Why I Left Banking to Become a Healer (it's not what most expect)

It wasn't a lightbulb moment, not a vision, a calling or a dramatic resignation letter slapped on a desk.

But it was slow, painful, and body-breaking unravelling that took the best part of a decade, and I wouldn't change a single moment of it.

It started with grief

When I was in college, I was seeing a counsellor. I'd lost a lot of people around me, and my sisters were grieving too, which meant the weight of that loss followed me everywhere. It was relentless.

I was studying Health & Social Care, and Sociology, and I was genuinely considering a future in counselling and psychology. Not because it sounded impressive, but because talking therapies had genuinely helped me through some of the hardest moments of my young life and I wanted to give that back.

But as we know, grief is exhausting so I took a gap year. Worked full time in retail, had some breathing space, and then the plan was university.

But then came an opportunity... 

A 10k pay rise to move into banking. I was 19, and the option was 10k+ in debt or 10k+ on top of my pay... Of course I said yes!

I told myself I'd do the counselling degree alongside it, and I did start. But before the second level commenced, the course was pulled from the college, and so in banking I stayed.

A career that looked right on paper

Over time, my career progressed and I became an accredited client facing trainer, I was working with clients and their technology daily and (rightfully blowing my own trumpet) I was ruddy good at it. But whoever dreamt of being in banking? I didn't.

When the spark died out, I didn't hesitate - voluntary redundancy came up in 2014 and I joke that I was first in line. April 2014, I walked out of corporate life (little did I know it would be the first time I'd do this).

What followed was one of the most unexpected periods of my life.

I travelled. Some of it solo. I saw parts of the world that made me put on my big girl pants in the best possible way. I got over my very real, very paralysing fear of spiders, and I started to discover who I was outside of the town I'd lived in my entire life.

And then I came home.

I started working as a carer to get those real, person-centred skills whilst I looked at finally completing my  counselling degree, but the night shifts were brutal, I was too exhausted to work the shifts I needed to pay rent, and the degree didn't materialise.

But then I asked the universe for a lifeline and was headhunted back into banking.

Truthfully I've thought a lot about that since - what was the universe trying to tell me?

So back I went, with my career progressing once again. I got back into the rat-race and told myself I was enjoying life... But banking was still never the dream!

Then 2018 brought something unexpected when we fell pregnant - 100% not planned.

And from the moment I found out, something in me already knew it might not work. From years of endometriosis, surgeries, medications, negative tests, and medical professionals had spent an age conditioning me to distrust my own body. So when my mum said "be more positive," I told her I was being realistic by saying "it might not be a successful pregnancy". 

Jeez Louise, I truly thought I was protecting myself but really, I was manifesting that very outcome which I feared.

And then in 2019, we miscarried at just before twelve weeks.

Now I won't go into the full detail of that here, I've written about it separately, and it deserves its own space. But what I will say is: I had been bleeding for two weeks before we delivered, I was working from home via my phone because my laptop was broken and I had a project to get over the line. My manager knew what was going on and he encouraged me to rest. The universe was telling me to stop.

But I thought I knew better and I overrode it. Because that's who I was. That's what we do.

The unravelling

After the miscarriage, a consultant told us to go away and rest. We flew to Thailand a week later for a friend's wedding.

And yes it was 2 weeks of laughter, sunshine and far too much to drink. And I processed absolutely nothing. Nada. Not a single thing. It was like I had a big rug and swept it all under it.

When we came back home, my nervous system started doing the processing for me. Jet lag developed into something else entirely and I just couldn't get a grip on reality. Two colleagues I'd been working closely with felt intimidating, I saw it as borderline bullying, so much that I didn't want to raise a grievance, I just told my manager how I felt because I didn't want a big flashing arrow above my head.

I was referred for private CBT, and from my first session, I was signed off work for most of that year.

I filled my days by keeping my hands and brain busy. Decorating the house. Gardening. Woodwork projects with my Pops. Listening to countless self-help and spiritual audiobooks (seriously absorbed it all whilst mowing the lawns and having a paint brush in hand). I couldn't really socialise, the anxiety got the better of me. My body had changed and I didn't like it anymore. Day by day I was becoming a fragment of who I used to be.

I cried constantly, so hurt, so jealous of others, and so lost. My husband was quietly googling whether marriages survive miscarriage.

It was hard, and it was really b***** heavy.

I was having bi-weekly relaxation massages, acupuncture and reflexology for fertility. I'd started evolving our home toward low-waste living which meant researching ingredients, products, materials, containers etc. And I started a compost bin (which I ADORE). These things mattered to me in a way I couldn't quite explain yet.

