My Story

Turning Trauma
into Training

For nearly twenty years, people came to me for help.

I built and ran my own Cosmedic Clinics, and I loved every part of it. The treatments, the consultations, meeting someone new and uncovering what they really wanted my help with to change about themselves.

But it was more than the work in front of clients. I built that business from the grassroots up, and one of the greatest blessings was the team around me: the people I got to employ, train, and pour my skills into, and who taught me just as much in return. There's a particular kind of pride in knowing that what you've built puts food on other families' tables. I felt wanted. I felt needed. I was good at what I did.

And then, in a season I didn't choose, it was all taken away.

I had no choice but to sell my clinics. At the same time, my body was beginning to fail me in ways no one could explain. Once the businesses were gone, I felt lost. I didn't know what direction to take, and my body wasn't letting me do much of anything anyway.

So I hid under a rock.

The quiet season

What I didn't know then was that hiding under a rock and reconnecting with our Creator can look like the very same thing. I disconnected from the world. I stopped watching the news, stopped the noise, stopped the comparison. And in that silence I drew closer to God than I had ever been.

It wasn't a peaceful time on the surface. I was being passed from specialist to specialist, trying medication after medication, feeling at times like a test dummy, and like the people in front of me didn't always believe what I was telling them about my own body. If you've ever lived that, the endless appointments, the labels that don't fit, having to become your own researcher because no one else would dig deeper, then you already know me a little.

I won't share every medical detail here. That part of my story is tender, and it's something I'd rather talk about one to one with the people who need it. These are just the snippets, enough, I hope, for you to know that I understand.

The way back

The first thing that brought me back wasn't a treatment. It was a prayer.

I grew up in a traditional church on the North Shore of New Zealand, where every Sunday the whole congregation would stand and recite the Lord's Prayer together. It was planted in me as a child. And in my darkest season, lying awake through the insomnia, resting but never really sleeping, God brought those words back to the front of my mind. Every time I woke, I would close my eyes, connect to Him, and pray.

The prayer that was planted in a little girl became the prayer that lifted a grown woman out from under the rock.

From there, life became quiet and peaceful. And in that quiet, I found out who my true inner circle was. The ones who kept reaching out when I'd gone silent, who loved me when I'm not sure I was even loving myself.

God gently pushed me out of my comfort zone (my bed) and back into nature. I started laying out in the sun for intentional vitamin D therapy. I couldn't garden anymore, so I learned to tend bonsai instead. I turned everyday chores into controlled physical movement to engage my weak muscles, and I'd tick one task off a day, sometimes two. In the early days, even taking a shower and getting dressed was an accomplishment to be celebrated, and I did, I celebrated the wins, even the little ones. And somewhere in there I made a choice that changed everything: instead of grieving all the things I could no longer do, I turned my focus to what I still could. That one shift, from disability to ability, is the whole reason I'm here today, and I give God the credit for it.

The people who understood

I want to honour two communities that carried me.

First, the people who were in the same boat. The ones I met in the support spaces, living with the same conditions, invisible illnesses, who understood from the inside what it's like. They welcomed me, believed me, and reminded me I wasn't alone. They're a big part of why I now want to be that welcome for someone else.

And then, through my friend Christie, I was introduced to a wider wellness community and began my own low-tox journey. As I reduced the toxins in my home, I slowly felt my body change. That community turned out to be the most genuine, caring, encouraging group of people I'd ever been part of.

Carla and Christie in the kitchen — With my friend Christie, who first opened the door to low-tox living.

I'd spent years in the cosmetic industry, and for all its artistry, it often ran on competition and comparison, on keeping up and measuring yourself against everyone else. I was good at it. But it never quite aligned with who God created me to be. This was the opposite. It felt like belonging. And it didn't feel like work at all.

Why I'm here

Once I'd felt the difference in my own body and my own home, the realisation came: I can use this. I can give others hope. I can help people again by sharing what has worked for me.

It was as though God needed me to learn it for myself first, and then He began sending people back to me. One of my daily prayers is simply this:

Place the right names on my heart, and my name on the hearts of those You've chosen for me to do life with.

And in His timing, my messages began to fill up. People from my past reached out, but this time it wasn't just about skin. It was about health, wellness, life, and skin help too.

That's when I understood what all of it had been for. Everything we go through, we have a choice: we can let it stay trauma, or we can turn it into training.

Who I'm created to be

I was created to be a helpmate.

I've been told often that I'm kind, that nurturing and caring for people is a gift God placed in me, and I believe that now. I'm a professional friendship maker. In full disclosure, I'm not here because I need more friends. I'm here because I want you to have one. Someone you can turn to, no matter where in the world you are.

If you've lost something, if your body has changed the shape of your life, if you once helped people and wonder whether you still can, I want you to know there's a way forward. You can use your qualifications, your journey, and even your hardest seasons to help others.