trailblazer | visionary | advisor | muse
Meet TYMOTHEA
As a young girl in the countryside of Ireland, there was always something intriguingly singular about Tymothea!
With time, this has only amplified.
What emerged wasn't a single identity but a woman who has been continually evolving fully.
Tymothea’s story isn’t a straight line ~ it’s a gathering, a remembering, one that has been decades in the making, and is far from finished.
Now her mission is to guide women as they open up to remember the truest, most unguarded version of themselves.
My Journey
In the very early 50s, just a few years after the Second World War, I was born in a small slow town right in the heart of Ireland. It's not commonly known as one of the most ancient towns in Ireland.
I was born into a family of four girls and am the youngest. My next sister was 10 years older than I and the others were 11½ and 14 years older.
My parents were born and raised in a nearby city, they were so different from other parents in town. For one thing, they were in mid-life. My mother was 40 and my father was 45 when I was born. Never questioning it at the time, I just knew they were very, very different and it had a large influence on me.
After the Second World War my father retired as a commissioned officer, a lieutenant in the Irish Army. He studied in England and became a chemist, then moved the family to our small town to take up his position at the laboratory in a new modern pharmaceutical factory.
My mother managed the household. She had great style.
She was marvellous!
Marvellous with interior decor, and although our home was filled with very modern furniture, she had a affinity for fine antiques and loved her garden.
I was 2 years old when my father drew up the plans for our new two-level house and built it after his regular 8 hour workday. I was always around him on those evenings ~ intentional, interested, involved. Watching him hammer the stakes in the ground to and measuring to dig the foundations. Remembering this from the age of 3, I walked around in those muddy channels.
As a young child before entering school, I travelled a lot on an old steam engines with my mother. I loved having tea and scones on white linen tablecloths with fine china and silver cutlery.
We went regularly to visit my mother’s aunties who were all nuns in many different convents, in many different towns. While the visiting was happening, the nuns would scoop me up in their arms and sit me on the kitchen counters while making afternoon tea. I watched as they prepared the sandwiches and baked the delicious scones. Cutting off the sandwich crust and slicing them into triangle, dusting off the crumbs, lining them up on the most beautiful china cake plates.
When my mother had finished her visit, she and I were seated and served by these joyful nuns. I recall the swishing of the nun’s habits as they walked around the table to serve tea. I can still recall the distinct smell of starch from their crisp bonnets and veils. I will never forget the hypnotic sound of the wooden rosary beads that hung from their waste. The tablecloths were always beautifully hand embroidered.
After tea we would go walking in the garden all the while my mother would quietly nip little slips off the purple border for her rockery, taking tiny clippings of the plants and flowers secretly stashing them away into her purse. She was never caught.
I learned from my family environment, and from a local wise woman, about the realities of life. A ‘nothing-sugarcoated’ version.
For example, I used to walk with my neighbour who was an old woman and her greyhounds, nine of them, helping her with their feedings when I was only four years old, perhaps a bit younger. Mrs. Fitz, “Honey” as she was known, had 9 children who lived all over the world, in addition to the 9 greyhounds. She made hare soup and elderberry wine. When not walking the dogs, you could often find her having a whiskey at the local snug while chatting with other women from the town… sometime this was before 11am.
I was fascinated by this unique family.
At four years old, I made it a point to be at her home when the adult children arrived off the train visiting from their far away travels, all nine lived in completely different countries. I wanted to see inside their suitcases. For me I could see the world the moment they opened, filled with exotic gifts like sequin slippers from Thailand, jewellery from Bali, beautiful fabrics and treasures.
I was mystified and fascinated by the marvellous gifts from all over the world the girls brought for their mother.
On one occasion her son arrived from preaching on a soap box in Hyde Park in London, John arrived on a bottle green motor cycle with a side car.
Their family was full of surprises and I loved it.
I come from a family of readers,
what a wonderful foundation for life.
I learned about the world and life through
the adventures of others and far away places.
I dreamt of travelling the world.
