My Story

Hi, I'm Vanessa, founder of The Lit Spirit.

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I created this space for the seekers, the feelers, the deep thinkers, the heartbroken, the spiritually curious, and the people who have always sensed there is more to life than what we can see.

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The Lit Spirit is the home of my tarot readings, Reiki healing, workshops, podcast, blog, Substack, Medium writing, and one to one sessions. But at its heart, it is much more than a list of offerings.

It is the place where my whole life finally makes sense.

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I grew up in the English countryside, between two cultures, with a Thai mother and an English father. My childhood was shaped by nature, solitude, spirituality, and silence. From the outside, life may have looked simple and rural, but beneath the surface there was generational trauma, emotional neglect, physical abuse, instability, and a deep loneliness I carried from a very young age.

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I became hyper independent before I even had the words for it.

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I learned how to self soothe. I learned how to be alone. I learned how to disappear into fields, trees, beaches, books, imagination, and my own inner world. Nature became one of my first healers. The countryside gave me somewhere to put my pain before I knew how to speak it.

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I was always sensitive. Always observant. Always aware of the energies in a room. Always drawn to stories, dreams, symbols, magic, and unseen worlds. My favourite film growing up was Narnia, which makes perfect sense now. I think some part of me always knew there was another layer to life.

At fifteen, my dad was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Overnight, my sense of safety fell apart. He was the breadwinner in our family, and with my mum being a migrant, I immediately feared we would lose the house, our stability, and the life we knew. I began grieving him before anything had even happened. That experience cracked open a deep fear around safety, security, money, survival, and loss.

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By seventeen, I reached one of the darkest points of my life.

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I was depressed, suicidal, self harming, and struggling to see a future for myself. At sixth form, things became so bad that I was nearly kicked out and had to sit early exams to prove I deserved to stay. I remember carrying a box of paracetamol tablets with me. I remember feeling like I was living on the edge of disappearing.

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Then, somehow, a book found me.

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I went book shopping and picked up A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. I did not know it at the time, but that book became a doorway. It introduced me to consciousness, presence, the ego, the pain body, healing, awareness, and the possibility that I was not broken beyond repair.

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That was the first time I realised there might be another way to live.

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My mum is Buddhist, so meditation and spirituality were not completely foreign to me. But this was the first time spirituality felt personal. It was the first time it felt like a path back to myself.

Then 2020 happened.

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During lockdown, something opened in me again.

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I started meditating more deeply. I visualised. I journalled. I asked the moon for change. I remember feeling like I was calling out to the universe and, somehow, the universe began calling back.

That was when I came across Sean Kelly’s YouTube channel.

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Sean spoke about souls, starseeds, spirituality, consciousness, and the deeper nature of reality. Something about his energy and his teachings reached me. I ended up reaching out to him, and he became my online spiritual coach and mentor.

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For around six months, life felt like an Easter egg hunt set by the universe.

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Sean guided me towards books, teachings, practices, ideas, and resources that opened my world completely. I learned about chakras, meditation, energy, the soul, intuition, manifestation, spiritual awakening, and the idea that life is not random. One thing would lead to another, then another, then another. Synchronicities were everywhere. Dreams became vivid. Signs appeared. Life felt alive, enchanted, and full of meaning.

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It was one of the most magical periods of my life.

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For the first time, I felt guided. I felt connected. I felt like I was remembering something I had always known.

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Then I went to university.

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I studied Geography, sustainability, conservation, ecology, and the natural world, which reflected another deep part of me. I have always cared about the Earth, nature, animals, and how humans relate to the planet. But at the same time, I was still carrying unhealed wounds around love, belonging, self worth, and emotional safety.

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Like many people, I searched for love in places that could not fully hold me.

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I entered relationships and connections that mirrored my deepest wounds. Emotionally unavailable men. Unhealthy dynamics. Abandonment wounds. The ache of wanting to be chosen. The pain of feeling unseen. The pattern of losing myself in the hope that someone else would finally make me feel whole.

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One relationship in particular became a major turning point.

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After leaving an abusive relationship in 2023, I made myself a promise. I promised that I would never allow heartbreak to take me that far away from myself again. I knew that if I did not want to feel that way again, I could not continue being the same version of myself. I had to turn my pain into power. I had to alchemize the energy. 

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So I changed.

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I committed to healing. Not as a trend. Not as a phase. As a way of life.

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I studied psychology, spirituality, manifestation, nervous system healing, metaphysics, self worth, attachment, trauma, boundaries, emotional regulation, and human behaviour. I began to understand why I had tolerated certain dynamics. I began to see how my childhood had shaped my relationships. I began to recognise the link between self concept, nervous system safety, manifestation, and the reality we create.

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And my life began to change.

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As I changed, the quality of my relationships changed. My self respect changed. My boundaries changed. My confidence changed. My ability to manifest changed. I began manifesting people, money, opportunities, views, experiences, support, synchronicities, and new versions of myself.

I do not say that lightly.

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I believe manifestation is not about pretending life is perfect or spiritually bypassing pain. It is about becoming energetically, emotionally, mentally, and behaviourally aligned with the life you are calling in. It is about changing who you are being, what you believe you are worthy of, what your body feels safe receiving, and what you are no longer available for.

