My Journey

Not all who wander are lost.

I've always been a seeking spirit.

Not lost — though it may have seemed that way to the untrained eye. But oriented, always, toward something more true. More alive. More real.

I always knew I was different. I was awake as a child, deeply connected to the unseen and knew more than I had language for. I would study in depth and at length topics such as astronomy, ancient history, social issues and ecology from as young as age seven.

I grew up carrying a lot. As a highly sensitive racially ambiguous child I was bullied throughout my childhood for being different. An empath in systems that devalue empaths, my highly sensitive nervous system was working overtime before I even had words for it. An ethnic woman with diverse ancestry, centuries of ancestral and intergenerational trauma carried in my bones. As I grew, so did my awareness of just how much.

Repeated traumatic events over many years, unhealthy coping mechanisms, undiagnosed neurodivergence and a fried nervous system took its toll. I slowly and steadily burned out in youth and social care — work I loved that slowly dismantled me. I was exhausted, activated, deeply hurting and deeply seeking all at once.

My seeking spirit remained in tact.

Unknown to me at the time, my curiosity, depth, intuition and love for learning led me to slowly building my own powerful and potent spiritual toolkit. Not from a course or guru (although I did seek out plenty of those too!) but from necessity and lived experience.

Yoga. Energy work. Psychic development. Astrology. Dream work. Divination. Shamanic Journeying. Prayer. Flower essences that helped me manage physical symptoms caused by trauma and years of chronic stress. I made my own creams, oils, aura sprays, all in my bedroom because nothing off the shelf worked for the vastness of what I was carrying. So I created a spiritually informed multi-dimensional holistic toolkit — mind, body, heart and soul. My bedroom potion lab is what eventually became my apothecary Eternal Medicines. I wasn’t building a business. I was learning to heal, survive and then thrive.

The turning point.

In 2014 I graduated. I knew I needed to change my life and was yearning for my soul’s calling.

In 2015 I took my first solo trip to South America. Something woke up.

In 2016 after a solo trip gone wrong in Colombia, I ended up island hopping in the Caribbean.

In 2017 I solo travelled to India for my first yoga teacher training. Something open further.

In 2019 I solo travelled to Brazil for six weeks. I stayed for six months.

Brazil was a huge turning point for me. The colour, the vibrancy, the mysticism, the rainforest, the music — a welcome home party for my soul. This activated a new timeline and brought new parts of my soul online. I quit my jobs. I extended my flights 3 times. I followed nothing but my intuition, unconditionally, into the unknown. I never looked back. Within the first week in Rio de Janerio, I was invited to visit the rainforest by a curandera. Four months later, mystically during Lion’s Gate, I found myself as the only foreigner living in the middle of the Amazon rainforest with an indigenous community participating in a two week ayahuasca ceremony. Something in me shifted that has never shifted back.

This is just one story of countless others over the years that have shaped who I am and how I practice the work I came here to do. I haven’t just faced my shadows and overcome obstacles. I have allowed them to mould me into an instrument for the highest expression of what the world needs.

I came home knowing one thing above everything else: my intuition is my compass. And I will follow it. No ifs. No buts. No negotiation. It hasn’t wavered since.

Razor sharp refinement.

But life has a way of refining us. Insecure housing. Unemployment. A relationship that tried to rewrite my reality. Events that cost me more than I can say, that regressed my nervous system in ways I am still understanding. But the still compass held. It always held. The sword of my intuition is razor sharp and will cut through and destroy the shackles sent to bind me. Whether I know it at the time or not. And in the wreckage I found something unexpected — answers.

Not a revelation about who I am. I always knew who I was.

But a confirmation that the struggle was real. That I was never broken. That my nervous system, my sensitivity, my intensity, my seeking — none of it was too much. It was just mine. A different kind of neurodiverse intelligence that I am only now fully learning to accept.

And suddenly the whole map made sense. The burnout, the wandering, the toolkit I built from scratch, the intuition forged in the rainforest — it was never chaos. It was navigation. I was always making my own map because the standard one was never going to work for me.

That's what Living Wanders is.

It’s the map I made. Offered to you, fellow seeking spirit, in case you’ve been wandering too. In case the standard map has never quite worked for you either. In case you’re tired and restless and somewhere in you there’s something that knows there’s more — you just haven’t found the language for it yet.

Through yoga and somatic work, nature and ritual, energy work and flower essences and the particular kind of presence that only comes from someone who has genuinely been there — I help sensitive, complex, beautifully wired people feel seen, heard, valued and encouraged. To feel liberated and strong. To learn to trust in yourself so completely that faith stops being a concept and starts being the ground beneath their feet.

I want you to feel it immediately. A full body yes. The sense that someone finally gets it.

Because I do. I really do.

I’ve been where you are. I know what it is to seek and not find. To hurt and not know why. To be so much and feel like it’s not enough.

And I know what it is to find your way through.

Come wander with me. 🌿

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."

- Anais Nin

meet your guide

Hi, I'm Tijen

Creator of Living Wanders

I specialise in mapping and navigating uncharted territory with love and wisdom gathered from transforming pain into power and power into purpose...

My work is shaped by two decades of professional and lived experience across youth & community care, global travel, holistic healing modalities and psychosocial practices — exploring what it means to heal, grow, and live in alignment.

I bring that together to support you in seeing yourself more clearly, reconnecting to your own power, and navigating life with greater awareness, courage and intention.