What I think happened was that when I shared my full testimony, I let out a big sigh of relief and landed, for a little while, in the arms of the Lord.

As I shared in part 1 of my testimony, it has not been easy to share my story, and there was a lot of processing. Glory to God, I feel in a good season, and I have learned a lot through the refinement.

There were deep layers of shame and spiritual warfare I had to work through with Him after I was first saved, so I guess you could say it has taken time to reach a place of continuing the writing in a way that flows.

My heart intends to post biweekly articles. I am currently praying that God blesses me with the wisdom and endurance to see that out :)

Partly of what I’d like to speak about today (and I guess there will be some other parts sprinkled in if you know anything about me and my disorganised mind) is the complex nature of the heart.

Also, specifically, about how we can read something as true with our mind (the Bible), but it does not quite yet land in our hearts.

This was certainly the case for me for a very long time.

So let’s begin, shall we?

We know from God’s Word that the heart is the wellspring of life (Proverbs 4:23), and we know also that Jesus mentions the heart multiple times in the Bible.

The heart, many times, is mentioned as the true centre of a person’s inner life, where thoughts, desires, faith, love, and evil all stem from.

Depending on the Bible translation, Jesus refers to the “heart” around 40–50 times in His recorded teachings.

Peeling the layers back even more, the Hebrew word for heart is “lev” or “levav” meaning:

the inner self

mind

will

emotions

conscience

place of decisions

Ancient Hebrew thought did not separate mind and heart the way modern English often does today. The “heart” was where a person:

thinks

chooses

understands

desires

worships

Also, in the New Testament, “kardia” means heart and in Greek it means:

inner life

thoughts

intentions

moral center

spiritual condition

Ancient Hebrew and Greek people did not separate the heart and mind into two completely different faculties the way modern culture often does today.

So biblically speaking, the heart is essentially the very core of the person.

To put it even simpler: the heart is the place we live from.

Many of us have unknowingly been taught to separate the mind and the heart. We think the mind thinks and the heart only feels. But biblically, the heart is understood as the true source of thoughts, will, emotions, moral conduct, and spiritual life.

It personally took me a while to learn the difference between heart and mind and realise there’s a reason why there were so many times I could know the truth of God’s Word intellectually, but my heart was still living out pain because of areas of old structures that hadn’t been dismantled.

I see this in many women in the church also.

And I think this is partly why so many Christians end up living heavily from the mind while suppressing the heart. Because emotions can feel overwhelming, unsafe, messy, or even spiritually “wrong,” we learn to disconnect from them instead of understanding what they are revealing to us.

Because if the heart is the place we live from, then it makes sense that unresolved pain does not stay neatly tucked away in the past.

It follows us.

Into our relationships.

Into the way we interpret love and safety.

Into the way we view God Himself.

As the place where we indeed live from.

The heart can only change when we partner with God in sanctification and heart formation, instead of trying to convince *the mind* we believe what He says about us.

The Christian life is not just mind renewal. It is also heart transformation.

A woman may fill her mind with Scripture daily, yet still find herself reacting from fear, shame, self-protection, or striving if the deeper formations of the heart have not yet been surrendered to God’s transforming work.

Quite literally, she’d be living out how her heart has been shaped, until she gives it up to God.

While there is wisdom in disciplining wayward emotions through truth, suppressing the heart entirely weakens us spiritually and emotionally, because the heart is not separate from thought. It is the full source from which thought flows.

If you grew up in complex relational dynamics as I did, the heart often becomes formed around survival rather than safety.

And over time, that formation begins to bear fruit in the way we love, trust, attach, react, and relate to God.

Scripture speaks about “bitter roots” for a reason (Hebrews 12) and that no “bitterness springs up causing trouble.”

Because unresolved pain in our hearts does not stay dormant. It shapes the way we think, relate, protect ourselves, interpret people, and even perceive God.

This is why we can come to faith, we can be so grateful for salvation, but questions are lingering, such as:

“Does God really forgive me?”

“Are God’s promises really for me too?”

Sometimes the fruit looks obvious such as anger, fear, people pleasing, hyper-independence, control, emotional shutdown, or anxiety.

Other times it looks far more spiritualised.

Struggling to rest even while praying constantly, feeling emotionally distant from God despite loving Him deeply, and feeling abandoned when prayers go unanswered.

There’s also overperforming spiritually out of fear rather than intimacy. Reading Scripture faithfully while secretly feeling ashamed or finding it difficult to love.

Other times, it is much more sly and crafty.

Think silent beliefs. Internal promises we’ve made as protective strategies. Inability to rest in God’s promises. Unable to truly grasp the fullness of His character. If we go even deeper a level briefly, one could say that this could be classed as rebellion.

What many inner healing ministries call “bitter roots” often produce what we later experience as bitter fruit. The visible struggles are rarely the beginning of the story. They are usually evidence of something deeper that formed long ago within the heart.

Many women are trying to manage the fruit of their lives without ever understanding the root system beneath it.

This is why surface-level solutions often leave women exhausted, because the issue is not always a lack of discipline or needing a “stronger faith”.

Often it’s the heart itself which has been shaped around pain for so long that transformation requires far more than intellectual agreement alone.

It requires deep inner surrender and allowing God into the places where those structures were first formed, most of the time as far back as our family of origin.

The heart cannot heal through information alone. It can only heal through literal spiritual transformation with the help of the Holy Spirit.

Because inner healing is not “mindset work” or behaviour management. It is allowing God access to the places where beliefs, vows, fears, agreements, and survival patterns were formed.

It is repentance in the deepest sense of the word. Not merely feeling sorry, but allowing God to transform the inner world from which all things flow for you.

God has given us His Holy Spirit so that He can bless us with direction and inner healing, to allow God to lovingly dismantle the structures of pain built within us, so the heart can truly begin living from the new nature we have in Christ.

This is the kind of work I care deeply about.

It’s not surface-level behaviour management. It’s not performative healing. It’s not simply learning how to think differently.

But deep inner transformation for God’s glory.

The kind that reaches the hidden places of the heart. The kind that dismantles survival structures formed through pain. The kind that reforms the inner life through truth, repentance, surrender, and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Because Jesus did not come simply to modify behaviour. He came to make all things new.

Perhaps this is why healind does matter so deeply. Because beneath all the striving, the heart still searches for rest.

As Augustine quoted, “You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

Amen.

The course had fizzled out naturally. I’d quit the adult industry and was offering card readings. Things were slow, almost as if my business was slowly being dismantled. I was perplexed.

I had started to pivot and use the word “God” in my content, but from a Gnostic sense, where God is misrepresented as the revealer of hidden knowledge, rather than sending his Son to be the Saviour of humanity. It is a twisted notion in the New Age where God can be mentioned, but as soon as it becomes biblical and about sin, He is instantly rejected.

Where true Christianity teaches that God is personal, relational and loving, Gnosticism encourages secret teachings and mystical practices, still ultimately leading away from the truth.

In other words, it’s all about what we can discover or achieve for ourselves, not about trusting God, His ways or coming to repentance and knowing Jesus as Saviour and Lord of our life.

One of the books I became obsessed with - an unbiblical Gnostic depiction of Jesus and Mary Magdalene

I came to start reading about Christ Consciousness, which, if you don’t know, suggests that all people have the potential to realise the “Christ” within themselves - almost like a state of Christ-like awareness.

I still wasn’t quite there at the Truth yet, but please stay with me…

I started reading teachings about Mary Magdalene being labelled a prostitute and how she and Jesus were lovers. I felt I was really embracing these teachings, yet it was still a version of Jesus that had zero resemblance to the Jesus of Scripture.

Looking back now, I can see how deceptive it was, but I also see how God’s mercy was so, so close because I believe He used this to bring me to Himself.

I truly believed I was on my quest for the real truth, but I didn’t know it was actually Truth calling me.

Scripture warns about false representations of Christ and that there will be those who preach a different Jesus, a different spirit, and a different gospel: “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.” Galatians 1:8

And again, Paul warns that people can be led to a different Jesus than the one revealed in Scripture: “For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached… you may well bear with him.” - 2 Corinthians 11:4

Yet God would use it all for good, very, very quickly, and my life would soon be changed forever.

I then started to come across reading articles about God as “Father”, and then, through my search, I started encountering more and more about Jesus, but not the mystical teacher I had come to know, but something a little more convicting.

The truth really did begin to weave its way into the deception.

Then next, I came across something about baptism and about being washed, cleansed, and “made new”. So, I went down a rabbit hole of questions about Jesus, the Father, and baptism. What did this mean?!

False teachings and the Truth were all mixed at this point, yet day by day, slowly came to unravel from one another, until a day I’d be met with life-changing conviction.

Now what happened next was really strange…a friend who’d detached from my New-Age social circle had been baptised the year earlier, reached out to me, and we got into a conversation about her faith and her baptism, where she sent me voice messages evangelising to me over the phone.

I kept searching, following what felt like a gentle urgency in me.

After several days down the rabbit hole on the internet, I came across a YouTube testimony of a woman who had renounced the New Age and shared how she had become a born‑again believer. I listened closely as she explained why the New Age was spiritually deceptive, how it is built on sand, how it exhausts the soul, and how God sent His Son on a rescue mission to call us to repentance from sin.

