Success, but not Fulfilment.

Not long after that turning point, I left school and began my adult working life as an apprentice hairdresser.

For the first time, I wasn’t shrinking — I was determined to stand out.

I poured myself into mastering the craft. At 21, I bought my first salon. Around the same time, I competed against hundreds of applicants through rigorous trade testing to become a TAFE teacher.

From the outside, it looked like success — and in many ways, it was.

I built a thriving business.
I employed incredible staff.
We worked hard and had a lot of fun.
I was respected in my field.

But underneath it all, there was a quiet, persistent knowing.

A steady internal whisper:

“This isn’t it.”

It wasn’t dramatic.
It wasn’t urgent.
It was just there — an undercurrent I couldn’t ignore.

The confusing part was that nothing was “wrong.”
I didn’t hate my job.
I wasn’t failing.
I was achieving.

Which made it harder to justify wanting something different.

So I did what many high-functioning women do.

I buried the feeling and kept going.

Around this time, my mum invited me to a weekly meditation circle. It was part meditation, part open discussion about life, awareness, and consciousness.

For the first time, I was being invited to reflect — not just perform.

Those conversations disrupted my autopilot.

They made me question the roles I was playing.
The stress I was normalising.
The identity I had built around achievement.

I also began reading personal development and psychology books — not because I wanted to “improve” my life, but because I knew something inside me still felt unsettled.

Outwardly, I was the young, successful business owner.

Inwardly, I was still highly self-critical.
My stress levels were elevated.
I was chasing validation through productivity.
And my weekend partying and drinking — if I’m honest — was sometimes an attempt to escape the pressure I was living under.

I didn’t yet have the language for nervous system dysregulation.

But I was living it.

The Wake Up Call.

At 24, life interrupted me in a way I couldn’t ignore.

My vision started going blurry. My left eye felt swollen, as though it was being pushed forward from behind. Something wasn’t right.

Months earlier, I had seen a doctor and been referred to a specialist who dismissed it as old nerve damage from Bell’s Palsy. But this time my intuition — sharpened through meditation and self-reflection — said otherwise.

I sought a second opinion.

Within 24 hours I was sent for an MRI.
The next day, I was sitting in a specialist’s office hearing the words:

“There’s a large mass behind your left eye. We don’t yet know if it’s cancer. But it needs to be removed.”

Just like that, life narrowed.

And strangely — I went back to work that afternoon.

I smiled. I saw clients. I kept functioning.

It’s amazing what the nervous system can do when shock sets in.

Edna

The following week, one of my regular clients told me she was also having a tumour removed.

We called ourselves “tumour twins.”

Humour was easier than fear.

I made a conscious decision not to catastrophise. I didn’t know if it was malignant. I didn’t know what the outcome would be. But I refused to mentally write myself off before I had facts.

Before surgery, I even threw a small “farewell party” for the tumour — I named her Edna.

There was lightness.
There was bravery.
There was probably also denial.

The surgery lasted eight hours.

When I woke up, swollen and stitched, unsure what I would look like or what the pathology would show, something in me had shifted.

It wasn’t dramatic.

It was clarifying.

What It Changed

Lying in hospital, waiting to find out whether the tumour was benign or malignant, strips life back to essentials.

You realise how fragile everything is.

Health.
Identity.
Time.

When the results came back benign, I felt overwhelming relief — and a deep sense of responsibility.

This wasn’t just a lucky escape.

It was a wake-up call.

The specialist told me it was a rare tumour. If it returned, there was a high probability it could be cancerous.

That statistic stayed with me.

And for the first time, I began seriously examining stress — not as a buzzword, but as a biological force.

I knew my body had lived in chronic activation for years.
Family violence.
Unresolved trauma.
High achievement.
Self-pressure.
Disconnection from my own inner compass.

You cannot override your nervous system indefinitely without consequence.

I realised I didn’t want to live out of alignment anymore.

The cost felt too high.

Perspective

My tumour twin initially received good news too — her cancer cells were contained and removed.

We celebrated.

Months later, the cancer returned aggressively.

