About Donna Stichbury · 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.

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.

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.

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.

🌿

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.

💙

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.

🧠

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.

🔵

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.

⚡

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.

🎭

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 🌿

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

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