I was deeply convicted, and I realised that although I had come to know a mystical version of Jesus, it was nothing like this Jesus.

I was really experiencing some wrestling at this point, because hearing about sin smashed my dreams apart, because that sounded like the most oppressive and depressing thing ever.

That same evening, I came across this Scripture for the very first time:

“There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the LORD, and because of these abominations the LORD your God drives them out from before you.” - Deuteronomy 18:10–12

It felt like someone plugged electricity into my body and switched me on for the very first time.

When the Bible says that the Word of God is both alive and active, believe me when I say that’s true, there would have been no way to have read that and felt the way that I did.

When I read that scripture, I knew something was telling me to stop living the life I was living. It wasn’t about reading these words on the screen, my heart changed in an instant.

It was the beginning of the end, and I knew I could no longer continue walking the road I had been walking on. I just knew in my body, my spirit, my soul that these words were TRUE.

I wanted to share this feeling with everyone!

I grabbed my phone and scrambled to call my mother, where in a confused, shaken voice, I said, “I’ve just read the Bible. It’s all true. And all I know is I can’t keep living the way I’ve been living.”

That’s all I remember saying.

In one given moment, I had read Scripture, and my heart began proclaiming “someone DIED for ME! I can’t believe it!!”

That evening, I grabbed a huge bag, and I began ripping up my tarot cards. I had numerous altars in my apartment, which were covered in statues of gods and goddesses, huge crystals, and New Age paraphernalia, which I had worshipped.

My house looked bare to the bones, and that same evening, I lay down to sleep, and the Holy Spirit began working in me.

I remember lying down for sleep and seeing an image of a white dove flying towards me, carrying a gold ring in its mouth. I quickly wrote it down and went to sleep, and when I woke up in the morning, I felt very different.

Imagine a filthy, broken-down car left in the wilderness, and a mechanic comes along to fix the engine, it comes back to life to function, and before he leaves, he gives it a power wash, including inside. The car looks brand new.

That is how I felt.

Weeks after being saved by Jesus Christ and receiving the Holy Spirit

Everything in my apartment was destroyed, and I continued reading the Bible. God led me to the book of Psalms, and I became obsessed with it.

As I read David’s cries for mercy, it spoke to my own inner world, which I hadn’t had the words for all of these years. My own heart posture began to mirror David’s, and for the first time, I felt God start to Father me.

By this time, I’d renounced my New-Age business and came off social media, which lasted for 8 months, and I entered a sweet, intimate season of getting to know Jesus.

I fell in love with the One True Living God, and it showed. I longed to be fully basking in the love of this beautiful Saviour who died for me, who saved me, who cared for me, and who loved me.

I had no idea how to pray, and I had no idea how to read Scripture. But I wanted to love this Jesus, my goodness! I wanted to know about Jesus.

Then came several nights of beginning to feel the true separation of light and darkness. The closer I grew to God, the more my heart wanted Him, the clearer I began to see and feel the darkness I was once part of. Almost every night, I was visited by demonic presences.

The darkness I’d left behind was angry.

I began attending my local church, where I chose to get baptised 3 months later. I’d well and truly left my life behind, but the lingering shame seemed to follow me everywhere I went. Somewhere deep down, I truly didn’t feel free in my heart, and the strongholds were not gone. At this point, I had much to learn about sanctification.

As I attended church, seeing mature Christian families together, I felt something I’d never fully leaned into before…

The shame of how I’d robbed the opportunity to give my daughter a Father.

It began to consume me and it grieved me for a long time.

The enemy used this for a long time to lead me into comparison, grief and shame. It seemed like the more I walked the journey, the heavier it became, and now I was born again, this lie of being different and misplaced was still operating…

“I am the true Father for you both, Beloved”, Jesus would say every single time.

“The Lord is my Shepherd, I lack nothing…”

Absolutely, of course, a two-parent family is your ideal, good design and intent, Lord, and I see your mercy through my past mistakes In Scripture, but I was struggling to “get the message”.

If I’m being honest with you, it has been a journey of the Lord pruning through layers. Things take time, and our healing is in His hands. It is false that we are delivered from pain straightaway.

Not that He is not a good Father, because He is, but crucifying our fleshly and demonic strongholds takes time.

I remember trying to renew my mind constantly through the people in Scripture who, by theory, never, ever measured up - and I knew I didn’t either, but for a long time, I felt this same lie about being worthless and needing to perform for God to love me.

God continued to sow His Word into me, to show me that I was worthy of receiving Him, and fear had no place.

But sometimes, as much as I read Scripture, it stayed as head knowledge, not heart knowledge, and there have been many deep layers to work through.

There is a lot to learn, which the Church doesn’t always teach.

The funny thing is, there was never any evidence of rejection towards my daughter and I, as we were not rejected once. I was in awe of the Lord sending Godly, mature men into our lives to shepherd us. It was all a lie. But there, the expectancy in my heart caused me to feel different, and not integrate into the Body, even staying distant from God.

The Lord would lead me through what felt like an intensive boot camp over the coming months in terms of healing, where I was to unlearn everything I thought I knew about it. He slowly began calling me to deeply forgive others in my heart and to learn to honour my parents, regardless of what happened, and to separate sin from people he made in His image.

I learned deeply about how these teachings can keep us bound (the heart of my ministry).

The enemy continued to try to cast shame on me for my past, and it was intense and RIFE. I’d been set apart from the darkness by God, and I was now able to see and feel the demonic realm so clearly in those days of being born again, which were very, very difficult with navigating so many layers of pain, so I could fully embrace this new life I’d been blessed with.

I’d feel the enemy in my house, and I felt his fury. I wouldn’t have made it through without Jesus.

“Shame is no longer yours to carry, Beloved”, He would say…

I’d abandoned the kingdom of the enemy for the only Kingdom that is built on Truth and Love, and the enemy hated it.

It was safe to say that the life I’d built before in Satan’s kingdom had fully dismantled and collapsed. This is why he was furious, and this is partly why he tried to continue to shame me again and again…

God kept showing me the bitter roots of my heart and began pruning them, and the enemy white-knuckled it for a long while until God’s words began to fall into my heart.

During this time, I’d been convicted to remain pure. The enemy did not like the lifetime of lies being dismantled in this way, either. If you remember, the enemy had trained me for many years not to desire a man at all, let alone love and care for one, and advance God’s kingdom together.

Here’s the thing, shame does not come from God, it is a tool of Satan, and shame is the lie we believe about who we are. Where guilt says “I made a mistake”, shame says “I am a mistake”, and it keeps us from receiving God’s love.

“Dear Lord, we thank You that You are a kind God. I thank You, Jesus, for dying on the cross and for paying the price of sin and shame. Amen”

Jesus shared with me that He would be cleansing the New Age business I’d laid down, and it would “resurrect” at a later date, but first, I was to continue learning how to rest and heal with Him.

I needed to know what it was like to be truly Fathered.

I could continue using this particular post to share a lot more about what I’ve learnt the last 3 years about forgiveness, love, generational healing, and family restoration, but then there would be no point in starting the Substack at all, because the intention is to press on beyond this post, and to share the teachings He has graced me with for my own journey.

It’s my turn to continue supporting you.

So, you could say that sharing my story has been to introduce myself, to share my why, and from here I’ll be sharing more about what’s been learned through the journey, not as a finished product, but as a Daughter who has been reconciled to God, and who finds healing childhood trauma and flourishing in biblical womanhood pretty important.

Thank you for reading!

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” - 2 Corinthians 5:17

I was elated when I bought my first pack of tarot cards, and I became obsessed with them also. I’d spend hours learning the meanings, the images, the words, so I could pass on messages of what seemed like hope for others. These people were genuinely broken trying to find hope in their lives, just as I was.

I threw myself in the deep end about what were called “spirit guides” quite quickly. For those unfamiliar with the term, spirit guides are believed (within certain New Age belief systems) to be non-physical beings, often described as people who lived before you, who are assigned to accompany and guide you through life.

Followers of the New Age believe these ‘guides’ can be contacted through practices like meditation and that they support wit’s personal growth, spiritual development. Insight through dreams, visions, or inner impressions is able to come from them. What I later came to understand, through the Holy Spirit, is that these were not neutral beings, but dark, spiritual forces masquerading as light.

“And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.” - 2 Corinthians 11:14

So essentially, I was purposely becoming ‘paired’ with my spirit guide, not knowing it was actually the darkness of the spiritual realm pretending to befriend me and essentially, take the steering wheel of my life.

The woman who owned a Facebook spiritual group (I was in several now) saw my “natural gift for mediumship” and took me under her wing to begin training me to build up my relationship with said spirit guides I was strengthening a relationship with. It makes me shudder to think I truly believed these demonic forces had my best interests at heart, and how close a bond we formed.

I learned how to ‘blend’ with spirit guides, which I know now is essentially asking a demon into your body for “better connection”. I thought this was a good thing; it meant I was becoming closer to my spirit guide, because the closer I got to him, the closer I got to seeing all the hidden things of the universe.

