Meet Helen
The heart behind Mai Solas
Two Sides of Me
There are two parts of me that I have spent most of my life pulling in different directions.
One wants to know why.
The other wants to know if you are alright?
The first one is insatiably curious. Give her a question, and she'll disappear down a rabbit hole. Philosophy, psychology, the human body, different cultures, why we think the way we think, why something helps one person and leaves another completely cold.
She can be exhausting.
The other part doesn't particularly care about theories.
She notices you're cold.
She notices that although you've said you're fine, something about you says otherwise.
Someone once called that part of me 'Mother Earth'. I wasn't entirely sure whether I'd been complimented or told I was built like a small planet.
But I knew what they meant.
I have a very deep need to make people feel safe.
There Wasn't One Normal
For years, I don't think I understood how those two sides of me belonged together.
My childhood certainly fed the curious one. My father's career moved our family from place to place and eventually from Britain to Texas and then Libya. Before I was old enough to decide what I believed about the world. The world had already contradicted itself several times.
There wasn't one normal.
That fascinated me.
Then I found Lao Tzu and the Tao Te Ching, and Singapore with its philosophies and extensive cultures.
I kept looking outward.
Trying to understand people.
Trying to understand life.
Trying, perhaps, to understand myself.
Then Came Family
Then I came home and raised my family.
And life became less theoretical.
Caring for people isn't an idea when someone actually needs you. It can be repetitive, inconvenient, exhausting, funny, and intensely ordinary. Somewhere in those years I discovered that nurturing wasn't simply something I did.
It was part of me.
And that presented me with a problem.
Because I was still the woman asking why.
Still curious. Still restless. Still incapable of accepting that's just the way it is as a particularly satisfying answer.
Hello Anxiety!
I was the person who jumped in and worked out the details afterwards. I trusted myself to cope. If something frightened me, I generally did it anyway.
Then anxiety turned up at my door, and my life changed.
I didn't recognise myself anymore. Sleep became elusive. Decisions I once made instinctively suddenly had consequences. I questioned myself. I hesitated. And perhaps the hardest part wasn't feeling anxious at all.
It was remembering the woman who hadn't been.
I wish I could tell you I found the answer and anxiety disappeared.
I didn't.
I still have moments when it tries to take hold. The difference is that I no longer allow it to make my decisions for me.
That experience changed me.
It made all my curiosity about the mind, the body, safety, touch, and what helps us feel like ourselves again suddenly much less academic.
Somewhere To Put Myself
For a long time, those parts of me had travelled alongside each other.
Until I found holistic therapy.
And something clicked.
Here was touch and thought.
Care and curiosity.
Ancient ideas alongside modern understanding.
I hadn't suddenly found my calling.
I'd found somewhere to put myself.
And perhaps that's why this work matters to me as much as it does.
In my therapy room, I don't have to choose between the woman who wants to understand and the woman who wants to care.
I get to be both.
It feels remarkably like the two have found a way of being one.
The Sparkle Hasn't Gone
I don't know what the next chapter looks like.
For once, I'm quite happy about that.
The wonderful thing: Every question uncovers a new answer, another path, another avenue to discover.
I hope I never reach the point where I think I've seen enough, learned enough, or understood enough.
The sparkle hasn't gone.
If anything, I finally know what to do with it.
