There’s something I’ve been working with that’s so intimate, so deeply embedded in my body, I haven’t been able to name it fully until now. And yet it feels important, actually vital, to speak it. Not just for me, but for the many of us who carry shame that was never ours to begin with.

In my twenties, I was abused by my boss while working at DFDS head office in Copenhagen. At the time, I didn’t know how to say no. I didn’t even fully realise what was happening, just that something felt very off, confusing, and deeply wrong. He would call me into his office and touch me in ways I didn’t want. One day, he took me to his cabin on a ferry under the pretence of reviewing paperwork. The next thing I remember is waking up naked next to him in the bed. I don’t remember what happened. I left my body. I’ve never forgotten that moment, not because I can recall it clearly, but because I can’t.

And then came the shame. The silence. The gaslighting. The blaming. I was told it was my fault. That I dressed inappropriately. And I believed it, because I didn’t know better. I had no idea how to protect myself. No one around me was protecting me.

That wasn’t the first time I’d abandoned myself. The roots of it go much further back. A father who was emotionally unavailable. A mother stuck in people-pleasing. A body that learned very early on to disconnect from pain, from pleasure, from truth.

Years later, I was raped by someone within the Tantra community. That was the moment that forced me to stop. To look deeply. To reckon with what was happening inside me and what had been happening all along.

Now, decades later, I find myself gently exploring my own body again. Committing to slow, intentional connection. Learning not to force, not to fix, but to listen. And with that, a new fear has surfaced. The fear of doing it wrong. Of somehow harming myself. Of making myself shut down again.

And I’ve come to see that fear is the voice of an old wound. A part of me that still believes it’s my fault. A part that’s still waiting to be met with love, with presence, with truth.

The truth is:

It was never my fault.

Let me say that again: It was never my fault.

And if you’re reading this and something in you knows this story – in your own way – I want you to hear that too.

You were never to blame for what happened to you.

You don’t have to carry the shame any longer.

You don’t have to perform your healing, or get it “right.”

You just have to keep listening, gently and honestly to what your body already knows.

This is why I do the work I do.

This is why I teach consent.

Because no one taught me how to say no.

No one taught me how to trust myself.

And I want to change that for myself, for my daughters, for us all.

If this speaks to something in you, if you’re navigating your own return to trust, your own unravelling of shame, I want you to know you’re not alone. You don’t have to have all the answers. Just bring your breath, your body, your truth.

The rest will unfold from there.