into the world, via social media.

Victoria is still working deeply, with my continued 1:1 support, with the part of the Archetypal Apothecary path that will help her to begin to create offerings, and bring her gifts into the world in a tangible way.  She has begun to feel into her offerings for women, and will journey with birthing those into the world and making them visible, creating her soul business.  She is also currently journeying a personal healing portal that is revealing her capacity to trust her true healing power - through which she has held herself with an immense amount of courage, strength and Feminine soft-power, having embodied the art of true healing.

She’s a shining light for what’s possible for all women who feel a deep call to heal themselves, discover their deeper purpose and begin to step into expressing it.