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FLY WITH ME
ONE HEART
ONE VOICE
HEAL THE PAST
TRANSFORM THE PRESENT
EMPOWER THE FUTURE
LEE-ANN SUDDICK & VANESSA POTGIETER ELSDEN
About US
Lived Experience Motivational Speakers
Passing through the witching hour, identical twin girls entered the world beneath the African sky, at Pretoria's Die Ou Moeder's Bond Maternity Hospital, at a birth weight of just 1.418kgs.
Their journey began in the harshest of ways, shaped by difficulty and a quiet battle for survival.
From their very first breath, the world demanded resilience, as if testing their strength, yet even in their most fragile beginnings, there was a sense of purpose woven through their struggle, a whisper that they were meant to endure, to rise, and to carry something far greater than their tiny bodies could yet reveal.
Their innocence began slipping away around the age of four, taken piece by piece by every person who crossed their lives. Whilst one twin's mind fractured under the weight of what she could not escape, she splintered into severe dissociation as a means of survival. The other rose above the limits of human pain, finding solace in places unseen.
Their twin bond and private language was tightly held in a bloodline marked by alcoholism, prolonged ritual abuse, secrets, familial dysfunction, and instability; an ancestral landscape fractured long before their arrival.
Their purpose was not merely to survive the legacy they'd inherited, but to one day, in divine timing, transform it.
Lee-ann's Journey
Lee-ann continued to struggle from the aftermath of childhood sexual abuse, reaching a final breaking point in February of 2007. Knowing that another breaking point would kill her, she admitted that she seriously needed help, therefore embarking on a four-year journey of intensive therapy, that included sixteen psych admissions, some of which were sectioned due to severe dissociative disorder and self-harm with suicidal ideation, and a serious overdose in 2010.
The greatest lesson learned through Lee-ann's mental health struggles, and after fighting a seven-year Australian immigration battle that unjustly tore her away from her four children, is that
you have to go in to get out.
The real test for her, was finding a reason to get up when she'd lost everything, was left destitute, homeless, and beyond hopeless. She sat on a beach, crying, and on that day, she realized that strength lies within, not in material worth or things, but in heart.
No matter how difficult it can become, YOU are your strength and resilience, and don't ever give up on yourself or your dreams. YOU are not your trauma; you are what you choose to be.
Dear Diary, I'm having a bad day
Girl Interrupted
Vanessa's Journey
Vanessa was an ultra-sensitive child who saw beauty in everything and everyone. She forgave easily and wanted nothing more than to live in a peaceful, loving world. She sensed energies, saw spirits, spoke to the dead, and understood the gift of alchemy, but often felt like a lone wolf, misunderstood and shut down by an era's generational mindset and a family's religious teachings.
From a young age, she became the fixer and the people-pleaser, despite child sexual abuse hidden in the House of God, and at the cost of self-sacrifice, to feel an obligation to carry self-blame for every wrong-doing placed on her and her twin.
Vanessa's young adult life consisted of bereavement, loss, domestic violence, and further abuses, to not then have understood the importance of breaking transgenerational cycles that later would ultimately save a bloodline.
In 2007, her twin's mind and body shut down from body memories triggered when Lee-ann's oldest daughter turned 4, to tread in the darkest places on a deeply painful combined journey of healing and transformation,