It meant my gifts could become fine-tuned, my readings became clearer and more correct. I became obsessed with my tarot card readings for others and being crystal-clear in the information I gave them, and sadly, the validation and reactions from others only drew me further in. The New Age does fulfil and encourage puffed-up pride.

I want to share this clearly: the world we live in is a spiritual war, and the conflict between good and evil is real. At the time, I didn’t understand this, I thought the devil was a myth. But later, the Lord revealed to me that it is very possible to appear accurate, insightful, and even helpful to others while still working for the kingdom of darkness.

Demonic forces have been keeping watch since before our births, it is more than possible to know our weaknesses.

The moments of “correct” readings helped create a powerful illusion and the belief that I was on the “right path”, which kept me bound and deceived. I came to understand that deception does not always look false; often it looks convincing, affirming, and very, very attractive.

Me, in the New Age, living my “best life”, trying to heal trauma

When I came to Christ, I also came to understand that demons do exist and that they are not ignorant of human lives. When we are not reconciled to God, we leave ourselves spiritually exposed. In that state, the enemy is able to exploit wounds, patterns, and unhealed places, presenting counterfeit insight that mimics truth but ultimately leads away from freedom and the ultimate Truth, which is Jesus Christ.

Before long, I was entering trance states regularly with what I believed to be my spirit guide, who was supposedly a Native American man from the 1800s (face palm!). What I had been taught to call “trance” and “blending” was, in reality, the surrendering of my thoughts, awareness, and will to an external spiritual influence, which was essentially demonic. Another phrase for this is possession.

At the time, I thought it was spiritual growth. Looking back, I understand it very differently. I now recognise those practices as forms of spiritual surrender that opened my mind and to forces that were not from God, allowing me to be bent in a way which made me vulnerable and this was only just the beginning…

I received my Reiki certification around this time, which I began practising and weaving into my spiritual gifts. I’d come to know an older lady, another one who took me under her wing and taught me about Reiki, which is a Japanese New Age practice developed in the early 20th century by Mikao Usui, and is based on the belief that a ‘universal life-force energy’ can be channelled through a practitioner’s hands to heal another person.

During practice sessions, I felt sensations such as lots of heat through my hands. At the time, this was seen as “energy working.” What I now understand is that there is spiritual power involved in Reiki, and it is not from God. It is a counterfeit power used to deceive and lead astray.

As I continued these practices, I genuinely did think I was doing good, but it truly fostered pride, spiritual blindness, and narcissism, causing me to be led astray from any possibility of finding out the real truth (yet): that the power of healing belongs to God, and God alone.

Years passed, and I was “making my way to the top”, not only was I learning these things in my spare time for my own ‘healing’ and ‘enlightenment’, but I had now formed a career which was charging money for tarot card readings, crystal healings and teaching people to enter trance-like states. I made a ton of money from doing it, unfortunately.

Me hosting trance and plant medicine ceremonies at big, UK New Age festivals

The scary thing is, when you enter the New Age, everything you’ve ever wanted is handed to you on a silver platter. There’s hardly any struggle, and if there is, it’s very overspiritualised and called a “spiritual upgrade”.

In New Age belief systems, a “spiritual upgrade” is thought to be a moment when a person moves to a ‘higher level of spiritual awareness’ or ability. It’s often described as receiving ‘new gifts, heightened intuition, stronger psychic experiences, or deeper access to spiritual knowledge’.

The deception of the New Age is tragic because it is a subtle inversion of the truth, and so many of its concepts do mirror biblical realities, just from a distorted lens. They remove God from the centre and replace it with self, empowerment and performance.

What is called ‘karma’ is a counterfeit of God’s law of sowing and reaping. In Scripture, sowing and reaping exist within the context of grace and mercy. God disciplines, but He also forgives, restores, and redeems. Whereas karma offers NO saviour at all, no forgiveness, and no restoration, only an endless cycle of earning, paying, and spiritual debt that can never even be paid.

It totally explains why karma in the New Age feels so heavy and relentless.

Also, what the New Age calls a “spiritual upgrade” is a counterfeit of biblical sanctification. Sanctification is not about ascending, unlocking a sort of power, or becoming more enlightened. It is a slow process of being humbled, refined, and conformed to the image of Christ. Where sanctification produces humility and dependence on God alone, “spiritual upgrades” fuel pride and self.

You see, there are many worldly counterfeits to God’s blessings and gifts!

Where spirit guides and New Age practices exist to serve the self, the Holy Spirit leads us to die to self.

This is why the New Age is so convincing. It offers the language of healing without the cost of surrender and the Lordship of Christ. It’s packaged as light and promises freedom, yet it quietly keeps us bound because it can never address the root of the human condition…

Sin.

The New Age was no longer something I practised; it was who I was. My identity was wrapped up in how well I could trance with my spirit guide, how many clients I had, how much money I earned, how good a trip on magic mushrooms I had, and how visible I was in spiritual spaces. I wanted front row, and I wanted it all.

For context, before we move on (and to tie into what’s already occurred), I want to share that when girls who have been sexually abused by fathers, stepfathers, other male relatives, or friends they trusted, they either:

a) become very promiscuous or they shut down their sexuality entirely. Some of the reasons they behave promiscuously is a sense that so much of their dignity and worth is gone, so why not get rid of it all?

b) they have a desire to punish, to lure men and then leave them

c) they desire to prove the lie and belief that all men are bad or lastly…

d) they believe that sex has become identified with love and attention, so that they will endure a life of promiscuity so they can receive the affection they actually deeply long for.

In my New Age teachings, I began learning about polarity, divine masculine and feminine energy, and “sensual awakening”, and I began to notice a shift in my attraction toward men, and I began to call myself pansexual, which if you don’t know, means someone is attracted to any gender and includes transgender.

No longer was I labelled a lesbian, but fluid.

I want to be clear and careful here. On the surface, becoming attracted to men again after years of living a solely lesbian lifestyle could be seen as a move back toward God’s design. However, because I was still deeply immersed in deception, the way it emerged was still deeply distorted. It did not come through repentance, truth, or surrender to God as yet, but through New Age teachings rooted in sensuality, promiscuity and self-focused healing.

Learning about feminine and masculine energies became twisted with lust, erotic spirituality, and the sexual energy of the body. The enemy was having a field day with the root of sexuality he had planted early on in my life (go back to the earlier paragraphs where I explained what happens when girls who have been sexually abused).

So while something that looked “right” was happening externally, internally, it was being formed through sinful responses.

was living my “best life,” working festivals, fully immersed in the New Age, and exploring polarity teachings, I met a man called Chris* and I became besotted.

Chris was known by the nickname “Jesus.” He had tanned olive skin, long dark hair that brushed his shoulders, he was always barefoot, and had a calm, almost mystical presence, and I was completely captivated.

In the world I was living in, he seemed to embody everything I had been taught to desire.

“I’ve met my soulmate whilst in the New Age”, which made me believe I’d reached peak spirituality and made it, or so I thought.

If you’re from the New Age and experienced the twin flame deception, you’ll know exactly what I mean…

I became deeply invested in the belief of “twin flames”, which is the teaching that claims that there is one soul split into two bodies, destined to find one another across lifetimes, but you have to do a lot of “internal work” to become reunited.

Those who believe in twin flames believe the connection is intense, magnetic, and often necessarily painful and that these struggles are necessary for spiritual growth. So, any dysfunction, distance, or mistreatment is reframed as part of the “journey,” something to glorify, rather than view as unhealthy.

I became convinced that Chris* was my twin flame. Naturally, the deceptive lies around twin flames were grounds for dysfunction.

At the time, I gravitated towards the goddess movement and had renamed myself Sophie Seerwolf, with “Seer” meaning I could see all things, and “Wolf” to honour my so‑called spirit guide, whom I had been blending and trancing with for years by this point. My spiritual identity, my worth, and my destiny all felt bound up in these teachings and this man.

Chris* and I entered a relationship, but it soon became clear that he was very emotionally unavailable. He would see me regularly and then disappear for weeks with no contact, telling me the stars and planets “weren’t aligned” and it just wasn’t our time yet. Lol.

Each absence validated my anxious attachment, which formed over the years. Yet instead of seeing this as a red flag, I spiritualised it. I told myself the timing wasn’t right yet and I agreed with him and his plans.

“Oh my goodness, yes, the stars hadn’t aligned, and the planets weren’t orchestrated correctly for our destiny to unfold”. I assumed I clearly still had a lot to learn about this, so I got to work.

I believed that if I just healed more, embodied more “divine feminine energy”, or waited patiently enough, he would eventually step into his role as the divine masculine leader I believed he was meant to be, devoted, present, and fully in love with me.

The twin flame notion sadly gives us a language to keep us bound to pain. It teaches to settle for emotional neglect instead of recognising it for what it is: unhealthy and dysfunctional. It also encourages obsession under the disguise of “destiny”, essentially tempting you to believe it’s right to operate on your own timeline, your own will, and the works you do.

Again, this relationship fulfilled the core belief I had about myself; it was just packaged differently: You are not loved. You cannot possibly be loved.

It deeply pained me to love someone who could not (or would not) love me in the way I wanted. And yet I stayed, believing that suffering was sacred and that love required striving and begging instead of safety.