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That is why my work blends spirituality with real life.

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Because healing has to land in the body.

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It has to show up in relationships, habits, choices, boundaries, money, self expression, and the way you speak to yourself when no one else is around.

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Over time, people kept reflecting something back to me.

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They told me my energy was calming. Soothing. Safe. They told me I should be a counsellor, a speaker, a healer. People would open up to me naturally, even when I had not asked them to. They would share their pain, their dreams, their relationship struggles, their spiritual experiences, and the parts of themselves they usually kept hidden.

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For a long time, I did not fully trust it.

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I also doubted my tarot abilities for years, even though I had been giving accurate readings since 2017. I loved tarot, but I still questioned myself. I still wondered whether I was good enough, intuitive enough, qualified enough, ready enough.

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Then in spring 2026, I completed my Reiki Level 1 training with Mystical Soul Sanctuary.

During that course, I offered tarot readings to the women there, and their feedback changed something in me. They told me I had a gift. They encouraged me to use it. When I practised Reiki, people told me they could feel the healing. They could feel my hands working. They could feel shifts, sensations, calm, release, and energy moving.

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That was the moment I began to truly believe myself.

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Not because I needed outside validation forever, but because life had been giving me the same message for years and I was finally ready to receive it.

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The Lit Spirit was born from that receiving.

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My commitment to healing eventually led me beyond books and online learning and into immersive transformational spaces.

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Over the years, I have attended workshops, courses, healing circles, online trainings, and personal development programmes focused on spirituality, manifestation, trauma, nervous system regulation, self worth, emotional healing, and personal transformation. I became deeply interested in understanding how childhood conditioning shapes our beliefs, relationships, behaviours, and sense of self.

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I wanted to understand why so many people, myself included, could know what they needed to do intellectually but still find themselves repeating the same patterns emotionally.

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One of the most significant experiences on my journey came in September 2025, when I attended a transformational weekend workshop led by Aaron Doughty and Victor Oddo, two teachers whose work I had followed since I was seventeen years old.

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Aaron's teachings, in particular, played a powerful role in helping me heal people pleasing tendencies, self worth wounds, and the belief that my value came from how much I could give to others.

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Attending that workshop felt like coming full circle.

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During the weekend, I experienced trauma release breathwork for the first time. The experience was profound. When I returned home, something had shifted. I stopped smoking completely and, perhaps even more importantly, I felt a level of presence in my body that I had not experienced since I was thirteen years old.

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It is difficult to fully describe that feeling.

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It was as though I had spent years searching for myself and suddenly realised I had returned home.

That experience deepened my understanding of the connection between the body, the nervous system, emotional healing, and spiritual growth. It reinforced something I now believe wholeheartedly:

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True transformation is not just about changing your thoughts.

It is about creating enough safety within yourself to become the person you were always meant to be.

Since then, I have continued exploring modalities such as breathwork, Reiki, meditation, manifestation, somatic healing, nervous system regulation, energy work, and spiritual development. I am passionate about learning, growing, and expanding my understanding so that I can better support both myself and the people I work with.

I still consider myself a student of life.

I suspect I always will.

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This space is the meeting point of everything I love and everything I have lived through: spirituality, psychology, manifestation, tarot, Reiki, writing, healing, nature, self worth, heartbreak, metaphysics, and the deep human longing to come home to ourselves.

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I believe we are souls having a human experience.

I believe our bodies hold wisdom.

I believe the nervous system matters.

I believe dreams, signs, intuition, and synchronicities are real.

I believe we can heal ourselves and our lives.

I believe your pain is not the end of your story.

And I believe healing does not have to feel heavy forever.

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Sometimes healing is crying on the floor. Sometimes it is breathwork, journalling, therapy, Reiki, or shadow work. Sometimes it is finally blocking the person who keeps hurting you. Sometimes it is eating a proper meal. Sometimes it is walking through nature and letting the trees hold what you cannot. Sometimes it is laughing again. Sometimes it is realising you are no longer who you used to be.

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Through The Lit Spirit, I offer tarot readings, Reiki healing, workshops, writing, podcast conversations, one to one sessions, and reflections on spirituality, self love, manifestation, healing, and personal transformation.

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My intention is to help you trust yourself again.

To help you reconnect with your intuition.

To help you build self love and self belief.

To help you understand your patterns without shaming yourself for them.

To help you remember that you are powerful, guided, and capable of creating a life that feels deeply aligned.

I am not here because my life has been perfect.

I am here because it has not been.

I am here because I know what it feels like to be lonely, lost, heartbroken, anxious, spiritually hungry, and unsure where to place all your love.

I am also here because I know what it feels like to come back.

To rebuild.

To receive signs.

To feel magic return.

To realise that the life you once prayed for is slowly becoming the life you are living.

Whether you have found me through tarot, Reiki, my writing, my podcast, a workshop, or a quiet intuitive nudge, I am so glad you are here.

The Lit Spirit is for the part of you that still believes there is more.

More healing.

More love.

More magic.

More truth.

More life.

Welcome home.

Vanessa x