My father built a beautiful radio when I was a child, he housed in a large upright mahogany cabinet. The sound of it was like stereophonic in the 50s. He would listen to Friday Night Music on BBC. What a beautiful sound.
When my mother was out for the evening on Fridays, I would get one of my much older sister's ballgowns. She was about 18 then. I recall her beautiful pale blue gown with a boned bodice, sequins embedded on the full net skirt, ballerina length. Pinning the bodice on myself to fit I would then prance around the living room pretending I was dancing on stage with Dame Margot Fonteyn. I felt such joy seeing myself in the mirror above the mantle.
My father listened to the music while pretending to read thoroughly enjoying the performances from his 6-year-old. I felt like a prima ballerina.
By 7, I was dancing in weekly ballet classes for two years and had 2 performances ~ I was in heaven dancing on stage. That went on until the teacher no longer came to our town. I slept, ate and dreamt ballet for years, until I realized I couldn't study anymore. Living in a very small town, with no opportunities to realize that dream.
I was sent first went to a country school, a few miles out of town, up in the hills.
There were only 32 pupils, a single partition between the classes, only 5 children in my class. Our school had only two schoolteachers. This was a benefit I later realized, as I had selective listening and learning. I was speed learning things that much the older children were being taught.
At about 9 years old my parents moved me in the local boarding school as a day pupil, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
Flush toilets, hot water, multiple classrooms, a harp in the music room! I studied French, Latin and German as well as Gaelic, with English as the spoken tongue. I loved art classes and favoured poetry class. I played tennis, volleyball and field hockey. Later my parents sent me to elocution lessons because they didn't want me to have a Midlands accent.
As I was growing up, my mother would say…
"I don't own you, I only have a loan of you
until you are older to teach you how to live your own life."
This is also what I taught my two sons.
My mother also said to me…
"We don't want you staying behind here to take care of us when we are old, you must go out and live your own life, your own way. Even if it’s in faraway lands."
And so I did.
There were several times, maybe more than several,
when I was told "no" ~ I rebelled and did it anyway!
My journey with the healing arts began at 13, in a hair salon summer job. But really it began walking the fields as a child. It was so safe in those days, and I was so in touch with nature and the energies of the land. I saw things others did not perceive. My awareness grew as I felt energy that others didn't. In the salon, I became very in tune with how people’s energy felt as I worked on clients' crown chakras while washing their hair, fully in their auric field.
This was happening all the time, throughout my life, and my depth of perception kept increasing.
One of my favourite memories was riding Connemara ponies through the misty fields and forests with my friend Ann.
When I was 15, I created my own little business selling Avon Cosmetics. Knocking on doors in my town, testing my bravery and building my confidence. To my surprise I was received warmly. I was already a self-starter and didn't know it.
At 18, I was very self-directed. At times walking into the unknown feeling an unease but a knowing that I had a lot of life to live. I believed that with my skills in hairdressing I could venture out and travel the globe, leaving the past behind me.
When it comes to life & love as I knew it then… my life’s experience up to that point was simply within my culture, my community, my family and the books I read. With poetry books I felt love, pain, fear and apprehension. Up to that time in my life, I felt very mature, I felt I had ready learned and experienced way beyond my piers. I was a trained professional, I wasn’t trying to be someone - I was someone - in my mind I had arrived and was ready to take on my future. I walked confidently forward into unfamiliar territories, head on, all my life, even as a teen. I felt brave feeling fear, basking in the apprehension of the unknown, but I headed right towards it anyway.
In June 1971, I embarked on the biggest adventure of my life. With many knots in my stomach, I boarded an Aer Lingus flight from Shannon Airport, my first flight ever.
This is the day I immigrated to Canada.
I arrived in Montreal, stepping down from the plane onto the hot tarmac I felt the burn through the soles of my shoes. Wow, such heat. Wearing my own design, a citrus yellow, finely tailored dress with a scooped-out back, topped with the bolero jacket and my chic white weekend case.
