I’ve rebranded this blog more times than I want to admit.
It’s been a mum blog. It’s been a manifestation and Law of Attraction blog (that’s where the name came from, which I’ll get to). It’s been a chronic illness blog. And every single time, I’d get a little way in, feel like a fake, and quietly stop showing up.
So if you’ve been here before and you’re wondering what the hell happened, fair question. And if you’re new, hi. This is the post I should have written years ago: who I am, why this place exists, and what you can actually expect from it now.
Grab a cuppa. This one’s a bit long.
Disclaimer: This blog shares my lived experience and what I’m learning through my trauma healing training. It’s for education and connection, not medical or psychological advice, and it isn’t a substitute for care from a qualified health professional. If you’re in crisis, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or emergency services on 000. This post may contain affiliate links that earn me a small commission at no extra cost to you. See my Disclaimer for more information.
WHO I ACTUALLY AM
I’m Briony. I live in New South Wales and I’m a mum of two kids, who I co-parent with their dad so they can grow up somewhere stable.
I’m also autistic, I have ADHD, and I live with CPTSD. On top of that, my body has collected a list of diagnoses that reads like a medical textbook: hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (hEDS), Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), MCAS, dysautonomia, scoliosis, kyphosis, lordosis, chronic pain, chronic fatigue and gut issues. The list goes on, honestly.
I’m in pain every day. Getting the kids ready for school is a daily battle with my own body. My hands drop things because they won’t grip properly. My shoulder slips in and out of joint most nights. I’ve torn rib cartilage from a sneeze. And from the outside, most days, I look completely fine.
If you know that gap between how you look and how you feel, you’re in the right place.
WHERE IT STARTED
I didn’t grow up safe.
My dad had a temper that filled the house. Constant yelling, holes punched in walls and doors, and being told I was useless so often it became background noise. Mum didn’t step in. A lot of the time I wasn’t allowed out of my room, so I played on my own. At night I’d lie in bed with my heart racing, too scared to go to sleep, and get told to grow up.
I was also a sick kid that nobody believed. Scoliosis at three months old. Bowel issues, malnutrition, knees that dislocated, pain that never went away. As a teenager I was labelled with anxiety, depression, an eating disorder and chronic fatigue, and told the pain was in my head.
It wasn’t in my head. It took until my thirties, after Googling my own list of symptoms and pushing a GP who flat out told me “you don’t have that,” to get a referral and a confirmed hEDS diagnosis. I’ll tell that story properly another time, because there’s a lot in it.
These days I don’t have much to do with my family. That’s its own long story, and some of it will show up here eventually.
What I didn’t understand for a very long time was that all of this, the unsafe childhood and the years of not being believed by doctors, was living in my body. Not just as memories. As a nervous system that never, ever switched off.
THE WINDING ROAD TO HERE
Before this blog, I was a vet nurse. I loved it. I loved the animals, and I still miss it. But I was the one who always got the work done, so more work kept getting piled on me until I was doing six days a week. When I tore my rib cartilage reaching for a surgical kit, a doctor told me to quit and find a desk job.
The desk job was the same story, just with a computer.
Then came the years of trying to find my thing. Virtual assistant work. A uni degree in graphic design. The mum blog, which was doomed from the start, because I’m not naturally organised and I don’t enjoy cooking. Digital marketing, which felt fake. Then manifestation and Law of Attraction, which is where the name She Shines Abundance was born.
None of it stuck. And every time, the same thing happened: I’d self-sabotage, freeze, and walk away. I told myself I just hadn’t found the right niche yet.
The truth is I kept circling the one thing I didn’t want to say out loud.
WHAT FINALLY CHANGED
My first FND symptom was a tic. I was told it was just stress and I should calm down.
Then came whole-body spasms. “That’s your EDS.” My legs started dragging and I couldn’t grip things. “Your EDS.” My speech started slurring. “You’re just tired.”
It took a new doctor to connect the dots and diagnose Functional Neurological Disorder. And that diagnosis is what cracked everything open for me. For the first time, I could see what years of unresolved trauma and stress were actually doing to my body, and how they were making every other condition I had worse.
