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Donna Stichbury standing in the New Zealand bush with mountains behind her
PIKLER® Pedagogue

I have been the misunderstood child.
The healing adult.
And everything in between.

Free. Healed. Natural in nature.

Young Donna with her mum at Christmas
Where it began

I grew up feeling too much in a world that didn't quite know what to do with me.

Born and raised in England, I was a sensitive child. I felt the emotions in a room before I walked into it. I noticed everything that went unspoken. I wanted connection more than anything and didn't always know how to reach it.

Nobody had a name for any of this. It was just me being too much, or not enough, depending on the day.

What I didn't know then was that I had attachment wounds I couldn't see, and needs I didn't know existed. That map was still to come. And everything would change when I finally found it.

I would go on to become the misunderstood child, the healing adult, the angry mum, the overgiving teacher, the nagging wife, the overworked burnt out leader. I have been every person I now sit with. That is not coincidence. That is the whole story.

Young Donna backpacking on the beach
The searching years

I went looking. For myself and for somewhere I truly belonged.

In my twenties I travelled. Greece, Europe, volcanoes, glaciers. I carried a backpack and a restless heart and filled both of them up.

I was capable and curious and kept feeling like something essential was just out of reach. Then I came to New Zealand. And something settled in me that had never settled before.

And then I threw myself into work. Passionate, capable, committed work. With no idea what it was about to cost me.

Donna and Sam on their wedding day on the beach
The day we became each other's family in the land we chose.
Coming home

New Zealand gave me land, community, and the man I would build my life with.

I met Sam. I put down roots in Pukekohe. I found the black sand beaches and the bush and the rivers and understood for the first time what it felt like to belong somewhere.

And then I started to understand what belonging to myself might feel like too. That understanding did not come from a therapy room. It came from the books, the frameworks, and the deliberate, sometimes difficult work of applying everything I was learning to my own life.

I did this because I love my children and my husband. I wanted the intergenerational trauma to stop with me. Not because someone told me to. Because I chose to. For them. And eventually, for myself too.

Donna and Ayla with ladybird faces laughing together
This is why I did the work. For this joy.
Finding the map

I found the frameworks. And then I used them on myself.

I trained with Pennie Brownlee and became one of her Dance with Me in the Heart facilitators. I studied Integrated Attachment Theory and finally understood my fearful avoidant patterns. I began to see my own wounds, name my own needs, and choose differently, one moment at a time.

I have never sat in a therapy chair as a client. My journey from fearful avoidant attachment to nearly earned secure has been through deep, committed study and the courageous, uncomfortable, ultimately life changing work of applying everything I learned to my own life.

I know my worth now. I know what I offer. And I am not going back to giving it away.

Donna laughing as she is handed her Pikler diploma
The Pikler journey

My Pikler training lives within me.

I travelled to Budapest to study Emmi Pikler's philosophy of respectful, attentive care, and on 29 September 2026 I graduated. My thesis, The Misunderstood Child and Healing Adult, was drawn from every version of myself I have ever been.

There is a growing number of people around the world who hold this title, and I am excited to see the friends I studied with join me here.

Because my Pikler training is not only something I studied. It is something I became.

My thesis will be shared on the Pikler website, alongside the work of other graduates.

PIKLER® PedagogueSee the theses page
Donna holding her Pikler diploma, standing with her teachers
Graduation day in Budapest.
Donna outside the Pikler Emmi sign holding her Pikler certificates
Outside the Pikler Institute, where I studied.
Donna presenting at a workshop
Supervision and safety

I have never heard anyone speak about trauma with such depth or compassion.

I studied Interplay with Donna Berry while she was in Perth. There are only a handful of Interplay trained practitioners in New Zealand and I am one of them. Donna is now my supervisor.

I have supervision not despite my journey but because of it. Because I know my own landscape well enough to know where the edges are. Because the work I do with families touches deep places and everyone in that room deserves to be held safely. Including me.

Supervision is not a formality. It is integrity made visible.

The turning point

Business broke me. But in my thesis defence I was asked, where now?

And I think that is the beauty of the present moment, ever changing.

I have done the hard work of looking at myself, and the soft and compassionate work of looking at others with soft eyes, seeing what lies beneath. I am ready to make what I have learnt visible to others. And that takes others stepping into the space in non competition.

Because what guided me through so many years was what Zsuzsa from the Pikler Institute guided us. Start where you can. Place the child at the heart of the matter. Drop the labels, whether Pikler or others. Find that field where we can work together.

My invitation to others is this. Are you ready to listen in the field and be heard, as we put our differences aside for children and the future of humanity?
The HELD programme

What we all need.
Someone to see us without changing us.