In the New Age, there is no teaching on purity. No wisdom about God’s design for love, commitment, relationships or marriage. Only to romanticise longing and self‑abandonment dressed up as spirituality and growth.

One day, after a fun weekend together where we played the flute to the horses and meditated in the woods, we returned home, and I sensed something was different. There was something changing.

A little later that evening, we stood on my doorstep for a little while to smoke pot, as we always did, and Chris turned to me and said, “I have to leave and go away for a little while, and I’m not really sure when I’ll be back.”

I looked down at the floor and nodded. And that was the last time I saw Chris.

After about a year of grieving, healing, and still following teachings on sensuality to ‘reclaim power back to my body and femininity’, some girls in the same New Age circle worked in the adult industry, and had asked me if I’d be interested in setting up an online profile and earning some extra money for myself.

It was an instant yes.

A month or so later, I enrolled with a coach in the adult industry (who was actually a previous client of mine) who taught me how to set up an account, which kind of content works best, which outfits to buy, and how to perform (and perform very well) for the adult industry.

I went all out and I decided that I was going to be known.

One thing I praise God for is that I did choose a fake name and persona. I chose my “style”, my studio, and which would earn the most money and make me feel the most powerful.

So, I chose to be a dominatrix.

I chose the role that promised the most power and the strongest illusion of being alive and in control, because underneath I was broken, lost and hardened.

Looking back now, I can see what I couldn’t see then: inwardly, I was spiritually dead, and I was searching for anything to feel important. So were my clients, many of whom were seeking meaning and substance in ways they couldn’t access in healthy ways, and I began to notice patterns which mirrored some of the struggles I was facing in my own life.

My upbringing had taught me that I was not important, and every path I had taken since had been an attempt to disprove that lie, whilst still bumping into places of the world that would funnily enough, reinforce that I was unimportant.

The adult industry did not begin as rebellion for me, it began as survival. From the outside it looked like confidence and empowerment, a daily commitment to create the “best” content, chase success and validation.

But inside, I was beginning to feel tired.

I grieve for the woman I was then, the woman who felt so unseen, so hopeless, and so disconnected from who God made her to be, that she believed this was the only way to feel she was important.

Again…“I am only valuable for what I do, what I give, or how I perform.”

I had layered my chase for power and status. I had two income streams running side by side: my New Age spiritual business and my work in the adult industry. When I wasn’t creating content, I was still offering readings, healings, and spiritual guidance, still trying to give people hope while desperately searching for it myself without ever admitting I was indeed searching.

I decided to launch a new course, one I’d never offered before, and I was excited. I poured everything into the marketing and I spent a lot of money on resources. I’d positioned it as “advanced spiritual training” which would be to teach others how to heal themselves and how to build their own New Age businesses.

Each Saturday, I taught others how to enter a trance with their spirit guides and perform rituals, spells, and blood magick. By this point, I was calling myself a Shaman and had been fully immersed in the New Age for over nine years. I was well established, and this was the ‘peak’ of my New Age career.

As a “Shaman”

But I felt something begin to change.

As the course started, it didn’t flow as everything else had before, and instead, it began to dismantle. Conflicts were happening between clients, people stopped showing for sessions, and it just wouldn’t happen. For the first time in years, the forces which I felt worked with me began to work against me…

It reminded me of the quiet, internal shift I had experienced years earlier when I became a new mother, the sense that a chapter was closing, but I couldn’t understand why.

I will admit, I felt burnt out, depleted in a way I had never been before, and I did wonder if I just needed to change direction, but I was honestly…tired.

I had everything I wanted in a materialistic sense, yet I didn’t feel nearly as fulfilled or satisfied for someone who had been working on themselves for such a long time.

In the New Age, there is always something new to learn, a spiritual buffet of rituals and modalities, and my life became a work of endless striving with no actual rest.

I now see it clearly: I was coming to the end of myself.

“You were wearied with the length of your way, but you did not say, “It is hopeless’; you found new life for your strength,and so you were not faint.” - Isaiah 57:10

At the end of myself - my last ever solo plant medicine ceremony before being saved just weeks later

If you’d like to read the final part of my coming to Christ, you can click the link below! I also encourage you to subscribe if you aren’t already.

Jane* was an interesting character. She looked feminine, with long, flowing brown hair, she was full of life and zest, and very feisty. She was the type of person who drew people in effortlessly, and I became drawn to her.

We became like two peas in a pod, hanging out every weekend, and it was only a matter of time before she introduced me to a whole new world, unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

The LGBT party scene.

I remember my first time in a LGBT bar like it was yesterday. The neon lights flickered across the walls, music pulsed through my chest, and the air smelled of sweet perfume and Happy Hour. Everyone seemed so friendly, laughing loudly, dancing freely, living as if every moment was a celebration, and it quickly became intoxicating and euphoric.

What began as weekend escapes quickly bled into weekdays, and the line between who I was meant to be and who I was becoming began to blur.

I became consumed by that world very quickly, where I lived my life for Gay Pride, often planning the event for months, what I’d wear, what drugs I’d choose to take for the optimal experience, and who I’d attend with. What was supposed to be a one-day event would easily become a week-long after-party in a drug den with my lesbian and drag queen friends.

I want to share here that throughout the many different environments I moved through along the way, the one that has since felt very personal is the LGBT community, because the core foundation of the LGBT is identity, you literally choose to become yoked to a label, an identity, a persona, very far from who God called us to be.

I’d also like to share that those in the LGBT community deserve love and kindness just the same as anyone else, in the same measure. They are human beings created by God. I’m speaking as a woman who has real experience as someone saved from the LGBT world. I was among them, I shared my life with them, and I know how deeply many are searching for belonging, safety, and their true identity, just as I was.

By this time, my issues with drugs had become very serious. It wasn’t just using the odd line of cocaine at the bar anymore; it was numerous days at a time, where nourishing myself and basic hygiene weren’t things I thought about.

It became a sort of normality, I truly thought I was happy and had “found myself”.

During the morning of the after party the night before, I remember we were in a small studio flat and I’d not been to sleep for several days. In the studio, I was with a group of friends and drug dealers who were all asleep, and I decided to search for another line of cocaine.

Except the drug dealer waking up and telling me sternly, “You’ve had enough”, taking the drugs out of my hand…

I refused and wrestled them from him, trying to prise them from his hands, but he didn’t allow me. Why? Because I was more than likely on the brink of an overdose. If even a drug dealer would not allow me anymore, what did that really say about my mental state.

I did not like being sober. Parties or bars were the only places I attended, and when I arrived, I intended to go all out. I was the life and soul of the party, carefree, hyperactive, and an attention seeker without a care in the world. I was also now selling drugs on the side to support my habit.

All of the beliefs that began to form in my childhood were now coming to a head. The facts were, I was scared of men, I assumed they’d always hurt me, and if I ever let my guard down around them, it would come at a cost.

I chose to associate the most obvious thing for me, and I “came out” as a lesbian.

“I won’t let men hurt me”.

“I will find comfort with women and stay protected.”

“I will make lesbian my new identity.”

By this point, I’d had enough encounters with women to make the choice, yet it was a sinful response and choice I made to fulfil the vows I’d made in my heart concerning my pain and grief.

I was about to find out that there was no way I could ever run from my pain, that it was always waiting to sneak up on me through every relationship. I had no idea about the possibility of having a relationship with a woman and still encountering issues.

This wasn’t about gender. It was about the darkness which had access to my soul.

If you recall my ex-boyfriends, Luke* and Patrick*, this time, I met a woman, with whom I had a relationship, which was fueled by the same type of behaviour. But I moved away to be with her anyway, which was a really bad move (pardon the pun lol).

I moved across the country, almost 60 miles away, to be with my new girlfriend and her parents. The only saving grace about this situation was that I came to know what it feels like to be loved by her mother and father, even considering how deceptive the dynamic was. They were warm, open, and kind, and they clothed me with love and care in ways I didn’t know I needed.

I ended up getting a new job as a customer service agent at the local mail order catalogue office. My job was to take mail orders and product complaints, but I hated it. I hated working, having a job, and my life was torn between pretending to be a girl who thought she wanted to settle down, yet in this new relationship, it just perpetuated issues that were still lingering.

Katie* and I, on the surface, seemed like just two human beings wanting a relationship together. But beneath that, there was an underbelly of toxicity and dysfunction. Moving away didn’t mean I had left my addiction behind, I just carried it with me.

Before long, I found myself in the same patterns I’d experienced in my relationships with men in the past. All Katie* and I did was party, but it quickly became clear that whenever we were intoxicated, conflict was inevitable. Arguments escalated into physical fights, each of us trying to “win” against the other.

It became undeniable: the relationships in my life were being fueled by the same strongholds over and over again, violence, alcohol, and drugs, repeating the same cycles that were yet to be broken.

Me in Manchester’s famous LGBT hotspots - a place which quickly became my second home

Katie* and I lived very close to Manchester, and almost all of our time was spent in the city’s LGBT hotspots. Again, the neon lights, music, and energy continued to be intoxicating for me and this way of life felt like a world where I could hide my pain and just be someone else for a while. On the surface, I did feel happy, I looked happy, with everything seeming fun and glamorous, but underneath, I carried a cloud of emptiness, but I wasn’t truly conscious of it.

