In a powerfully intimate blog, founder of Hope Walking Faye Smith shares some of her journey from rock bottom, to bringing hope and healing to others.

"Three years ago I joined a therapeutic faith community in Kent. It has been a life-changing journey of healing which- although painful- I could not now imagine being without.

I had been recommended to seek support through the Rapha programme this community follows by my spiritual mentor, who had herself experienced healing through the Rapha community. She could see I was at my lowest ebb after a succession of traumatic losses and bereavements and experiencing a breakdown, despite counselling and professional therapy.

Let me explain. Imagine a Jenga tower of wooden blocks. Some can be taken away and the tower still stands, until finally foundational pieces are removed and the tower falls. That was my life.

My story from my thirties onwards of marriage to an alcoholic, the implosion of our marriage in a very public church setting, followed by my former husband’s breakdown then suicide, hit the national media when my daughter died after a suspected seizure two years later.

I was self-employed working with the media with my son doing his GCSEs in a recession. I was considered to be a strong and inspiring woman, so I tried to live up to that identity, deal with what grief I felt able to express and struggle on.

After 14 years of single parenting, I thought life had finally taken a turn for the better when I became engaged to a man from my church. When our relationship ended suddenly four years ago, the faith community of which I had been part for decades handled the aftermath badly, which proved to be ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’. That Jenga tower finally collapsed. The inner strength and resilience upon which I had formerly relied would take me no further.

I was already having fortnightly trauma therapy which included a form of EMDR, but now I was unprepared for extreme anxiety, my first ever panic attacks, struggling to trust people and repelling those who tried to help in my pain and anger, having nightmares- when I managed to sleep...

I couldn’t sell, couldn’t work and watched my business, my team and my income fall away in a landslide of horror. At my lowest, having taken the life-changing decision to move to Kent for a recommended six-month sabbatical, my beloved father had a sudden stroke and died a few days before I was due to move. I had to postpone my move for a month to make funeral arrangements and support my mum, moving in with her because my home was already rented out.

A week after my father’s funeral, I arrived at my rented flat by the sea in Kent to meet the team who had agreed to support me for those six months, to do what seemed impossible, put ‘Humpty’ back together again. Two ‘expert by experience’ mentors met with me daily in those early days, two wise retired women agreed to ‘buddy’ me, be a listening ear. I discovered a term: Compassionate Witnesses. That is what this team feels like to me. Fuller Seminary professor David Ausberger said: ‘Being heard is so close to being loved, that- for the average person- they are almost indistinguishable.’

I had my programme director’s support, online clinics and conferences to learn from, and a ‘Journey group’ of peers to support each other.

I had never lived anywhere but my home city in Yorkshire. Now I was 250 miles away in sight of the French coast, determined to put a healthy ‘frame around my pain’: positive things that had helped me survive like my love of walking, swimming and yoga. I was planning to join an art class, singing group and The Ramblers, visit my son in London … all to support my challenge to find, examine and let go of my overwhelming emotional pain, locked in that pandora’s box over the years.

Two weeks in, having barely found my feet, met my support team and discovered the supermarket, you can imagine how I felt to be locked down except an hour a day in a scary global pandemic. No lifetime friends or bereaved mum to turn to, and in my tiny rented flat, few possessions, no Wifi, no gym classes, no swimming. And on my programme no touch, no one to one meetings with the virtual strangers who were intending to support me through the hardest hours of my life, no programme director locked down in America, all my potential friends in this therapeutic community behind closed doors… Some thought I would go home, but I had rented my home out…

But today I can say with the most enormous gratitude- we made it work against all the odds.

As the healing increased, those six months turned into two and a half years. My ‘experts by experience’ held mentoring over the phone, we met and walked together socially distant when allowed. I accessed zoom teaching and read widely.

On the social side, I made friends through discovering the enormous endorphin-boost of cold water sea swimming throughout the year, I found a wonderful upbuilding art teacher who helped me rediscover this area of creativity, the gym reopened for pilates and yoga to strengthen and dissipate my embodied trauma…

I made business contacts and- after the agreed month of rest to allow myself to stop my unhealthy coping mechanisms of busy-ness and finally feel and face my pain, I managed to rebuild the elements I enjoyed of my media business on the coast part-time, despite the Covid nightmare we have all lived through.

It was incredibly tough, I learned to live on far less than I would have thought possible, but I discovered the incredibly releasing power of recognising I had enough for today. I moved from living with what felt like a hornet’s nest buzzing in my head not wanting to wake up, to finding the joy and hope in life again I found hard to believe possible at my lowest ebb. Friends who called me from my old life could tell I had radically changed.

In fact, during that sabbatical period, I discovered a very different person who has been so covered up by layers of damage, she had become all but invisible.

Six months into my healing journey, I found myself writing a declaration about ‘this Faye’. This Faye no longer wanted a 24/7 always on social, media lifestyle, to manage 18 people, spend all day selling and all night socialising…

This Faye had an introvert side that came alive in reading, in writing a book on the losses women experience, in communing deeply with nature, in the exhilaration of cold water swimming, in walking on her own along 250 miles of coast so far, in helping others find their freedom and peace.

As a result of this self-awakening, a year ago I started a whole new social-purpose business I called Hope Walking after the hope my programme gave me. I offer walking holidays and adventures for men and women, often with an element of modern-day spiritual pilgrimage at their heart and an empathic non-judgmental listening ear for those who have experienced grief and loss. It’s a 180 degree turn from the frenetic life I used to live.

I liken this healing journey to conducting an archaeological dig. After shifting the topsoil and rubble with spades, the archaeologists work carefully with their trowels, and when they find something important or precious, they take out their tiny brushes and gently brush away the dirt of years to reveal the treasure. I am brushing away layers of pain, some of which I thought I had dealt with, some of which I didn’t even know was there. I knew I was adopted, but had never connected this experience to my life challenges and eventual breakdown.

In this ‘dig’ where I have been ‘collecting the dots, connecting the dots and correcting the dots’, I have now finally been able to see clearly how loss after loss, pain after pain in my life all leads back to that first all-consuming loss. From that moment on, that utterly dependent baby was forced to fight for survival, and she has been fighting ever since to please everyone, fearing more rejection and abandonment. It has been exhausting. I doubt my archaeological dig will never be completely finished, but today you find me committed to continuing my healing journey into enhanced mental, emotional and spiritual health every day and sharing the techniques I have been taught to create a purposeful future of contentment, which will spill over to benefit others.

The programme Faye participated in is called Rapha Journey*. It uses well-regarded psycho-therapeutic techniques and operates online, based in the UK and USA. It offers an optional additional dimension rooted in the Christian faith, but welcomes everyone and respects personal spirituality.

The programme offers:

• Online clinics with supportive peer group of men or women

• Online community

• Huge range of resources to support your journey to emotional freedom

• Services financed through donations for any who need the financial support

www.FindingFreedom.solutions is their USA site including stories of healing

www.RaphaJourney.com is their UK site and includes their resources and their faith-based content

Contact enquiries@RaphaJourney.com or info@findingfreedom.solutions for more information or subscribe to their newsletter through their websites

*Faye attended a residential programme which is not currently available.