The Spice Girls, and the moment everything broke open

I went to Wembley with friends to see the Spice Girls. The concert was great, but that trip literally ruined me. 

A friend was pregnant and made the announcement on social media, with a Spice Girls babygrow, whilst sitting right by my side. It hurt like hell, and I mean punched in the stomach, whacked around the head, a deer in headlights, ran over by a lorry, and forgotten about kinda pain. And so began my 36-hour panic attack, then I had to drive home on zero sleep with my body still trembling. And I'm not sure that write up even does it justice.

So I called the doctor the moment I got back home. I cried and said I needed something medical to help me (I'd refused meds since I was 16) because I was frightened of what I might do, and I didn't want to feel this way anymore.

And that was the day I went on Sertraline.

Two arrivals I never saw coming

As part of my projects-at-home-therapy, I'd been going down a rabbit hole of DIY natural products. I'd invested about £30 in essential oils from Amazon (yikes!), but one ingredient kept appearing in every single recipe! It was called 'On Guard Cleaner Concentrate' but I had no idea what it was, or how to get my hands on it.

I followed the hashtag on Instagram and voilaaaa, it came up in Holmes Chapel! So I asked, and the lady ordered some for me.

Note that I was also, at this point, attempting a phased return to work (sick pay came to an end, yay!). I wasn't ready by any stretch of the imagination and my husband drove me an hour to the office and home every day. I needed a chaperone to collect me from the car and walk me everywhere (even the loo). My manager had quietly given me a backseat role to protect me from the 2 people who'd been making me feel so small.

Then my chaperone mentioned she'd booked in with a Reiki practitioner so I booked in too, more out of curiosity than hope.

Not long after, this lady arrived at my door with this cleaning solution and then introduced me to a world I didn't even know existed, cue a very mesmerised Ashleigh. Those Amazon oils never got touched. I ordered this little 'Family Essentials kit' and then it started. Quietly changing things.

Two weeks later I had my Reiki and Crystal Therapy appointment and what happened in that session is for another time. But I can say that I slept the night through, woke up without the need of an alarm and had a spring in my step. Thinking about it, it was actual lightness, and I genuinely felt that there was hope for a brighter future.

So after 6-months of "I don't want to be here anymore" on a loop in my head, it simply felt staggering.

And then it all unfolded - rapidly

I continued with both the essential oils woven into every corner of day-to-day life, and Reiki & Crystal Therapy for the deeper inner work.

I did my Reiki 1st Degree and the inner/shadow work accelerated. It was truly a case of once the blockages had started to clear, it was like something had been released that'd been stuck for years. It was far from easy, but I felt hope, and that changed everything for me.

So I went on to my Reiki 2nd Degree, knowing in my soul that I wanted to share these tools with other women. I have never wanted anyone to feel even half as low, as disconnected, as socially inept as I had, so if I could help just one person, I'd done my job.

And then it started to click... maybe that counselling degree never panned out because it was never meant to. My motto has always been that everything happens for a reason (you might not know it in the moment, but one day it will become clear). I'd always known that in my heart of hearts, but now I could finally see why.

Aaaaaaaan then the world went into lockdown! Now I'll note that for my nervous system, it was a gift. Not for all I know. But I honestly thrived. 

The routines I'd built could continue. The three hours a day I'd been spending commuting, wasted in something that was no longer my real life simply disappeared overnight. It was over those 2 years that I completed my Reiki 2nd Degree, my Crystal Therapy training, and I started sharing Reiki in 2021.

That final nudge

Work demanded everyone return to the office full time; "We're better connected" was the value on the screensavers. 

But I sat in an open plan office, with literally 2 people near my desk, but not close enough to even acknowledge each other. I was connected to no-one. Being forced back into a version of life that belonged to a completely different woman than the one I had become.

I knew building a holistic business wouldn't happen overnight, so I started laying foundations: offering Reiki, and exploring other income streams that would give me flexibility and autonomy.

And then in December 2021, I left corporate life.

It all makes sense now

I spent years wondering why the counselling degree never happened. Why banking kept pulling me back. Why the path felt so winding and unclear, and now I know - I'm meant to be in this capacity, but in a very different way than I expected.

The woman who walked into that first Reiki session carrying grief, anxiety, a miscarriage, a corporate identity she'd outgrown and a body she'd spent years fighting, she needed all of it to happen, she needed to embody every ounce of it to become the spiritual healer she is now.

Because I'm not guiding women through something I've read about.

I'm guiding them through something I've lived.

If any of this resonates, if you recognise yourself somewhere in this story, I'd love to connect. 

Discovery calls are free, and there's never any pressure, just a conversation. Click here to book