Manchester became my playground, but also my classroom, teaching me lessons I wasn’t ready to see at the time…that running toward pleasure and escape without addressing the pain inside would only lead me back into the same cycles of hurt and brokenness.

So, here I was again. And then one day, a familiar doorway opened.

P$rn…

I was utterly oblivious that these things were not normal; for me, they became so ingrained from an early age that they just became my normal. I was in a painful, dysfunctional cycle of relationships with all of my lovers, who tried to lure me with porn, drugs and alcohol and make it the very foundation of our relationship.

A belief was well and truly formed.

“I am only valuable for what I give or how I perform; I am not worthy of love for who I am.”

Spiritually, this belief also opened up a doorway for the enemy to keep me in cycles of pain and unfulfilling relationships, because he whispered over and over: You are not loved. You cannot possibly be loved. Love must be earned through your body and how you perform for others.

So, I stayed. Chasing validation, confusing attention for affection, and unknowingly reinforcing the very lie that was absolutely destroying my life.

“For he thinks in the heart, so is he.” - Proverbs 23:7

These cycles weren’t just bad luck. We have God’s Word to back up that the enemy comes to try to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10).

What I later found out is that every lie about who I was, and every past betrayal, opened doorways that the enemy used to indeed steal, kill and destroy. Each relationship was not random, because each one was tied to the same core pain, unresolved vows, and beliefs and lies I had unconsciously made to protect myself.

Katie* and I ended up moving back home, and I picked up right where I left off, reuniting with the same social circle around the gay bars and clubs every night. My illusion of ‘settling down’ had quickly come to a close, and I felt right back home where I belonged, continuing my substance abuse to escape my feelings.

I was head over heels in love with a substance called Ketamine. This is in no way to glorify, but for context, Ketamine didn’t feel like just getting high, it felt like leaving. The enemy is a master deceiver, offering temporary relief for long-term destruction. I was running from the pain, thinking I could bypass it.

“There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.” - Proverbs 14~:12

This particular drug gave me out-of-body experiences and took me away from my thoughts, my memories, and created an entirely different reality, which I’d experience for hours on end. For a while, I didn’t have to be me. I remember being completely convinced I was somewhere else every time, as I was completely and fully detached from reality.

Some time after being back, living my best life, I met a woman called Tina* during the early hours of a bar. She looked tall, she had brown short hair, and as I stood with my back against the bar, she took one look at me and patted her lap as an invitation to go over and join her. So I walked on over, I sat in her lap, and that was that. We became like two peas in a pod.

Very, very quickly, we decided we were in a relationship together, and I moved in with her. This time living with a woman, just her and I, felt different. There were no parents around, there were bills to pay, and it seems as if life asked me to step into an adulthood I’m not entirely sure I was ready for.

My bubble burst pretty quickly, as no sooner had I moved in than it came to light just how she wasn’t really in a space of settling down at all. Yes, I loved the party lifestyle myself, and I wasn’t fully finished with drugs yet, but I was beginning to crave some sort of stability.

What I was really doing was unconsciously seeking out patterns that reflected my past betrayals, because the pain had not been dealt with.

Night after night, Tina* would have someone call her up asking her to go and party, but I was never invited. She would turn to me every time and say, “I’ll go so they don’t keep asking, but I won’t be long.” But that would never be the case, as 4 am would come around, and she would still not be home. I was becoming increasingly frustrated with this pattern.

I found myself wanting love and affection, and I must admit, I was still manipulative to get it, often victimising myself in the process.

I didn’t realise it at the time, of course, but what I know to be true now is that I continued to respond to the sins and brokenness of others with sinful responses of my own - manipulation, anger, and chasing pleasure. While understandable to some degree, this is not God’s design, and it only keeps us trapped in cycles of destruction and perpetuates the cycle until we bring it to God’s presence.

“Do not be deceived, God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” - Galatians 6:7

About a year after moving in, we got engaged. It was nothing fancy, we jjust had a conversation in the living room, but it wasn’t a proposal; it was more of an agreement from me, suggesting it and asking her thoughts. But so what! I was elated! Things finally felt like they were going in the right direction. So we got “married” a few months later.

I put “married” in quotation marks because it wasn’t a true marriage at all. I believe the one kind of marriage God designed is between a biological man and a biological woman. This is my unwavering conviction, based on my faith.

It’s been difficult to write the tender parts of my story as I feel a mixture of both sadness and gratitude. Sadness for the choices I made and the deceptions I fell into, and understanding of just how lost I was at that time. There’s a bittersweetness in remembering how deeply I longed for love and permanence, even in a place that ultimately wasn’t life-giving. I was spiritually dead inside, completely far from God’s design for me when He intentionally created me in my mother’s womb.

The biggest hindrance to my faith was the shame I carried until God really began working in my heart. Even after salvation, I carried it around with me, like a ball and chain, weighing me down in church services, Bible studies, and Christian circles.

It’s like my heart truly didn’t get the message yet.

I not only carried the original shame of abuse, but the shame when I later came to Christ because of the decisions I made because of the pain of it.

God teaches me that shame can begin early and develop through rejection, abandonment and neglect. The reason for this is that a child is by nature self-focused, where he may believe neglect and abandonment are his fault. Shame also binds to needs and can urge us to believe we don’t have a right to be loved, leaving us in situations where it doesn’t arrive easily.

“Lord Jesus, thank you for coming to preach the Good News to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. Amen.”

“Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith; Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” - Hebrews 12:2

For some time, I continued working my job (another customer service agent), and logged onto Facebook to see that Kirsty* was sharing the news that she was having a baby with her female partner, and I genuinely was curious as to how.

I was happy for her, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I became like a dog with a bone. You have to remember, I was actively living as someone who felt she had been born to be attracted to females.

“Wouldn’t it be lovely if…I did the same thing someday?” I thought.

That ‘someday’ came and I decided I wanted to find a sperm donor. I registered on a reputable website and began my search online. After some weeks, I came across a man who was tall, handsome, and professional, so I reached out to him. The process continued, and a few months later, he arrived at a neutral location where we’d agreed to meet with his ‘donation’.

After nine months of repeating the same process, I felt something in my body was very different, and I had an instant thought to take a test. So I did, and I was pregnant. I knew it. Even now, as I write this, there is nothing to describe that instinctual knowing that there is a growing baby inside of you.

I was elated. My pregnancy had been relatively smooth until around 37 weeks, when I was diagnosed with a serious liver condition that carried a risk of stillbirth, so I needed to be induced. I spent three long days in slow labour before my daughter was born by emergency C-section.

I ended up giving her the middle names “Grace” and “Elizabeth” meaning “God’s promise”. God is so cool when He makes you look back at all of the details.

There is something tender and beautiful about seeing your newborn for the first time, no matter the circumstances. When she was placed on me, my whole body flooded with a love I’d never felt before. I was alone in the hospital and then moved to a private room with just the two of us, and on the first night, I just couldn’t sleep.

I just wanted to keep looking at my baby as she looked at me, soaking in every detail, every tiny movement, every breath. The world seemed to dissolve and fade away.

Because of some health complications we experienced, we had to stay in the hospital for almost three weeks, and I felt something begin to change within me. If you speak to any mother you know, she may say she felt like she had ‘changed’ when she had a baby, like some kind of awakening or something. That was certainly true for me, and I couldn’t place it no matter how hard I tried. I didn’t want to be around anyone, I just wanted to be with my daughter and I didn’t care about anyone else. I so desperately wanted to love her in a way I had never experienced.

We came out of the hospital and went back home to where Tina* and I lived together, and things became odd to say the least. Everyone thought I was postnatally depressed, but looking back, I don’t think I was. I want to almost say it was a time when I felt urged to start seeing the light of day…

As a postpartum mother, I didn’t want to be in that house, I wanted to stay upstairs, in the cocoon of napping with my baby, gently washing her, singing her to sleep and resting with her. I became really detached from Tina*, and my heart began to change towards her.

When people say they have got the ick, that’s what it felt like for me. I began to not see her in the same way anymore, I didn’t want to be there, and I didn’t want her to touch me, help me or anything.

After around three months of feeling this way, I confided in her and told her I didn’t feel the same anymore, that things had changed for me, and that evening in the early hours of the morning I began packing my bags, called a taxi and fled through the middle of the night to my mother’s house with my newborn baby.

I still had sitll a lot of anger in my heart towards my mother for her not protecting me more, but at this point, our relationship was repaired enough for me to be happy to go there to stay, I just didn’t have a permanent solution and it didn’t matter to me, I just needed to get out. It was a matter of taking one day at a time. But I soon became depressed, feeling really low and lost.

I felt extremely vulnerable. I was a new mother, tons of trauma, living on the sofa of a one-bedroom apartment with no job, and back to the very basics of my life.

So, guess what I turned to? You got it.

I relapsed hard. It was just the once, but it crushed me with shame and guilt. After I relapsed hard during one New Year's Eve night, I swore to never take drugs again. I wanted to concentrate on being the best mother I could be, and while it wasn’t at all easy, I have kept my word.