Everything was ahead of me.
I felt completely totally liberated,
walking into the vast unknown.
I met and married a handsome Italian man at 21, who was 4 years older. By February 1972 with all of our earthly belongings my husband and I boarded CN Rail train in Montreal for the 5 day journey to the West Coast of Canada ~ this was our new frontier.
I grew within the relationship, he did not. We parted ways after 8 years.
My mother died unexpectedly from a stroke at 68. My first child was only two months old at the time.
Almost overnight I was motherless, and even though I was 10,000 miles away, the heart cannot decipher distance.
I was a single mother, alone, grieving, growing, reinventing my life.
In my 20s I opened my first hair salon, maintaining a client base, all with a new baby.
This was my first business. I learned to follow my own instincts and my own lead, we were in our second home, by then my baby was only five months old. Four years later as a single mother, I opened my second shop and while growing a staff of 8, I learned another level of motivating others. While building my salon, I trained and qualified as a clinical counsellor, adding to and rounding out my skills in human behaviour from hairdressing.
Fundamentally, people are the business.
When I was only 29, I was hired and trained by a large organization out of New York. They had leased space in a large department store located in the city where I lived. They trained me in relationship management for one month, after which I took on a salon staff of 28. I was well equipped for the job, and one of those managers who comes out from behind the desk to pitch in helping staff sweep the floor at times when things got busy. I proceeded to motivate the staff and bring them together, raising the sales 400%.
There again I learned new leadership skills and realized I was on my self-directed journey with no one backing me while raising my son.
This was a very affirming position to be in, as at the time it was not in fashion for a woman in the early 80’s.
This then led me towards energy and quantum physics in the body. I was feeling the energy body of people, so I learned deep tissue massage and body work. I was trained with Shamans on the energy fields I was transferring with other humans. The work led me in another direction, yet still on my path, the through line being assisting and helping people.
And yes, I had another "stop me in my tracks" moment, when I was driving my mentor to the airport. It was one of those times when you pull the car off to the side of the road and finish the discussion and go "AH HA, this is what I am meant to do with the rest of my life." I was in my 30s, just after completing my counsellor training with my clinical counselling certificate under my arm. I said yes, this is what I'm meant to do with my life, help people in many different forms and on many different levels. A moment of truth.
In 1986, I was working as a freelance hairstylist in my 30s, and suddenly I was gifted an extraordinary new opportunity. Six weeks previously I lay down for a nap on a hot summer afternoon and asked myself, "What do I want to do with my life before I move forward" Oh yes! I want the experience of working on a cruise ship. An efficient way to do that is work as an on-board hairstylist. So I visualized tasting all the food, feeling the balmy seas, gazing at the night stars. Then it was all but forgotten, however six weeks later I got a phone call from the owner of the hair supplies warehouse, and he said, "Miami to Bermuda..." I thought he was joking, but the employment manager was in town and standing right in front of Don. I met her that evening, she handed me the tickets and said, "You'll either love it or hate it." So, I went for it! The only catch was that I had to leave on an 8am flight the next morning to Miami.
I had just begun a lot of deep work with my Buddhist teacher at that time, so every morning I was on the top deck at 5am meditating. The Greek sailors couldn't figure me out, a woman alone with no man! Secretly shrouded in the dim light of the morning and nighttime, I was being covertly watched because they thought I was a jumper, lol!! I was such a mystery to them. This job lasted only a month as it was end of season, I had many different experiences. I rose before sunrise, danced in the moonlight on balmy seas, I felt seasick and very queasy every time we passed the Bermuda Triangle, met wonderful people, and lots of senior Southern Bells with incredible stories.
This is another experience really shaped my life as I went forward, this was a childhood dream manifested.
Years later I met the big love of my life and had another son. I was complete for a short time.
Then the real brutal heartbreak happened, and it lasted for several years.
It was 90s, in the corporate world I was raising funding in a new era of technology. This had me on the cutting edge in a "man's" world, again doing things most women were not at that time… continually trailblazing.