HELD was born from a gap I kept noticing. Some mothers needed to be seen and understood themselves before they could be fully present with their child.

Fearful avoidant mothers. Mothers who had experienced trauma. Mothers who were doing everything right on paper and still felt disconnected from the people they loved most.

In HELD we look at the parent separately, at the child separately, and then we bring them together. Because connection cannot be rushed. It can only be created in safety.

The name is not a programme title. It is a description of what every person who comes to me is really looking for. And it is what I spent most of my life looking for too.

Explore HELD
What I have learnt

From following the rules to trusting my own wisdom.

I once held every framework as dogma. Now each one is a thread I weave into my own golden thread. None of them is the answer. They are the teachers that taught me to trust what I know.

Dance with Me in the Heart

A remembering, not something new.

Pennie Brownlee saw that people didn't understand the healing journey, and gave signposts for where to look within. She and Kimberley Crisp gave me the kindness in my work and the beauty of the environment that children and adults deserve.

At the Pikler Institute I was confused right up to the last moment about what was Pikler and what was Dance with Me in the Heart. It showed me how strong my roots were. Where they stopped, I kept weaving my own golden thread.

Pennie also wove in the importance of Aotearoa, my adopted home, and many mentors have taken me deeper into the wisdom of our ancestors, who knew what we have forgotten. In the room I bring kindness, compassion and fun, and a flow to the concrete I have learnt.

Pikler training

Slowing down enough to see.

Pikler is where I watched myself change from dogma to a flow, where I weave everything I have learnt together. I learnt to think together with the people I walk beside, and to slow down and listen so I can meet what is really needed. It is why the way I work keeps growing.

You can't see what you don't know to look for, so I gently guide you to see what is hidden in plain sight.

Circle of Security

Where I start when parents don't know where to start.

It is the entry level to understanding behaviour. I don't run it individually anymore. I work with couples or groups who find me, because a 6 to 7 week course needs flexibility, and what I learn along the way gives me the foundations to support their challenges.

Many parents come wanting to fix their child. By the end they realise it is about working with the relationship.

Self-Reg

Finding the hidden stress.

Often it is prosocial stress: how the world looks at a child's behaviour, and the way everyone in a family soaks up each other's stress. Once it has a name, we can do something about it.

Nothing a parent brings will upset me, if they truly want change. I have been in so many of the places they have been, and I found my way here.

Interplay

Dancing with the nervous system.

Interplay weaves attachment wounds and needs together as we dance with the nervous system. It is for big trauma, and I am incredibly good at it, I think because of my Pikler training. Trauma needs the village, so I work in combination with an organisation.

Attachment mentoring

The day I stopped carrying someone else's hot potato.

With Integrated Attachment Theory I knew how powerful this was on my first day of supervision with Donna Rego. I had a case bigger than I was ready for, and she asked whether this was something I had said to myself through my life. It was my not good enough wound, and I couldn't help picking up the hot potato of someone else's.

That day I learnt it is never one modality. They all weave together.

Relational Flow

Everything I love, woven into one golden thread.

Relational Flow is my own softer, more reflective weaving, built on Interplay as its foundation and packaged for parents and teachers. It holds all of the above, along with the kindness, compassion and fun, so that families can find their own flow.

Everyone has their own golden thread. My work is not to keep you, but to walk beside you for a while, so you can make your own decisions with your own wisdom.

What I know now

I value myself and what I offer. Hugely. And that took everything I have been through to get here.

The woman who was broken by business, who gave and gave until there was nothing left, who was cast aside when she could no longer overgive. She was passionate and capable and she deserved so much better than what she received.

But she also did not know her worth. She did not know her needs. She did not know that her wounds were running the show.

That woman is still here. She is just different now. She knows what she brings. She knows what it is worth. And she has the supervision, the frameworks, and the hard won self knowledge to hold that space safely for others.

"I am not standing on the other side of this work looking back at you. I am walking the same path, a little further along, with supervision that keeps all of us safe."
Donna crouching beside the toutouwai robin on a mossy rock in the Pukekohe bush
He chose to come. They always know.
The life behind the work

A little more about who I am when I am not working

I live in Pukekohe with Sam, my deeply patient and endlessly supportive husband. We have built something real together and I am grateful for him every day.

I love turquoise. It is everywhere in my life without me planning it. My larimar, my hair, the rivers I swim in, the colour I reach for without thinking. I think it chose me before I chose it.

I love my dog, wild swimming, the bush, sitting by water. Nature is where I come back to myself. It always has been.

I am still learning. Still applying what I know to my own life. Still in supervision. Still becoming. That is not a weakness. That is the work.