Time moved on, and I was feeling very restless. I was still in this very low place of wondering for answers. What’s my next step? Do I get a job? Do I search for a new home? Do I stay here? What do I do?

DING. DING. DING. A lightbulb off…

Growing up I had witnessed my mother attend some spiritualist evenings, which is where you go to sit in a room and wait to be called by a “medium”, who is someone who says they can give you a message from a dead relative beyond the grave, for you to understand your direction, your destiny, and receive some comfort.

That evening, I logged onto Facebook, and typed in “spiritual readings” in the search bar and a million different Facebook groups came up in a list. I clicked on the first one and I felt a rush of excitment.

It said the only thing I needed to do was post a photo of myself and someone would then “give me a message”. “Okay, this is so, so great ”, I thought.

I finished browsing for the evening, and I turned in for the night to go to sleep, and the next thing that happened shook me to the bones of my body…

As I closed my eyes to sleep, I began to see several faces and heard several voices, all speaking over each other in my head, almost like a frequency on a radio which needed to be ‘tuned’. The faces were vivid, the voices were LOUD, and I genuinely had no idea what was happening to me.

Eventually, as I revisited these Facebook groups, I came across how apparently this was a good thing because mediums need to tune into voices to connect with the right one to pass on a message.

“What if I wasn’t meant to receive a message, I thought, but to pass messages on to others?” I wondered…

I became instantly captivated.

If you’d like to read the fourth part of my story, you can click the link below! I also encourage you to subscribe if you aren’t already.

I met a childhood friend near the house I lived in with my mother, and she became my best friend. Her name was Carrie*. She was sweet and caring, loved playing with her dollhouse, and invited me into her home regularly. I enjoyed her company, and the occasions we met felt like a sweet normality.

Going to Carrie’s* house felt quiet and safe. Her home was very different to mine, with a warmth that I longed for but couldn’t find in my own life. Being there, even for a short while, reminded me of what a safe and loving home could feel like.

But things were about to take a turn. I remember one day, playing outside at the front of the house, I remember myself cutting up squares of paper, writing letters on them, and carefully placing them in a circle on the ground. At nine years old, I was building my first makeshift Ouija board.

The squares stayed in place for only a few minutes before the wind scattered them, yet the memory remains vivid in my mind. I wish I could remember more about how it all came about, but it was so long ago.

A year or so later, my mother went on a blind date with someone who had written an advert in the local newspaper, and they fell into a serious relationship. His name was Kevin, he was Canadian, educated, and well-dressed.

I always felt something was not quite right, as whenever I saw him, he would always be shaking and trembling, and we’d always meet him in a pub. Looking back, he was under the grip of alcohol daily and hourly.

It wasn’t long before things progressed towards him wanting to be part of my care, but my heart was closed off from him. I have no doubt he loved my mother and naturally felt he became my stepdad, but to me, he felt unsafe.

All men did at this point.

Somewhere deep inside, my inner belief began to solidify: all men could not be trusted and having my guard down around them would always come at a cost.

I continued to make close friends around the local area where my mother and I lived, and I soon began passing my curfew, smoking cigarettes, stealing and drinking whiskey and running away from home, which always resulted in the police collecting me to bring me home.

The desire to escape consumed me, and turning to these things quickly turned into comforts to help me cope, forget and numb myself to my thoughts and the dark cloud which seemed to grip me.

My mother was regularly at work, I was skipping school, and I’d often find her boyfriend turning up to the house when he was drunk and ending up falling asleep in the garden after trying to pound the door down to get inside.

I want to be clear: I do not believe he was intentionally trying to physically harm me. He was clearly lost and carrying pain of his own. What shaped the experience were the patterns and modelling of men around me, crafting unhealthy beliefs during these tender years. I trust that God would have intended better for them.

During this time, I was still seeing my father every weekend, and my heart felt torn between the dread of those visitations and the desire to explore, experiment, and escape from the world. I was angry, and over time, my heart grew harder.

Looking back, part of me felt nothing at all. Yet the other half sensed that something was deeply dysfunctional in my life, a life surrounded by people who seemed unable, or unwilling, to pour into me.

When I’ve processed these memories, I’ve seen that the enemy was tempting me to partner in continuous falls in my life, because, by my early teens, I had experienced most things people won’t ever see in their lifetime.

My authority figures had taken over my care, regularly sharing their thoughts on my behaviour in front of me, often leaving me feeling shamed. There was a wrestle between my bad behaviour, and nobody really asking why, even though I desperately wanted them to.

Me in Spain, my only solace was visiting my grandparents there

Part of me grieved that I felt like the black sheep of the family, the only child navigating a split family dynamic, while watching my cousins appear to have bypassed any hardship. Now, looking back, this belief is unrealistic, but at the time it felt very real.

In the family, I had two uncles who seemed to enjoy teasing me and saying hurtful things.

“I can see her being pregnant very young and alone one day,” one of them said to the other one day, whilst laughing at the Christmas dinner table.

It makes me wince to think of how darkness was using their words to distort who I was and twist my already distorted view of love and family even more.

Something deeply settled in me from those words that day…

“My value is tied to how others choose not to take care of me.”

I want to be very clear and intentional in sharing this: the repetition of these cycles in past relationships with men is not meant to shame or diminish them. Rather, it sets the stage for a deeper part of my story, showing how identity and purpose can be distorted in childhood, and how God can set free someone like me.

Through my sanctification, God has been at work in my heart, gently dismantling the walls I once built around it. He has allowed me to see the value of men, to respect their role and place with a renewed understanding. More importantly, He has opened my heart to Himself. I’m excited to share that journey with you, but for now, please read on…

Anger and rebellion continued to consume me, and I was determined to run with these lies about who I was and what my circumstances had tempted me to believe about myself.

If you felt like the darkness was already prevalent in my life, I invite you to read on with discretion after a prayer. Very quickly, I was to take all of the bad things that were happening and walk the path of destruction, because I just wanted to be away from everything, and no longer exist - quite literally.

It would be another twenty-plus years before I came to understand that the only armour I truly needed was the armour of God, but in that season, I believed something very different: my ultimate weapon was myself, and I had every intention to self-destruct.

I became drawn to coping mechanisms which provided any meaning or substance. Cigarettes, alcohol, boys, and repeatedly stealing my grandmother’s asthma inhalers and inhaling deodorants to get high.

“Someday, in some way, there will be a way out of all of this”,…I thought.

I decided to attempt taking my own life as the war with my internal world had simply become too much.

It was a summer afternoon with my mother downstairs. I remember feeling serious about it, yet at the time, I felt something with me. It was a presence of some kind.

As I know God’s character now, I wonder if it was Him, because the ‘feeling’ of how I sense Him now is similar. In ways where I sometimes feel God’s fatherly “no” these days, this presence felt very similar.

I can’t tell you that I was consumed by a sense of peace, but what I did feel was a sense of knowing this was not going to work.

I continued attending school for the next few weeks, where I ended up confiding in a friend about the abuse that was (still) happening, and she ended up telling the headmaster.

My heart was in my stomach, and I returned home to a crying mother and the Child Protection team sitting at the kitchen table, who had been waiting for me to get home. They all asked if it was true, I said yes…and thought, “Maybe someone will see now”.

The investigation continued for weeks and weeks, and several conversations took place, and one day the decision was made: inconclusive evidence.

Oh my goodness, I wasn’t sure what was worse! The abuse itself, or not being believed by a professional team and your mother.

In my heart, I deemed my mother useless there and then. I felt she was uninterested, she had no spine, and I was completely done with her. I also took it as a signal to completely reject contact with my father, effectively taking my own protection into my own hands.

“Honour your father and mother” (this is the first commandment with a promise, that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”). - Ephesians 6:2-3

In Hebrew, “honour” (kabed) means to be heavy, weighty, or glorious, implying giving parents significant importance, while the Greek word timao means to value, revere, or prize, setting a price and worth on parents, both conveying deep respect for the roles they held.

I had NO idea about what this meant yet, as I’d never even heard of God at this point, so it wasn’t until years later when I came to know Christ that it would entirely change my perception of my childhood and bring a catharsis and awakening to my broken heart.

I rebelled even more because now I had proof that nobody cared in black and white. This justified all of the lies my circumstances had tempted me to believe about myself. Yes, I was a child, and forming beliefs was beyond my control to some extent; nonetheless, they would go on to shape the lens through which I saw myself and the world for years to come.

When the news came out, I was with my first boyfriend, called Luke*. A South African, dark-haired, young man. It was a typical teenage worldly relationship, fueled by experimentation and consisting of alcohol, drugs, rebellion, and a lack of consequences, with nobody to oversee us except ourselves.

Luke* was caring, yet often violent, allowing his temper to get the better of him, leaving us to argue and fight. His temper was scary and I regularly walked on eggshells.

I was there for him to take things out on, and looking back, I realise I sometimes played into the manipulation, almost inviting and wanting chaos as if I could control my pain or make some sense of it.

It is a funny thing to want to feel everything and nothing at the same time. It’s very hard to explain unless you’ve lived it.

