About

Hi I’m Helen,

For a long time, I didn’t know who that was. And now I have even less of an idea as the need for labels falls away.  I am more comfortable in the present moment, no longer getting fired up about the past or yearning for the future. I am here now, and I’m really glad you are too. 

I believe we are here to grow, the amount of manure we have to deal with in life can be the most incredible fertiliser for our potential to create beauty…But have the power to make it destroy us, or, become us.

Life taught me harsh lessons about trust, truth and survival. The first time I was hospitalised from abuse, I was six months old.

I grew up in London with two parents who had been through challenging childhoods and grandparents who had equally difficult slog. Themes of suicide, addiction, drugs, sexual abuse, extreme poverty, disability, betrayal and war. Also, vast amounts of creativity, making the best of it and close friendships.

My maternal grandfather, John Rose, was a brilliant, gentle giant who had not been defeated by a traumatic start in life followed by a war, poverty and two disabled children. He knew how to find pleasure in a sugary pint of tea and the paper. He was a beautiful role model who taught me how to ride a bike, swim and tell stories. He was completely paralysed by a stroke when I was ten and spent three years immobile and speechless, waiting to die in a hospital. My mother's nickname was Rosie, she loved her Dad, and it's my middle name. For her surprise 50th, I had everyone wear red roses in their outfits; at her surprise 60th, it was the same, and when I was chanting over her corpse the morning she died five years later, I took all the roses in the room and spread them around her body whilst I prayed. 

The rose is a potent flower that flourishes in manure...

The abuse continued for a decade and I was in and out of doctors offices and hospitals.  As an only child I normalised my life as I knew no different. I remember feeling this in extremes; everything felt like a life-and-death situation, and I didn’t understand why I didn’t enjoy being alive like my friends.

The mind's capacity for self-preservation is remarkable. 

Both my ability to survive in a house of harm and others' inability to understand.  First what was happening to me, and then once the abuse stopped, what I was doing to myself. 

My body became my warzone.

Starving myself, over-exercising, hurting myself in many ways, and looking for escape in all the wrong ones was how I got through the constant tempest inside.  Being raised an atheist and having parents who were functioning alcoholics, I had no model of how to live. But since I was four I was completely focused on becoming an actress, it was only through art and trying to get to the depths of a role that I was able to understand the world. By immersing myself in another world, another life, I found a way to be here.

By sixteen, I had left home, carrying diagnoses of narcolepsy, eating disorders, and depression. I’d attemted suicide at 14 and did twice more before I was 20. The pills I was put on didn’t seem to work but getting into one of the best drama schools in the world, accurately nicknamed Trauma Centre, gave me something to live for. 

The rigorous training demanded 14-16 hours daily, which gave my restless energy purpose, though it exacerbated my narcolepsy to the point of hospitalization.  Yet, due to my fierce passion and acting being my life line, I graduated with a top agent and quickly won a prestigious acting award which opened a lot of doors and was my first introduction to being in rooms where things happen.  One opportunity was a curved ball; I was invited to coach some of the senior leadership team in communication skills at a global financial brand.  That was the beginning of my parallel career.  When not acting in film, theatre or tv, I would support all sorts of business leaders in and around London and Europe in their personal development. I cut my teeth in London's financial district just after the 2008 crash.  It also allowed me to slowly fade out all the waitressing and promo jobs I hated.

But marginal success didn't equal healing.
Juggling far too many balls, burning the candle at both ends and being petrified of being still. I didn’t know who I was when I wasn’t doing something. This exhausting cycle was brought to an instant end when the boyfriend I lived with and loved, spent my 26th birthday physically torturing me. 

I was left with complex PTSD; the court case was in the international press, all I could do was sit in the apartment it happened in playing solitaire for morning till night.

The human desire to survive is extraordinary.

Slowly, slowly, I began to function again, but the court case and major press meant it was impossible to put it behind me.  Any illusion of safety had been pulled out from under me.  But in hindsight, this was the turning point for me to be able to heal.  Thankfully, I was left with no choice. 

A few years later, I met both Buddhism and plant medicine in the same month. I began chanting even though my mind was furious and thought it was stupid, by body’s intelligence would not let me stop. I continued on that path, rapidly becoming a leader and over eight years I ended up supporting hundreds of women in London.  By beautiful design my mother, who was the angriest atheist I‘d ever known, and who had banned me from talking about Buddhism, also converted as she said, I had now become the daughter she’d always hoped I’d be and nothing had changed except my practice. 

That is one of my proudest memories. 

Working with plant medicines and studying natural healing and alternative forms of living, allowed me to rapidly heal my narcolepsy, Amenorrhea caused by prolonged use of the contraceptive pill, stop many addictions and allowed me to break free from the matrix I had been living in. 

The 8 years I spent working heavily with alternative healing and Buddhism began to turn my life around from its very depths.  The period led on to deeper and deeper work, powerful prayers, huge, rewarding investments of time and money.  My heart began to open, my roots deepened, and my mind stopped being so in control.  The shift from head to heart was happening.

But as I grew stronger so did the challenges:
My memories of the abuse returned and It hasn’t been easy, but it has been immeasurably freeing as I can now love myself, understanding that all I was feeling was in response to my situation. I have made sense of myself and my life, and am now so proud of getting to where I am today.

Unlocking my heart and coming home to my body, I now live with deep faith, which now centres on God, not religion, has given me the courage and compassion to:

• Nurse my Mum through a rapid and fatal cancer. 

• To confront my father about abusing me, tell my extended family and when my father was on his sudden deathbed, tell him I forgive him and pray over him. 

• It gave me the strength to tell the truth at the congregation at his funeral in my speech, not out of retaliation but so the veil of cowardice and discomfort falls and the epidemic of child abuse stops in this lifetime. 

• It has seen me spend 5 months on my own, having to go through the hoarded childhood home my father had stuffed so completely that when I fell over I found I had put my hand in my mothers ashes. 

• It has seen me realise how extraordinarily precious life is, what a gift we have to be on this beautiful planet with all its peaks and troughs. That we are immeasurably powerful and our journey is to find that power, love ourselves so it becomes easy to use our lives as a force for good. 

• It has seen me have success as an actress but also as a coach and speaker. Help many people to transform their lives in small and big ways. It was seen me take huge risks that felt like inevitabilities, that have paid off, as I now have completely transformed my financial situation, have founded multiple companies and live in my dream apartment opposite the beach. 

• But mostly, it has allowed me to move from someone who always needs help, to someone who is able to give it.

I have travelled across rainforests, mountains, warehouses and the cosmos to find answers, but I have generally found more questions. 

My prayers continue, as long as the journey does.  Thank you for being here and sharing some of my path so far.

 “Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.” - Rumi