Today I went into the bush and a toutouwai came and sat beside me on a mossy rock. He chose to be close. New Zealand robins come to people who are still. People who are safe. People whose nervous system is not sending out threat signals. He read me and decided I was trustworthy. I think that is the whole practice right there in one small bird.

Mauri Aroha ๐ŸŒฟ
Sam looking down at Donna with quiet tenderness
The man who stayed. And who I stayed for.
Sam

The man who stayed. And who I stayed for.

Sam has been beside me through every version of this journey. The angry mum years, the burnt out leader years, the years of study and slow change and deliberate choosing differently.

He is one of the reasons I did this work. And he is one of the reasons it worked. Because when you are trying to learn what secure attachment feels like, it helps enormously to have someone who keeps showing up.

Ready to begin?

If this feels like the support you have been looking for, I would love to hear from you.

Whether you want to explore the courses, enquire about HELD, or simply find out more, there is a place for you here. A relaxed Zoom coffee chat is a gentle place to begin.

Book a coffee chat See ways to work with me
About Donna Stichbury ยท Relational Flow
Donna Stichbury standing in the New Zealand coastal landscape laughing
About Donna

I have been the misunderstood child.
The healing adult.
And everything in between.

Free. Healed. Natural in nature.

Young Donna with her mum at Christmas
Where it began

I grew up feeling too much in a world that didn't quite know what to do with me.

Born and raised in England, I was a sensitive child. I felt the emotions in a room before I walked into it. I noticed everything that went unspoken. I wanted connection more than anything and didn't always know how to reach it.

Nobody had a name for any of this. It was just me being too much, or not enough, depending on the day.

What I didn't know then was that I had attachment wounds I couldn't see, and needs I didn't know existed. That map was still to come. And everything would change when I finally found it.

I would go on to become the misunderstood child, the healing adult, the angry mum, the overgiving teacher, the nagging wife, the overworked burnt out leader. I have been every person I now sit with. That is not coincidence. That is the whole story.

Young Donna backpacking on the beach
The searching years

I went looking. For myself and for somewhere I truly belonged.

In my twenties I travelled. Greece, Europe, volcanoes, glaciers. I carried a backpack and a restless heart and filled both of them up.

I was capable and curious and kept feeling like something essential was just out of reach. Then I came to New Zealand. And something settled in me that had never settled before.

And then I threw myself into work. Passionate, capable, committed work. With no idea what it was about to cost me.

Donna and Sam on their wedding day on the beach
The day we became each other's family in the land we chose.
Coming home

New Zealand gave me land, community, and the man I would build my life with.

I met Sam. I put down roots in Pukekohe. I found the black sand beaches and the bush and the rivers and understood for the first time what it felt like to belong somewhere.

And then I started to understand what belonging to myself might feel like too. That understanding did not come from a therapy room. It came from the books, the frameworks, and the deliberate, sometimes difficult work of applying everything I was learning to my own life.

I did this because I love my children and my husband. I wanted the intergenerational trauma to stop with me. Not because someone told me to. Because I chose to. For them. And eventually, for myself too.

Donna and Ayla with ladybird faces laughing together
This is why I did the work. For this joy.
Finding the map

I found the frameworks. And then I used them on myself.

I trained with Pennie Brownlee and became one of her Dance with Me in the Heart facilitators. I studied Integrated Attachment Theory and finally understood my fearful avoidant patterns. I began to see my own wounds, name my own needs, and choose differently, one moment at a time.

I have never sat in a therapy chair as a client. My journey from fearful avoidant attachment to nearly earned secure has been through deep, committed study and the courageous, uncomfortable, ultimately life-changing work of applying everything I learned to my own life.

I know my worth now. I know what I offer. And I am not going back to giving it away.

Donna outside the Pikler Institute holding her certifications
The Pikler journey

Pikler lives within me. No title can take that away.

I have spent years studying Emmi Pikler's philosophy of respectful, attentive care. I have written my thesis, The Misunderstood Child and Healing Adult, drawn from every version of myself I have ever been. I am preparing to travel to Budapest to defend it at the Pikler Institute.

If I am accepted as a Pikler Pedagogue I will be among a very small number in the world. If I am not, the journey will have been worth every moment.

Because Pikler is not something I studied. It is something I became. The title would be an honour. The knowing is already mine.

Donna presenting at a workshop
Supervision and safety

I have never heard anyone speak about trauma with such depth or compassion.

I studied Interplay with Donna Berry while she was in Perth. There are only a handful of Interplay trained practitioners in New Zealand and I am one of them. Donna is now my supervisor.

I have supervision not despite my journey but because of it. Because I know my own landscape well enough to know where the edges are. Because the work I do with families touches deep places and everyone in that room deserves to be held safely. Including me.