I recall Luke*, his best friend, and I, became almost like a trio, where we’d hang out and go to the bars and clubs with fake ID during our tender teenage years. I thought life was a blast, I thought life was made for partying, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

My new ventures felt like purpose, and I felt free being let loose in the world. Having a new boyfriend justified no longer seeing my Father, where my Mother often just felt I was naturally growing up and changing my social circles.

What started as the odd, curious night out partying often became days of drinking alcohol, being involved in explicit activity and becoming exposed to the next layer of my journey…

P$rn.

There was one day when Luke* and I were in his bed, and he very casually opened a magazine, deliberately showing me images of women. The excitement on his face suggested this was something good, something to be shared.

But for me, it didn’t feel that way.

Being exposed to explicit behaviour was hardly new, yet in that moment it felt painfully familiar. It felt like the beginning of another form of coercion, echoing patterns I had known before and stirring memories of my father.

Magazines became books, and books became movies. What started as something that felt almost casual slowly deepened, adding another layer to what had already become a complicated mix of intensity - violence, alcohol, and codependence shaping the dynamic of our relationship.

Without even realising it at the time, my understanding of purity was becoming increasingly distorted. Each step added another layer, subtle at first, but powerful, of deception and conditioning that I would only come to recognise much later.

After a year or so, I drifted away from Luke*, school was over, I had no prospects for my life, but I continued drinking, partying and having relationships with young men.

His name was Jack*. It was a case of different face, same problems. He was a heavy drinker and struggled with drugs, which at the time seemed to fit all too well with my growing dependence on substances.

I wish I could tell you there was something that clearly set this relationship apart from the last, but the truth is, there wasn’t. I had found myself in yet another cycle, only this time it felt more intense, more dangerous.

Looking back now, I can see that Jack* was carrying his own pain. Like me, he was searching for love in ways that were ultimately destructive, hurting himself, and hurting me in the process.

I have compassion for the struggles both of these men carried, even though I couldn’t understand them at the time. Looking back now, I can see the patterns more clearly and how deeply our wounds can shape the choices we make and the relationships we find ourselves in.

In those dark years, my soul unknowingly made vows.

“I will survive, no matter the cost.”
“I will protect myself by controlling love.”
“I will never trust men.”

The vows I had formed about men were born out of the pain of betrayal. Somewhere along the way, I began to believe that men didn’t want to protect or love me.

So my heart made a decision: never again. I would protect myself by keeping men at arm’s length, by not allowing anyone to get too close. I would build walls because the fear of being hurt again felt too great.

Those vows, though made in an attempt to avoid future pain, only created more of it, because they became a silent barrier to real intimacy, real trust, and real healing.

The very thing I was trying to avoid became the very thing I continued to experience, because my heart was subconsciously drawn to relationships that reinforced those vows.

God’s natural law is real, so until these vows are identified, confronted and broken in His presence, the soul will unconsciously seek out situations which honour them, even if they lead to more hurt.

“When you make a vow to God, do not delay to pay it; for He has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you have vowed, better not to vow than to vow and not pay.” - Ecclesiastes 5:4-5

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.” - Galatians 6:7

I ended up landing my first job as a waitress in a top hotel at age 16. It was my stepdad who wrote the application for me, yet I had so much bitterness in my heart towards him that I couldn’t seem to let him in. I was also a mess and couldn’t hold the job down.

I was utterly besotted with Jack*, but every few weeks or so, we’d go out to the clubs, get drunk, stay up all night arguing and having fights, and we'd say sorry over and over, both promising to never hurt each other that way again.

There was one fight that escalated so badly that I ended up with a cut on my hand from a broken beer bottle, and my forehead swelled to twice its size after being slammed against the wooden panelling in our hallway.

It was a difficult relationship, one where we felt drawn to each other like magnets, yet treated each other like enemies at the same time. Despite everything, I was convinced we’d stay together forever and that, somehow, everything would eventually work itself out.

After a while, we split up, yet I stayed within the same social circle, continuing to live my life partying the days away and eventually lost my job. It wasn’t long before my life began to take a turn for the worse. Looking back now, I can see that my relationships during this time were less about love and more about sabotage, built on false foundations that could never hold.

My substance abuse was escalating, and life was about to hand me an invitation to return to a doorway which had been left ajar years earlier…

If you’d like to read the third part of my story, you can click the link below! I also encourage you to subscribe if you aren’t already.

It was 1988. I was born in Nottingham, England, the land of Robin Hood and the greatest meals that look questionable but taste like home.

I was born in September to two unmarried, yet happy parents who were still together, and welcomed in by a set of grandparents who doted on me, opening their home when we returned from the hospital, as if I had always been expected to be there.

My grandparents weren’t just nearby, they were two kind and warm human beings who not only welcomed my family and me into their home, but were also so close in the involvement of my care and daily life. Their home was steady, and they nurtured my parents and me, and they taught me in some way that the world could be just a little bit trustworthy.

Me, in my earliest years

We were not a Christian family; I’d never heard of God growing up. I’d say we were Agnostic, where we didn’t talk about God, we didn’t pray, and we treated faith as irrelevant or unknowable. Which, looking back, feels risky because it’s a place of no anchoring whatsoever, leading people to often end up having to become their own foundation, which you’ll later come to understand if you choose to stick with my story.

The next few years were relatively ‘normal’, where on the surface everything seemed safe, whole, and warm. I loved my family deeply, with my grandparents involved, and the early years felt like a safe cocoon.

Yet, when I was very small, a traumatic, sexual violation by my father marked the beginning of a very long season of darkness in my life, unknowingly at the time, becoming the very first doorway for the enemy. I didn’t understand it then (how could I?), but looking back now, the doorway began to plant seeds of distortion around my identity, which would quietly grow within me for years and years.

Little did I know the seed of darkness had been planted and they intertwined with my sense of self before I even had a chance to know who I was, marking my life and myself with violence, lostness, and a heavy weight of whispers of unworthiness.

Being violated wasn’t a one-time event; it sadly became a way of life, teaching me to believe that love was about quiet secrets, sly motives and transactions.

My life shifted a few years later, this time not by just a fracture of my identity but a fracture of my family dynamic, which would come to reshape my internal world even more.

This time, my parents were splitting up, and my mother became a single parent. She found out that my father had cheated on her and that he wanted to leave the family home, so, soon, my father left and moved into an apartment down the road. It was a shabby, tiny space, hardly fit for anything, and back home, it was just my mother and I.

Not long after my parents separated, my grandparents emigrated to Spain. My first home, which once felt warm and safe, was suddenly out of reach. Without realising it, I had lost the people who had held the world together for me, even if just for a short time.

As the months passed by, my mother did her best, yet the stability that I once knew for a short time was well and truly gone, because what started as a happy childhood home quickly became a childhood marked by fear and confusion and a sense that nobody or anything could ever be trusted.

“You know my reproach, my shame, and my dishonour, my adversaries are all before You. Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. I looked for someone to take pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none.” - Psalm 69:19-20

At this point in my life, I was adjusting to a split family dynamic and having contact with my father, who not only cheated on my mother but who left the home and continued to groom me. Even though he moved out, I still went to see him on weekends. From what I can remember, I looked forward to visits, even while the abuse was happening, because it had already been normalised for me, and I didn’t have the understanding that it was not okay.

What I later came to realise, throughout my healing with God, is that what happens to a child when their caregivers betray them is that their identity fractures and they experience literal developmental trauma. Years later, I would come to know this reality and have to stand face to face with the grief of being failed by the very first man in my life.

Within each of us is a deep God-given longing for love and grace, and those longings are basic human needs. Every child craves to be valued unconditionally and poured into from conception, and parents ideally should pour into the hearts words and actions of love, gentleness and compassion, which are a reflection of God’s qualities, so we feel welcomed and received, building a sense of belonging in our hearts.

If these basic needs are not met, and not enough love is poured in, a child naturally may give in to the temptation to believe lies about themselves, which is exactly what I did.

It grieved me for many years that the man who was supposed to ideally point me to the love of God failed me in such a catastrophic way. But for now, the abandonment paired with ongoing abuse only taught me one thing: that men were unsafe and that shame was a normal part of life.

It was evident that my mother did her best to raise me, yet my behaviour began to steer in a direction that was beyond recognition. I became angry and dysfunctional, and my heart became very hardened to everyone on the outside. On the other hand, because of my behaviour, my mother needed support; she needed help, and she needed it fast.

My behaviour became angry and violent. I was clearly screaming out for help, where the lines between love and pain were becoming severely blurred for me, and I acted out in ways that only made my heart harder and harder.

At the age of 8, I went to see my first behavioural therapist. The visit wasn’t a magical fix, of course, but it was a sign that something was deeply wrong in my heart. As a young child, I didn’t have the language to explain what was happening to me. All the pain just manifested into anger and rebellion, and the focus remained only on the actions rather than the deeper wounds beneath them. The advice my therapist gave me was that there were communication issues at home, and we needed to be more open as a family.

As children, we may put others through endless testing, as if to say, “If I do this, will you still love me?” tempted to reject before we are rejected, attempting to punish our parents by failure, or swinging to the other extreme and striving to please at all costs. Sometimes both.

These patterns reveal something deeper about the heart and our need for love. As Psalm 109:22 says, “I am afflicted and needy, and my heart is wounded within me.”

