A Co Down mum is featuring in a new self-help book after suffering childhood trauma.
35-year-old Carly Boyle from Bangor is a co-author in 'The Awakened Warrior Toolkit' which is set to be released this month.
The primary school teacher and single parent of Noah (4) wants to show that 'it is never too late to rewrite the beginning'.
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Carly told Be: "The book is a collaboration project. Nine of us have been chosen, [along with] the main woman behind the book, after sending a script when there was a callout for authors.
"It comes after the best-selling book, 'The Warrior Wellbeing Toolkit'. It was a group of therapists coming together to share their knowledge and tools to give people help. This book, which is the sequel, is 'The Awakened Warrior'. This is the spiritual side of awakening and our own paths and journeys in that awakening part of our lives and how that has then equipped us for our business or whatever career path we are now on."
In the sequel, the Co Down woman's chapter focuses on inner-child healing.
"I go into depth about my own path of spiritual awakening, going from self-awareness to understanding, to being able to change certain habits. But the main focus is on connecting with your inner-child, so being able to go inward and connect with that little child that dwells within us in order to bring about lasting changes. That would mean almost revisiting in a lot of circumstances, childhood trauma and reprogramming our minds in a more healthy way so that we can then move forward and live in freedom without fear of being judged - and just being our highest most authentic selves.
"There is a huge difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge or knowing something logically, knowing how and knowing how to. For me in my chapter, I bring people the steps that they need to be able to get in touch with their inner-child and how to re-programme that little child inside them or to be able to rewire. I think these are things and tools everybody should have the opportunity to know how to do.
"I'm passionate about getting it out there that no matter how hard it has been in your past, you have hope to change and find freedom in who you are today," Carly added.
The teacher says her personal awakening transformation "wasn't a straight, linear path".
"It was dipping in and out of different things and keeping an opening mind. My awakening involved me keeping an open mind and learning and progressing from podcasts, books, open and honest conversation.
"Spirituality to me, the whole core of it, is coming to an understanding that there is more to life than the physical world that we can see.
"Inner-child healing for me was so important because no matter what my level of self-awareness was, I was still having these unhealthy engrained patterns that obviously stemmed from my childhood trauma that I just couldn't seem to break free from.
"Even though I knew 'I'm behaving like this, going into these unhealthy relationships because I've experienced trauma in my early years', it didn't matter how much I was aware of that as until I healed my inner child, I didn't feel freedom.
"That was the importance for me and also so that I could break the kind of generational trauma and be a better parent and teacher because I think we can only build relationships on how healed we are," Carly explained.
The mum-of-one also told how her 'real healing' from her childhood trauma happened when she was an adult.
"The childhood abuse was nobody in my family... It was somebody that was let into our family home. I opened up about the abuse when I was 11, I was in P7 when I disclosed this and it went through all of the right channels... It helped to open up but I'll be honest, I thought I was fine because these things I think are suppressed.
"I got on with life, I thought I was fine, I thought I was strong and it wasn't until years later, mid-20s to now, the last decade, I started to go, 'Ah, but I behave like this, I'm drawn to these kind of people because of what happened to me'.
"Real healing happens at different stages and there is only so much you can do as a child I think. It's not until we mature and come into adulthood that we can really see the effects of abuse. Then, that's when we need different tools to be able to go back.
"It has helped massively and it has been a complete breakthrough for me.
"The message that I want to get across, the most important message, and it's quoted in my chapter, is - 'It is never too late to rewrite the beginning'.
"It does matter what happened to you, but the extent of your trauma does not define you. It is never too late for you to re-programme what was wrongly put together when you were a child," Carly said.
The Bangor woman shares positive messages through her Instagram, @carly_great_big_stories.
'The Awakened Warrior Toolkit' launches on October 24th on Amazon Kindle and shortly after on hardback, with funds going towards charity.
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