Supervision is not a formality. It is integrity made visible.

The turning point

Business broke her and left her cast aside when she could no longer overgive. That was the moment everything began to change.

Because when you have nothing left and the thing you gave everything to walks away, you are finally forced to ask the question you have been avoiding your whole life. Who am I when I am not useful to someone else?

The answer to that question became Relational Flow. It became HELD. It became the work that now holds other people in the same way nobody held her.

The HELD Programme

What we all need.
Someone to see us without changing us.

HELD was born from a gap I kept noticing. Some mothers needed to be seen and understood themselves before they could be fully present with their child.

Fearful avoidant mothers. Mothers who had experienced trauma. Mothers who were doing everything right on paper and still felt disconnected from the people they loved most.

In HELD we look at the parent separately, at the child separately, and then we bring them together. Because connection cannot be rushed. It can only be created in safety.

The name is not a programme title. It is a description of what every person who comes to me is really looking for. And it is what I spent most of my life looking for too.

What I have studied

Every framework. One thread.

๐ŸŒฟ

Pikler

Emmi Pikler's philosophy of respectful, attentive care. Trusting people to develop in their own time without interference. I have written my thesis and am preparing to defend it in Budapest.

๐Ÿ’™

Dance with Me in the Heart

Pennie Brownlee's foundational work on the primary relationship between caregiver and child. I trained as one of her facilitators. This work planted the seeds of what would become HELD.

๐Ÿง 

Integrated Attachment Theory

Thais Gibson's framework for understanding attachment wounds. This is where I began to understand my own fearful avoidant patterns and finally found the map I had always needed.

๐Ÿ”ต

Circle of Security

A research based approach to attachment. A safe haven to return to. A secure base to venture from. Permission to need both.

โšก

Stuart Shanker Self Reg

Understanding stress and self regulation beneath the surface of behaviour. What looks like defiance or shutdown is almost always a stressed nervous system trying to cope.

๐ŸŽญ

Donna Berry and Interplay

Studied with Donna Berry while she was in Perth. One of only a handful of Interplay trained practitioners in New Zealand. A body based approach to nervous system regulation and joy. Donna is now my supervisor.

Every single one of these frameworks is asking the same question from a different direction. What does a person need to feel safe enough to connect? That question is the heart of everything I do.

What I know now

I value myself and what I offer. Hugely. And that took everything I have been through to get here.

The woman who was broken by business, who gave and gave until there was nothing left, who was cast aside when she could no longer overgive. She was passionate and capable and she deserved so much better than what she received.

But she also did not know her worth. She did not know her needs. She did not know that her wounds were running the show.

That woman is still here. She is just different now. She knows what she brings. She knows what it is worth. And she has the supervision, the frameworks, and the hard-won self-knowledge to hold that space safely for others.

"I am not standing on the other side of this work looking back at you. I am walking the same path, a little further along, with supervision that keeps all of us safe."
Donna crouching beside the toutouwai robin on a mossy rock in the Pukekohe bush
He chose to come. They always know.
The life behind the work

A little more about who I am when I am not working

I live in Pukekohe with Sam, my deeply patient and endlessly supportive husband. We have built something real together and I am grateful for him every day.

I love turquoise. It is everywhere in my life without me planning it. My larimar, my hair, the rivers I swim in, the colour I reach for without thinking. I think it chose me before I chose it.

I love my dog, wild swimming, the bush, sitting by water. Nature is where I come back to myself. It always has been.

I am still learning. Still applying what I know to my own life. Still in supervision. Still becoming. That is not a weakness. That is the work.

Today I went into the bush and a toutouwai came and sat beside me on a mossy rock. He chose to be close. New Zealand robins come to people who are still. People who are safe. People whose nervous system is not sending out threat signals. He read me and decided I was trustworthy. I think that is the whole practice right there in one small bird.

Mauri Aroha ๐ŸŒฟ
Sam looking down at Donna with quiet tenderness
The man who stayed. And who I stayed for.

Sam has been beside me through every version of this journey. The angry mum years, the burnt out leader years, the years of study and slow change and deliberate choosing differently.

He is one of the reasons I did this work. And he is one of the reasons it worked. Because when you are trying to learn what secure attachment feels like, it helps enormously to have someone who keeps showing up.

Ready to begin?

If this feels like the support you have been looking for, I would love to hear from you.

Whether you want to explore the courses, enquire about HELD, book a 1:1 session, or simply find out more, there is a place for you here.

See ways to work with me

ยฉ Donna Stichbury, Relational Flow  ยท  [email protected]  ยท  All rights reserved