This Christmas humbled me in ways I didn’t anticipate.

There were relational ruptures — moments where old wounds spoke louder than present-moment truth. Places where unconscious shadow moved through relationship before it could be named. Where transference and counter-transference quietly shaped interactions, and nervous systems met each other already braced.

What struck me most wasn’t that rupture happened – rupture is part of being human – but how clearly my hopes were railroaded by reality. What I longed for, what I imagined might be possible in certain relationships, collided with what was actually available.  That collision hurt – and it asked something of me.

Rather than turn away, I felt a deeper invitation to turn toward myself.

Over recent months, examining how I show up in my personal relationships has been coming at me in waves.  Not as a neat insight, but as a lived reckoning. Again and again, the same questions arise:-

– I crave intimacy and deep connection — so why does it so often feel elusive?
– What role am I playing?
– Where do I abandon myself to preserve connection, and then quietly resent the cost?

Naming my own avoidant strategies has been uncomfortable, but necessary.  Avoidance doesn’t always look like distance – sometimes it looks like accommodation, silence, or staying when something inside has already said ‘no’.

Self-abandonment can masquerade as kindness. Complex trauma can make familiarity feel safer than truth.

This is why, alongside my professional training and experience, I have consciously chosen to become a student again.

I’ve begun attending Codependents Anonymous, not because something is ‘wrong’ with me, but because I want to address the subtle patterns of self-erasure, over-responsibility, and relational survival strategies that no longer serve me.  CoDA offers a space where honesty is valued over performance, and where responsibility begins with the self rather than projection.

Alongside this, I’ve stepped into Authentic Relating circles – because real-time, embodied relationship is the true classroom.  These spaces ask me to try to stay present, to speak from sensation rather than story, and to notice what happens in my body when vulnerability, difference, or disappointment arises.  They gently expose the unconscious habits that insight alone can’t shift.

I may be qualified, but I am forever a student.

A student of my nervous system.
Of unconscious shadow.
Of repair, boundaries, and relational integrity.

I’m learning, can be genuinely hard – right alongside its beauty.  Both exist at once.  Growth doesn’t come from bypassing that truth, but from staying with it long enough to let something new reorganise from the inside.

As I move forward, I’m choosing curiosity over certainty, humility over being ‘right’,  and a willingness to let relationship – especially the difficult moments – continue to teach me where healing is still asking to happen.

This feels like the real work now.