Then I met Stephen. This love in my life was totally different. I was adored and adorned by this artist, quickly becoming his mentor with my love of art and storytelling, my interest in the origins of his artistry fuelled my mission to revive the passion and love of painting within Stephen again. I became his inspiration. My interest in writing about his life made us a great match. I was the muse for all his painting as I brought sales to the door. My curiosity about where his art passion came from helped Stephen remember and come back into his love of putting paint on canvas again, which he continued until he died and moved into his next world.
Being Irish and coming from the land, death was a part of my being and present with all of the realities.
We grieve, we accept, we move on.
We move with our lives into the future.
When the grieving is done, it is done, but it isn't really. That's what most people think, it pops up every now and again along the way. So we stop, we feel it, we accept it. It could be a few moments, hours or days, but then we move on with our lives again.
It's such a familiar place. I did not know back then that the greater grief of a loved one was yet to come in future years.
We never know the hour or day.
As I look back now, at the woman living through the hardest years, moi, in my 30s, 40s, 50s and on, I would tell her:
I see you as brave, yet you didn't stop to think about that back then. You have, and still have, a great resilience. You stop sometimes for a little while, always coming back stronger and more brilliant than before. Your deep core values walked you through some of the extreme times. You always came back to see your own bright light and the light ahead. You are extremely strong, loyal, tender and loving, yet very discerning about where you place these things. You will not allow the ones who do not value you to cross that line.
Meanwhile, still a single mother of two teenage boys, reinvention for me seemed to come every 5 years, with children growing, experiencing menopause at 40, going through health challenges, into retirement in my 60s, and then back into an enlivened life.
I have supported hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people through my lifetime. Too many to count. I had one consulting client going through several life changes all at once, just coming into her early 50s. As we worked, I brought her back to a very important forgotten dream of hers, to attain her degree in leadership. She then went to university and achieved it.
At 64, I was invited to an open audition for a commercial, and to my surprise I was the director's pick and got the callback. Through the commercial audition, I was signed with my first agent.
This was after my first modelling photoshoot, posted as a half-page print ad in a city newspaper.
I was having so much fun with all of this.
My early 70’s were spent healing after being struck by an SUV while walking in a crosswalk. The driver quickly left the stop sign just as I was getting to the middle of the road, hitting me head-on. The intense impact tossed me forward and flipping me into a face plant. It’s is a true miracle I survived. This was the beginning of a three to four year recovery, and my most challenging comeback.
It was also the beginning of my most luminous chapter yet, with more capacity to give again.
I'm back.
At 74, I returned to modelling and was chosen for a magazine editorial shoot for a magical creative, shot with 3 other women, collaboratively. It was so fabulous.
Now, the beginning of my days is full of self care. I take my time, I breathe, I give thanks for every day. Then I consult my to-do list, which I love to write with my old fountain pen. After that I bounce into action for a workout and errands. Afternoons are for my clients, with my evenings spent perhaps strolling by the ocean, or I hit the town with my lipstick and heels on for an event, play or live music.
I feel the satisfaction and gratefulness to be alive each day at 74.
Good health, sharp wit, quick brain.
Aliveness comes in many forms and can be just as simple as the birdsong each morning.
I mainly assist women of all ages, bringing the most value to women throughout the major transition stages of their life and beyond.
As I consult directly with my clients, because we are all individually unique, I ensure we celebrate this.
I find, with the world speeding up in 2026 and over the past 10 years, how we choose to spend our time is of the utmost importance, and not to be enslaved by it.
If the one most precious gift I can give is presence, this is my invitation to this space.
Time and life experience cannot be measured with any certificate.
Mine is a dynamic multifaceted life, lived uniquely like no other.
What's next for me is tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that...
I am here, and I am grateful to God.
A Life Lived
Out Loud
Long, detailed stories from the events of Tymothea's own life, told with the pace they deserve. You're welcome to sign up below to be the first to read the first story when it launches.