Even as children, our wounds are real, and they quietly shape the way we behave and how we go on to seek love and affirmation.

My mother, overwhelmed and exhausted, began to ask family members to step in and help raise me. While their intentions were good, I struggled to cope with several new authority figures in my life who all had different opinions and views about how I should “be.”

I was not dealing well with having multiple authority figures in my life at all, who all had different views, and it stripped me of my spirit. My mother’s sisters were extremely harsh with their choices on how to discipline me, often sending me to a cold, dark room alone for hours, or hitting me around the head when I’d misbehave.

Those early experiences planted the seeds of a desire to be seen and loved on my own terms, quietly shaping my next chapters and forming patterns of seeking approval and looking for belonging in the wrong places.

The behaviours and longings that had begun in childhood were fully in motion, and I was willing to search in any world that promised them, so you could say I searched many different worlds on my quest for love.

Combined with the ongoing abuse by my father, it all just created a storm of confusion and fear. I began to feel emotionally distant from my mother, who seemingly just handed me over to the wolves, and a new wound was forming, one that cut differently.

The forming mother wound

I didn’t yet know God, so there was no anchor, no safe place to process what was happening. It was just fear, anger, and confusion, and I carried it alone. I felt different, like the black sheep, and the odd one out from my family. I had several cousins, and they weren’t getting hounded by several adults, nor did they have bad behaviour, as I did.

I remember believing this lie that I was so different from everyone else, nobody could possibly love me.

The judgments towards those around me started to take form as I grew, and those judgments also turned into anger. I was so tired of people telling me what to do and making fun of me. The one person I wanted the most was my mother, and I felt abandoned by her.

I grew up carrying a burden of hate, anger and unforgiveness towards my mother for just sitting there when they’d discipline me, tell me off or send me upstairs to spend hours in the dark room alone. The roots of bitterness were forming in my heart, and they were becoming silently anchored to my soul, shaping how I perceived love.

Here’s what I didn’t know at the time: when we judge a parent (or anyone) for a real wound, we may forget that we even held that judgment, but a seed has been sown. This seed grows quietly over time, forming what the Bible calls bitter roots.

The bitter roots then produce bitter fruit in our lives: anger, resentment, shame, and fixed beliefs about ourselves and others. They remain hidden yet quietly shape our thoughts, behaviours, and choices, until we bring them into God’s care and forgive the person who tempted us to judge because of their actions.

Though my childhood had started warm, cosy and loving, by this point, instability and years of loss had begun to shape my sense of self, my heart and my identity.

Because I felt different, I acted differently, which meant to fulfil those things I’d come to be tempted to believe, I became ridiculously rebellious.

“I’ll show you how different I can be.”

When we come into agreement with lies during childhood, they become the seeds which grow, influencing our choices, our relationships and our sense of self, and even our relationship with God.

Yet, at this time, I was only just beginning to get a taste of how cruel the world could truly be, and how deeply the wounds of betrayal could take hold of a child’s spirit.

What I didn’t realise at the time was how these experiences were quietly forming lies about who I was as a person, because the lie that said I was unworthy of love was tempting me to act out in ways which showed I was fulfilling that which I came to believe, wrong or not.

“For as he thinks in his heart, so is he.” - Proverbs 23:7

When these lies about our identity are formed, they tempt us to then create vows in our hearts, which are essentially promises for how we will act to keep us from ever being hurt again.

So my promise of “I’ll show you how different I can be” was a fortress of my flesh, created in my own strength, later to be something I’d rely on to protect me for years to come, and a stronghold to keep me on a path of destruction.

Those vows were my temptation from the enemy, my only way to survive, and it would take years of relying on them until I would one day walk with God and see them for what they truly were, and how they held me captive in a world I so desperately wanted to escape…

If you’d like to read the second part of my story, you can click the link below! I also encourage you to subscribe if you aren’t already.

Heart & Harvest

My Story: Part 2 // Doorways

By this point in my life, safety was fractured. People and places were slowly fading, and I didn’t have a language to understand the loss…

Read more

3 months ago · Sophie

I would have loved to have been able to share with you that it’s been easy to share my story, but I would be lying.

So often, healing is portrayed as a single encounter or a sudden sense of relief, but for me, it’s looked more like slow exposure, honest repentance, and sitting with God in places I would have preferred to avoid.

It has been a war even to get here.

I was saved by the Lord Jesus Christ in December 2023. I recorded my testimony weeks later, uploaded it to YouTube for the world to see, and didn’t really think much of it. It just seemed like the done thing to do if you were saved by Jesus Christ radically, almost like an unspoken expectation.

Weeks passed, and I felt a nagging instinct I could no longer ignore. It felt like it was the Lord’s conviction. So, I ended up deleting the video. It just wasn’t the time.

As much as I felt like it would honour and glorify God, the truth is, I needed to process first.

I needed to learn what salvation really meant.
I needed to know what this meant for my soul.
I needed to know how to share things from a place of wisdom.

“The name Sophie is derived from the Greek word Sophia, which means “wisdom.” While the name itself does not appear directly in the Bible, the concept of wisdom is heavily emphasised throughout the Scriptures. In Proverbs 3:13-18, we read:

“Blessed are those who find wisdom, those who gain understanding, for she is more profitable than silver and yields better returns than gold. She is more precious than rubies; nothing you desire can compare with her.”

The name Sophia reminds us that seeking wisdom means seeking God’s ways. It means walking in humility and acknowledging His authority in all aspects of life.” (source: Our Bible Heritage)

I knew in my spirit that I had made the wrong move by trauma dumping all over the internet, and over time, it became clear that I only wanted to speak from a heart posture of, let’s say, a little more understanding and stability.

I realised that sharing a testimony of pain without processing can unintentionally invite others (non-believers) into confusion and rejection rather than interest and curiosity. My heart didn’t want that.

“Do you see someone who speaks in haste? There is more hope for a fool than for them.” Proverbs 29:20

The truth is, sometimes we have to wait until the oil is pressed before pouring it out.

What I’m not saying is that it’s okay to quench the Spirit if He wants us to share something, but for me personally, I had a lot to learn about forgiveness and love before I even opened my mouth, because I had been the least loving person I knew.

I also had a lot of shame which needed to be broken off.

So, in my case, it was wise to wait.

My waiting required spiritual gestation, where God began to soften my heart and prepare me to speak life and what I’ve learned, rather than just share pain.

God is not a rusher. He is patient and gentle, and I’d like to share how patient and gentle He has been with me the past three years.

I have shared ad hoc writings of my deliverance and salvation before on my Facebook page, but this time, it’s different. I don’t just have my story to share, I have what God has taught me through it. My whole intention for this little corner of the internet.

So, it is not merely about sharing the testimony itself, but I have the hope that what I will share will create introspection in your own heart and apply it for yourself and your own story.

So often, we tend to mistake our longing for readiness. But what I’ve found is, Scripture tells a different story.

For example, Hosea was told to love before he understood why. God did not explain the pain first, and He did not justify the cost. He asked for obedience that would stretch Hosea’s heart to reflect God’s own.

Elijah was fed in hidden places before he confronted kings. Ravens brought Elijah food when no one else knew where he was, and a widow sustained him when nothing made sense. God trained Elijah to trust provision quietly before entrusting him with public power. The miracle was not only the fire on Mount Carmel. The miracle was the trust built in vagueness.

David was anointed long before he was crowned. Oil touched his head, but years passed before the throne touched his life. He learned restraint in caves, humility in loneliness, and integrity under pressure. God shaped a king’s heart in private while the world still saw a shepherd boy.

Joseph received a dream early, but the interpretation did not mean readiness. The dream had to survive betrayal, isolation, temptation, and waiting. God did not rush Joseph into leadership. He refined him until his character could carry authority without bitterness.

Esther was hidden before she was chosen. Preparation happened in private long before courage was required in public and God did not rush her moment.

God did not rush Esther. He matured her and formed courage within her.

He did the same with me.

Scripture makes it abundantly clear how God prepares people and that there is a time for things.

When you are saved by Jesus Christ, God tends to guide you through a period of learning how to fasten your bootstraps and carry the sword He has given you. It takes time to learn about the spiritual war.

It takes time to adjust.

It takes time to allow God to renew, restore, and set you apart from the lies which held you in captivity for so long.

It takes time to learn your new identity.

For a long while, I really didn’t “get the message”.

So, you could say there has been a battle to share the story of how the Lord pursued me. And for a long time, the sword he blessed me with has been laid down.

But now, I’m ready to share the journey, sword in hand.

Because I was hand-picked and rescued by Someone who laid His life down for sinners, I wish to share His sweet and tender mercy - not just what He saved me from, but what He has been faithfully forming me into.

Not as a finished product, but as a daughter who has been learning to be Fathered.

This space shares personal experiences of abuse, addiction, and unhealthy relationships. Reader discretion is advised. The core focus is on redemption, healing, and God’s work and glory in my life. It is my prayer that as you read God’s testimony, it can be an encouragement to you. I’m also happy to answer questions! :)

If you’d like to read the first part of my story, you can follow the link below! I also encourage you to subscribe if you aren’t already.