She was 34, with three children.

I remember sitting beside her at a fundraiser and saying something I would never say now — that I wished it had been me instead.

She looked at me and told me to never say that again.

That moment stayed with me.

Life is not meant to be bargained away.

It is meant to be lived.

Larissa 2.0

The surgery didn’t just remove a tumour.

It removed the illusion that I had endless time.

It removed my tolerance for living half-aligned.

It removed my willingness to ignore that quiet inner knowing.

From that point forward, I made a decision:

If something doesn’t feel right — I listen.

If stress is chronic — I address it.

If my body speaks — I don’t override it.

That was the beginning of Larissa 2.0.

Not a different person.

A more honest one.

You Only Need to See the Next Step

At one point in my studies, I came across a simple idea:

When you’re making a change, you don’t need to see the whole path.
You only need to see the next step.

Like headlights at night — they illuminate just enough road to keep moving forward.

That metaphor stayed with me.

Through meditation and journaling, I realised my next step wasn’t clearer strategy — it was courage.

So I sold my business.
I sold my new car.
I sold most of what I owned.

And I moved to Canada on a one-year working holiday.

It was a radical decision, especially for someone who had built her identity around achievement and stability. I came from a family where travel wasn’t common and change wasn’t encouraged (everyone living in survival mode).

But something in me knew I needed to step outside the life I had built in order to discover who I was beyond it.

That year stretched me.

It was exhilarating and lonely.
Liberating and confronting.
I lost parts of myself that were performance-based.
I found parts of myself that were quietly solid.

For the first time since I had started working at 14, I wasn’t chasing status or income.

I was learning who I was without them.

A Defining Moment

While I was in Canada, I had a vivid dream. My former client (my tumour twin) came to me smiling, as if to say goodbye.

The next day, my mum called. She had passed away.

That moment deepened something in me.

Life is fragile.
Time is not guaranteed.

And alignment matters.

Not in a dramatic, “burn it all down” way.

But in the quiet, daily decisions about how we live.

I made a commitment then — not to perfection, not to fearlessness — but to staying connected to my inner compass.

To not override myself for approval.
To not build a life that looks successful but feels misaligned.

To not postpone living.

Redefining Wealth

I used to equate success with income and achievement.

Canada reshaped that.

Health is wealth.
Nervous system safety is wealth.
Meaningful connection is wealth.
Self-respect is wealth.

Money matters — but alignment matters more.

I returned home with clarity about what I wanted to build next.

Formalising the Calling

I went back into formal study and began transitioning into health, healing and wellness.

For over a decade, I worked in leadership roles within large health and fitness facilities, collaborated with allied health professionals in injury rehabilitation, and deepened my understanding of human movement and physiology.

At the same time, I trained as a Kinesiologist and Life Coach, and immersed myself in yoga — not just as exercise, but as a comprehensive system for understanding the whole self.

I also studied Somatic Healing and Breathwork.

Mind.
Body.
Emotion.
Identity.
Energy.
Nervous system.

The deeper I studied, the more I recognised that my earlier experiences — trauma, stress, illness — weren’t separate from this path.

They were preparing me for it.

It Hasn’t Been Easy

Growth hasn’t come without grief.

I am the mother of two beautiful children — and I’ve also experienced five pregnancy losses.

My mum has faced breast cancer twice, including once being told not to expect survival.

Life has continued to test, refine, and expand me.

But these experiences have not hardened me.

They have deepened me.

They remind me daily that life is not something to drift through unconsciously.

It is something to participate in fully.

Why I Do This Work

This work isn’t a career I chose because it sounded inspiring.

It’s the natural outcome of everything I’ve lived.

I know what it feels like to:

Override your body.
Live in chronic traumatic stress.
Build success that doesn’t feel aligned.
Face your mortality.
Carry grief quietly.
Rebuild from the inside out.

And I know what it feels like to come home to yourself.

That’s why I do this work.

Not to fix people.

But to help them reconnect to the part of themselves that already knows.

If you got this far. Thank you for reading. I honour you and everything you've endured in this life.

Larissa xx