#BEYOUROWN MEETS LEANNE MARIE

Leanne Marie is an intuitive self-discovery mentor and Oracle & Angel card reader from Norwich, UK. By Effectively combining her intuitive gifts along with her creative and counselling skills, Leanne helps people to understand themselves on a deeper level so they can gain more clarity, make better life choices and create a more fulfilling life that aligns with their true self.

Welcome Leanne, thank you for taking your time with us, can you introduce yourself to us?

Thank you for having me, I’m Leanne Marie, an intuitive mentor, intuitive Oracle card reader, dream explorer, empath and fellow life roller-coaster rider!

Becoming Me was created when I started to notice changes within myself as I went through my own Self-Discovery process in a counselling course that I had finally built the courage up to join after years of putting it off. I had finally listened to my intuition (the niggles of my soul) and began my self-awareness journey.

For many years before this, I was always putting everyone else’s needs before my own, always wanting to help people (which led me to counselling in the first place) yet I felt like this was having a negative impact on my happiness and well-being, I would always feel exhausted and a bit like a doormat sometimes (maybe you know that feeling?) I felt like I wasn’t getting any appreciation or support, recognition or praise and sometimes not even accepting help or supporting myself, thinking I could do everything on my own as I’d managed to fight through trauma and lots of terrible things in the past so I must be capable and strong and little Miss independent right?!

Anyway, as I journalled and processed and got the support I needed, I realised there was a whole other world inside me that I had to explore and it was scary, but at the same time very exciting and I began to change, to grow, to learn, to understand and began to create a more confident, open, creative, passionate version of the me I was before, and I liked this new person and this person wanted to share what she had learnt with the world to inspire and help people going through the same struggles that she went through, but this time I was not helping from a place of needing recognition, praise, appreciation or any other un-met needs, but from a place of compassion, love, understanding and wanting to make a difference in the world. That is when Becoming Me was born.

Can you talk us through the path you have pathed to where you are now as an intuitive self-discovery mentor?

Of course!I love to talk about my journey as it is a huge part of what I do. So I guess I have always been quite intuitive from a young age and into spirituality but I never really connected the dots until later in life.

When I was a young girl, I would wish on stars, read star signs in magazines and newspapers all the time and I was very creative, compassionate and empathic. As I grew up and went through traumatic events and life difficulties and also tried to fit in to society, I guess I lost those parts of me.

For many years I had a voice inside that kept saying “train to be a counsellor” but I made excuses and put it off until I finally listened and followed that inner voice at the age of 29! And I am so glad I did!

As I went through my counselling training, I unlocked a whole new world inside of me and went through my own self-awareness and awakening journey. I found lost parts of myself that were hidden for years and I healed various wounds from my past with my own therapy, tools and exercises that I had learned, through journaling and with my own intuitive guidance.

I shifted and changed a lot in my training, gained a passion for personal-development and I found my spiritual gifts again which led me to oracle and angel cards. I found that I was able to use my counselling skills, creativity and intuition with the cards to create a magical kind of therapy that could help and heal others and I found I could use everything that I had gathered and learned over the years to support people with through their own life struggles.

I also connected back to my own inner resources that I used as a child (that I wasn’t aware of at the time obviously!) for example: using music and song lyrics to help heal or soothe myself or creating space for myself to listen to my inner voice, and I now use these to help with self-compassion, self-love and healing.

I started my own group on Facebook which I have been running for about 3 years now and a YouTube channel where I post weekly readings as well as Instagram and my Facebook page, I have mainly been offering email audio readings and a small amount of face to face readings and mentoring sessions but I plan on offering more face to face and Skype/video call sessions in future as well as growing my YouTube channel and offering more content on there and I have many other ideas in the pipeline which I am very excited about!

What sparked your interest in becoming a mentor and can you explain the creative therapy methods you use?

Well I trained as a Person-Centred Counsellor initially, and I worked as a volunteer for 2 years as a Counsellor but I found that I was not using all of my abilities and I needed to feel like I was offering my whole self to others to help in the way that I wanted to.

When I became aware of my spiritual gifts, creative talents as well as connecting to my passion of personal-development and personal healing, I wanted to offer these in my sessions too.

The creative methods came in when I realised that I had developed my own toolkit from resources I used as a child, from exercises and tools I used in my own training and from other sources along the way that I felt helped me greatly with my own healing.

I also found that I developed gifts along the way intuitively that helped me and that I had successfully helped others with too. The creative therapy methods I use in the mentoring sessions (other than the oracle cards) include music for self-compassion or music readings (using music and lyrics to bring through visions and guidance to heal and support clients).