I’d spent my whole life treating my body and my history as two separate problems. They were never separate. That was the moment I stopped looking for a niche and admitted what this blog was really about: trauma, the nervous system, and the body that carries both.
SO WHY KEEP THE NAME?
I thought about ditching it. The name came from a version of this blog that isn’t me anymore.
But I’ve made peace with it, because “abundance” means something completely different to me now. It’s not about money, and it’s definitely not about manifesting your way out of pain. It’s an abundance of rest. Of safety. Of a life you can actually live in, not just survive.
That’s what I want for me. It’s what I want for you too.
THE HONEST BIT
I need to tell you something before you decide whether to stick around.
I don’t have this figured out. I’m still healing, right now, while I write this. Some weeks I freeze and can’t make myself do the things I know would help. ADHD makes it bloody hard to stick with any one regulation practice. I reach for small things: a sensory tube with little jellyfish floating in it, sitting outside, texting a friend, noticing tiny glimpses of okay.
And yes, I still feel like a fraud sometimes. Writing about regulation when I struggle to regulate. Scared that people will “find out.” Even though I’ve lived every single thing I write about.
Here’s what I’ve come to: you don’t need someone who’s floating above it all. You need someone who’s in it with you and has picked up some tools along the way.
On that note, I’m a Level 2 Trauma Healing Practitioner through Finally Detached, currently working on my Level 3 and an IPHM-accredited trauma-informed coaching certificate, with somatic coaching on my list after that. So what you’ll find here is a mix of both: what I’m learning in training, and what I’ve actually lived.
WHO THIS IS FOR
This is for you if you’re sick of surviving and ready to actually heal.
Maybe you’re a mum holding everything together with nothing left over. Maybe you’re chronically ill and tired of being told it’s anxiety. Maybe you grew up in a house that never felt safe, and now you can’t sit still even when you’re exhausted. Maybe you’re neurodivergent and none of the standard advice fits. Maybe it’s all of the above.
You don’t need a diagnosis to belong here. You don’t need to have it together. You just need to be done with white-knuckling your way through life.
WHAT YOU CAN EXPECT FROM ME
Everything I write will fit into one of six areas:
- How your nervous system works. Fight, flight, freeze and fawn, and why “just calm down” doesn’t work.
- Childhood trauma and the patterns it leaves. People-pleasing, hypervigilance, the brain that won’t let you rest.
- Medical trauma and being believed. Gaslighting, dismissal, diagnosis delays, and how to protect yourself at appointments.
- Chronic illness and the body. How trauma and illness feed each other, and the grief of a changed body and life.
- Regulation tools and slow living. Practical things you can actually do, and what a slow day looks like when your system is dysregulated. Slow living as a result of feeling safe, not an aesthetic.
- Building a life anyway. Work, motherhood, money and identity when your body has limits.
What you won’t find: toxic positivity, spiritual bypassing, or anyone telling you to think your way out of pain. When I’m in a bad place I genuinely can’t see the positives, and being told to look for them doesn’t help. I’m not going to do that to you.
New posts go up on Mondays. I live with chronic illness and a calendar full of medical appointments, so sometimes a post will be late, and sometimes I’ll miss a week. I’d rather be honest about that than pretend. Consistency for me looks like coming back, not never missing.
You can also find me on Substack, and I send emails to my list that go a bit deeper than the blog.
WHERE TO START
If you want something you can use today, grab my free 60 Second Nervous System Reset Cards. They’re quick, practical tools for those moments when you can feel yourself starting to spiral, and they were made for a brain that doesn’t have the capacity for a 20-minute practice.
Get your free Reset Cards here
Signing up also puts you on my email list, which is where I’ll share the stuff I don’t always put on the blog.
And if any of this sounded like your life, I’d really love to hear from you. Leave a comment or reply to one of my emails and tell me where you’re at. You’re not too much, and you’re not the only one.
If this hits you hard….
You’re exactly who I write for. You don’t have to go through this alone.
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