Setting the Scene Part 5: Light to Rock Bottom: When Hope Is Not Enough

“The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved” — Mother Teresa

Moving to a new area can bring new beginnings—second chances. We had relocated to one of the most beautiful parts of London. But in a place like this, the cost of living was high, and I suddenly found myself surrounded by billionaires.

The girls were enrolled in the local state school and settled quickly, making new friends. Yet they were at an age when it was decidedly “uncool” to have your mother at the school gates, so my chance of connecting with other parents slipped away. Instead, a new puppy became my companion. Walking him around the village each day, I would stop for coffee, and after a few weeks the locals began striking up conversations with me over their endeavours of solving crossword clues – what turned out to be their daily ritual.

In such an affluent area, conversations often came with sharp edges. Some people’s first question was which school my children attended. If I didn’t reply with the name of the area’s top private school, I could almost see their opinion of me collapse across their faces.  At first, this stung. But eventually, I found it amusing—especially once I discovered others who didn’t care about status and simply wanted to laugh. These became my kind of people.

With them, there was no interrogation – no “what do you do” questions that always made me anxious. They simply enjoyed my company and my humour, and I began to relax. For the first time in my life, I felt part of a community. It was joyous – yet beneath the laughter, loneliness still clung to me. My work gave me no joy and felt like a poor fit. My heart was crying out: This is not the life I’m supposed to be living.

One passion, though, gave me breath. I had discovered scuba diving while travelling in Australia and picked it up again during holidays in Egypt. My youngest daughter also loved being under the water, so we returned often to the same hotel, where we became close with a dive instructor named Nadine. She was spiritual, deeply caring, and she has remained one of my dearest friends.

On one trip, overwhelmed by loneliness, I poured out my heart to her. Nadine handed me a book that, she said, had “taken the world by storm.” It claimed I could create my future simply by pretending I had already received it—by using the power of love.

For me, this was liberating. The idea that I could shape the life I longed for by changing my mindset cracked something open. Light began to seep in. I had something to look forward to—hope.

I had never given much thought to what was “out there.” I hadn’t grown up in church or with a strong belief system. But I could sense there was some kind of powerful entity, and this book called it the Universe. My light began to shine brighter. I went to psychic readings and heard empowering words about my future. I was told that what I longed for, if I pretended it was already mine, could manifest into reality.

Buoyed by this new hope, I threw myself into community life. A business idea was born. I invested every penny I had, financially supported by my mother. Though our relationship was still fractured, and though she used money as a lure, she desperately wanted us to connect, and I took advantage of it. She had moved back in with my father by then and had suffered a stroke. Helping me financially became her way of reaching out—but it always came with emotional manipulation, which inevitably left me torn.

My sense of spiritual awakening was deepening, but there as a problem.  Trying to live life as if I had already received the life I wanted —vibrating at its frequency, using the power of love to attract it—had one flaw. It wasn’t sustainable. Eventually, doubt always crept in, and when I crumbled, it fed my old belief that I was not good enough. One day, in a moment of despair, I looked up and cried out to the Universe a question—and I received an answer. It came so unexpectedly, so randomly, that I was shocked. Much of my story will return to that moment, and how I received that answer and from where. But now is not the time, as things were about to get worse…

The business failed. My youngest daughter began to suffer from severe mental health problems that ripped our lives apart. And when the trigger for her illness was revealed, guilt slapped me in the face harder than ever before. Chasing quick fixes of happiness and satisfaction , my already poor relationship with money spiralled. Pretending to live a bountiful, plentiful life in order to manifest it meant I lost all my money—and my mother’s money.

Desperation leads people to do desperate things – and I was no exception.  I slipped back into old habits of lying, stealing, and deceit. When the reckoning came, it brought complete and utter humiliation. My old demons snuffed out the fragile light that had been seeping through the cracks, and I plummeted.

I hit rock bottom.

But rock bottom, I would later learn, can be its own kind of beginning. In the shadows of despair, a healthier way of living began to form. My place in the community strengthened, and in the next and final part of this Setting the Scene series, the light will creep back in. That pull in the gut—the one that had once protected me – returns, leading me to a very unexpected place where true awakening can start.