Dream exploration where I help clients to make sense of their night time dreams and understand any messages coming through subconsciously through feelings or images in their dreams. Journaling methods that I have found helped me greatly in my own healing.

Focusing therapy, which is a therapy that focuses on feelings in the body and any images that come through, helping to shift and heal from within, this is sometimes combined with writing or drawing to help the healing further. Anything else that I feel intuitively guided to advise when tuning into the clients energy when working with them.

How did you launch Becoming Me and how has the journey been so far?

It has been a bit of a slow process if I am honest as I have been working an almost full-time job whilst starting Becoming Me and I am still doing that now but working on changing that in the future. I have mainly been working online and launched it using social media.

I am working on getting out there in the local community more as I wish to be able to help more people locally as well as worldwide online and use my tools and methods more effectively.

Can you tell us 3 ways in which your clients can benefit from your personal growth and healing therapy sessions?

Yes certainly, I feel that the most important benefit is that they will feel heard, understood, and really feel seen for who they truly are by being listened to and supported in a trusting, caring space, this helps them to feel better about opening up and sharing their truth.
They will learn tools and methods to help them to process their thoughts and feelings, which in turn will help them understand their inner world better, and help them move forward more positively, giving them clarity and direction in life.
And finally, they will start to notice shifts and positive changes with the way they feel about themselves and about their lives, helping them to create healthy boundaries for themselves and make better life choices that align with them.

Where can you see yourself within the next 5 years and how are you planning to grow?

I can see myself leaving my day job, growing Becoming Me both online and locally, offering sessions at home or in my own private office and at social or spiritual events, offering a lot more content and support through YouTube and across all social media platforms.

I also really want to create my own Oracle card deck in future which I am very excited about and offer group sessions and workshops helping to support people with their own self-awareness journey.

I plan to get the wheels in motion by offering readings face to face at local events and networking and connecting with like-minded people more locally and online and offering live content on Instagram and Facebook as well as more readings and self-discovery topics on YouTube. I am also working with some amazing mentors and business owners to help with my marketing.

What avenues are you exploring to promote your Self-Care Tool Kit Guide?

At the moment, I haven’t set up a personal website but I plan to get this created as soon as possible and I will be displaying my self-care toolkit guide on there as I feel it is such a valuable resource.

I currently share a link through my Instagram and I am going to be adding the link to my weekly newsletter that I send out to subscribers and my YouTube reading which is posted weekly also. But any further assistance and help with this is greatly appreciated! As marketing isn’t one of my strong points!

What is your most favoured aspect of your role?

I just get such a buzz from seeing the ways in which my clients benefit from the readings or the sessions, however that looks, whether its new inspiring creative ideas they have come up with, confidence being built, being able to feel more positive and loving towards themselves, being able to get clarity on their life situation, finding their passion, making life changes, being able to communicate better with people in their lives or just simply feeling heard and more at peace with themselves and who they are. Seeing this just fills my heart up so much, knowing that I’ve supported them and been alongside them through this part of their journey.

What challenges have you seen to have been presented during the growth of Becoming Me?

I must admit, having chosen to work online first has been quite challenging in terms of not being able to connect fully with people, showing them all that I can offer and getting the feedback and interaction that I would like, but I know this is a learning curve for me and I plan on getting further support from people who work in this area.

Also working a day job alongside trying to grow my business has presented many issues but I have found ways of working around this and balancing them out, making sure self-care is included too as this is so important.

How do you define your own success?

Success for me isn’t about being the best at something, it’s not about making the most money or having the best job or car or house or best looking partner etc…

To me, it’s always been about happiness. Being truly happy within, feeling like myself, being in alignment with who I truly am, feeling at peace, connected to my heart and doing what I love, and about seeing others doing and feeling the same.

What does #BEYOUROWN mean to you?

I would say it is about being your own kind of beautiful, whatever that feels like and looks like to you. To not wear a mask and not dim your light to fit in with others or society. To wear what makes you feel good, to follow your own intuition and what your heart and soul wants, not what others want you to be or do and to be your own best friend accepting and loving yourself fully just as you are.

Finally, what are you working on throughout 2019?

This year I am going to be working on growing my platforms and creating more content for YouTube, I also plan on offering face to face sessions and video sessions more and having my website up and running so people can access my services and content more easily.

2019 is a fresh start for me, I had a challenging end to 2018 so, as Becoming Me has always been about my journey as well as helping others through theirs, I will continue to heal myself and share my journey, all my lessons learned and anything that I feel will support my clients and community along the way and I will continue to be an authentic example to light the way.

Instagram:@becomingme_leannemarie

Facebook:www.facebook.com/becomingmeleannemarie

YouTube:https://www.youtube.com

Website:www.becomingme.freeindex.co.uk