“Mother equals motherland. The country where we come from is our mother. The relationship with the mother and the motherland is the condition for a good couple relationship. The motherland is something of ours. It is the mother. It is linked to our fate. Only in it can we grow and serve peace.” —Bert Hellinger, Neuchâtel Congress, June 2005
In my early twenties, without a second thought, I left dreary, grimey London behind for the glistening, sunlit streets of New York. The contrast was stark: where there had been boredom, now there was excitement; where hopelessness loomed, there now seemed infinite opportunity.
And I never looked back.
I left behind family, a cat, friends—and the part of me that had suffered under the Thatcher regime. At twenty years old, I was labeled “unemployable”—the lowest of the low—and handed a measly government handout every two weeks.
At the time, unemployment in the UK was soaring. London felt like it had come to a halt. Sanitation workers were on strike, mountains of garbage piled up in the streets—and entire coal-mining towns were being shut down, leaving whole communities without work. In 1984–85 alone, the Miners’ Strike pitted families and villages against each other in what felt like a civil war, as closures spread across Yorkshire, South Wales, and Scotland under Thatcher’s economic downsizing.
It was the post-punk era, and what at first felt like a victorious rebellion— “Cause I wanna be anarchy, the only way to be…”
—Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the UK
—only confirmed the depth of what we were already feeling.
“No future… no future for you.”
—Sex Pistols, God Save the Queen
That became the backdrop to our generation’s lives. We were pissed off and broke. What looked like rebellion was really self-sabotage. We were culturally engineered to be self-destructive through the glorification of consuming as many drugs and as much alcohol as we could endure. It left us living without ambition, without direction—and ultimately, no real threat to the system.
Sid Vicious became a martyr for the cause.
I spent eight years in NYC, completely absorbed in its nonstop chaos. They say it’s almost impossible to leave—and it’s true. Over time, it became a codependent relationship. I was making good money bartending and had built a successful personal training business, but I was also teetering on the edge of burnout.
It was my ambition to become a pro-bodybuilder that finally pulled me out. I landed in Venice, California—a culture shock. I didn’t even like California at first. I couldn’t drive (never needed to), and I couldn’t understand how people lived surrounded by sprawling, lookalike suburbs and indoor malls. But Venice was different. You could walk everywhere—and more importantly, it was home to Gold’s Gym. That was why I came.
I stayed in Venice for four years. My impressions of the California bodybuilding lifestyle came straight from magazines. When I arrived, I was starstruck—seeing, in the flesh, the same athletes I’d admired from afar. I knew their names, routines, competition placements. Others like me had made the pilgrimage. Europeans who’d given up everything, all chasing the dream of stardom at Gold’s. Everyone had a hustle: training clients, selling drugs, or catering to someone’s fetish. The glamour faded quickly. What remained was a dog-eat-dog reality.
As I wrote in my last blog, Looking for Validation in All the Wrong Places, it eventually came to a head—and I got out, relatively unscathed. Others weren’t so lucky. Some female bodybuilding celebrities, after reaching the top, crashed hard. I saw one—someone I had looked up to—prostitute herself for drugs on Lincoln Boulevard.
This lifestyle is not sustainable. The wear and tear—injuries, health problems, mental illness, and deep disappointment—makes it a short-term investment. I know many who died young.
I was fortunate. But I still carried years of unprocessed baggage.
I reinvented myself. I moved to Topanga Canyon. I gave up Gold’s Gym and replaced it with yoga, meditation, and healing arts. And it helped. But something still felt incomplete.
I struggled to feel truly at home. There always seemed to be some kind of drama—some looming threat that I’d be kicked out, forced to relocate my seven horses, three dogs, and my business all over again.
Then I was introduced to Family Constellations. At first, I didn’t grasp the full depth of the work, but I was deeply drawn to it. I hosted other facilitators for years. In 2008, one of them asked, “Why don’t you learn how to do it?” So I did. I enrolled in Francesca Mason Boring’s year-long training.
It was during this training that I experienced a Constellation called “The Place of Origin.” The exercise itself lasted maybe fifteen minutes. But it created a radical shift in my relationship to home—and eventually, it led me there.
In the exercise, we each stood in front of a representative for our place of origin. As I looked into the eyes of “England,” it hit me: I had never said goodbye. What I had said was: “F*** you. I’m out.”
But the longer I held her gaze, the more I saw her beauty. England’s rolling green meadows, vibrant landscapes, historic architecture. She was the land of artists, writers, and philosophers.
It wasn’t England I had hated. It was my experiences there.
In that moment, something released. I reclaimed the connection I’d severed.
“I see you. I am the daughter of England,” I said, and bowed.
That 15-minute experience rewired my destiny.
It didn’t happen overnight, but slowly, something shifted. I found my home. A place with no drama. A place I love. Where I still live today, in peace—with my animals.
This is exactly the kind of work we explore in depth in my 8-month Foundations of Family Constellation course. If you're feeling the pull to understand your place of origin, reconcile with your past, and find peace in the present, this course might be for you. It begins August 30th. Early bird enrollment ends July 12.