Release Spiritual

15/09/2026

Sexual abuse taught me things about myself that took me years to unlearn.

About my voice.

My boundaries.

My worth.

What I was allowed to say no to.

What belonged to me.

And, perhaps most importantly, whether I could trust my own feelings and instincts.

I don’t believe one experience explains an entire life.

But I do know that experiences can shape the patterns we carry forward without even realising it.

For me, rebuilding has meant looking at those patterns honestly.

Learning where I had stopped speaking.

Where I had learned to accommodate.

Where fear was making choices for me.

Where I was allowing other people to define what was acceptable for my life.

It has been a process of reclaiming myself piece by piece.

My voice.
My boundaries.
My choices.
My identity.

Not because somebody else’s story will be identical to mine.

But because I understand what it is to realise that parts of yourself have gone missing, and to decide you want them back.

13/09/2026

13/09/2026

Personal Harmony is designed to help you understand the cause, effect and solution of the disharmony in your life.

At its heart is something very simple: love is one of the most important ingredients in our growth and happiness.

When there isn’t enough love in our lives, whether shaped by upbringing, parents, partners or relationships, it can affect the way we feel about ourselves and the choices we make.

Personal Harmony helps identify where that disharmony exists, understand what has created it and look at what can be changed.

Then, with the guidance of a Personal Harmony Coach, you formulate your own structure for repairing it.

I’m an accredited Personal Harmony Coach and offer this work through Release Spiritual.

The aim isn’t simply to understand why your life feels the way it does.

It’s to help you decide what you want to change and begin rewriting your life.

09/09/2026

When you’ve spent years adapting yourself around other people, a boundary can feel selfish.

When you’ve experienced coercive control, making a choice someone else doesn’t like can continue to feel frightening even after the relationship has ended.

For me, boundaries haven’t been about becoming harder.

They’ve been about becoming clearer.

This is me.
This is what matters to me.
And this is where I end and somebody else begins.

07/09/2026

I survived cancer.

And yet leaving my marriage was one of the scariest things I had ever done.

That still strikes me.

I had already faced something that forced me to confront my own mortality.

But fear doesn’t always behave logically.

By the time I left my marriage, I had spent years questioning myself, adapting my behaviour and considering somebody else’s reactions before my own needs.

I was experiencing coercive control.

So leaving wasn’t simply a practical decision.

It required me to trust myself at a time when trusting myself had become incredibly difficult.

Cancer taught me that life can change without asking permission.

Leaving taught me that sometimes I had to be the one to change it.

And the years since have taught me something else:

Freedom isn’t only about getting out.

It’s about rebuilding enough self-worth and trust in yourself to choose how you want to live.

04/09/2026

I first came to Spiritual Counselling as a client.

At a point when I was trying to understand myself, my situation and the patterns that had shaped my life, it gave me a way to look at what was happening with greater clarity.

It wasn’t about somebody telling me who I should be.

It helped me understand myself, recognise what was mine to change and start making different choices.

The work had such an impact on me that I went on to study Spiritual Counselling myself.

Today, I sit on the other side of that conversation.

My own experience is part of what I bring to the work.

But so is my training.

I know what it is to arrive needing clarity.

And I know what it is to begin rebuilding from there.

02/09/2026

Losing yourself doesn’t necessarily happen in one dramatic moment.

Sometimes it’s gradual.

One opinion you don’t express. One decision you hand over. One boundary you don’t hold. One more occasion where keeping somebody else happy feels easier than listening to yourself.

Until one day the question “What do I actually want?” is surprisingly difficult to answer.

I know that feeling.

I also know it can change.

31/08/2026

Three years after I left my marriage, I was still questioning my own decisions.

Still finding it difficult to trust my perspective.

Still feeling the need to explain or justify my choices.

And the control didn’t simply disappear because we separated.

Three years after our separation, my ex still tries to tell me what I can and can’t do with my children when they’re in my care.

And I remember thinking:

How am I still this tied to something that should be behind me?

I had left a relationship where I experienced coercive control. I thought leaving would mean I was free.

What I hadn’t understood was that leaving the relationship and reclaiming your identity are two completely different things.

I had spent years adapting. Considering someone else’s reaction. Questioning myself. Making myself smaller.

And even after leaving, I was still being confronted with the expectation that someone else had a right to determine my choices.

The difference now is that I’m learning something I didn’t understand clearly enough before:

I am allowed to make my own decisions.

I don’t need someone else’s permission to live my life.

Rebuilding that trust in myself has been a huge part of finding myself again.

Leaving matters. But so does what comes next.

28/08/2026

At 50, I chose my own name.

I opened ChatGPT and typed:

“How do I legally change my name?”

It sounds like a simple admin question.

For me, it was huge.

It was about identity. Independence. Choice.

For much of my life, I had allowed other people’s expectations and opinions to shape who I was and how I lived.

After leaving my marriage, I had to learn to trust my decisions again. To set boundaries. To understand my own worth. To ask myself what I wanted.

Eventually, I realised I could even choose the name I wanted to carry into this next part of my life.

My name is Bonnie Valentine.

And it represents the woman I found when I finally started choosing for myself.

Sometimes taking your power back happens in enormous ways.

Sometimes it begins with filling out a form.

27/08/2026

I didn’t just leave a marriage. I had to find myself again.

For most of my life, I learned to conform.

Growing up, questioning or disagreeing could be seen as disrespectful. Being “good” meant fitting in, not causing problems and doing what was expected.

So I learned to keep my thoughts and feelings to myself. I put other people’s needs before my own.

Those patterns followed me into my marriage.

Over time, I found myself changing my behaviour to keep someone else happy rather than asking myself what I wanted. My choices were questioned. I didn’t feel heard or equal. I became used to considering someone else’s reaction before making decisions about my own life.

I was experiencing coercive control.

Three years ago, I left.

I thought leaving would mean I was finally free. But leaving turned out to be the beginning.

I still questioned my decisions. I struggled to trust my own perspective. And eventually I understood:

I hadn’t only been trying to leave a marriage. I had to find myself again.

So I started rebuilding.

My self-worth. My independence. My boundaries. My ability to trust myself. My understanding of equality. My ability to ask myself what I wanted.

That journey is a large part of why I do the work I do today.

I’m Bonnie Valentine.

I’m a Spiritual Counsellor, accredited Personal Harmony Coach and Hahnemann Healer.

And through Release Spiritual, I work with people who are ready to understand themselves, their lives and what they want to change.

There is the leaving. And then there is who you become after.

I’m interested in that part.