Founded by Abi and Menia – good friends, educators, mothers and therapeutic trainers – at Life Proof Family, they gently explore the unseen layers of family dynamics. They support parents and families to heal deep-rooted patterns, release unresolved trauma and build more connected, resilient lives together. Whether clients are facing parenting struggles, grief, burnout or a sense that something isn’t quite right, Life Proof Family offers a path towards clarity, connection and lasting transformation. Their work goes beyond the individual, reaching into generational histories and shaping future wellbeing, allowing you and your children to meet every life drama as it comes with more open hearts and greater wisdom. Here, Abi talks to The Natural Parent magazine about the inspiration behind their work, their biggest breakthrough, the challenges they have overcome, and their hopes and dreams for the future.
Background and Inspiration: What inspired you to set up your business?
As a child, I can remember closely observing how adults I knew, especially teachers, handled situations with other children. Sometimes, even when I was very young, I fully understood that what they were doing wasn’t going to work! Aged 7, I decided to become a teacher myself. I studied psychology and then went into education, teaching in Steiner Waldorf schools for over twenty years. I specialised in inclusive literacy teaching, co-authoring a book on the subject.
My life radically changed direction when my mother died young in 2013 and I was abruptly widowed in 2014. Then in my early 40s, I had three young sons and it became clear that lots of things would need to change so that we could grieve, repair and create our lives anew into a future we wanted to live.
Among the many therapeutic and healing practices I engaged with – I’m an eclectic client! – a few were incredibly helpful for me and my children. One really stood out: systemic constellations helped me start untangling threads of deeply stuck family patterns, issues I’d always assumed were permanent and insoluble. Over time, this work has enabled not just recovery for me and my boys, but increased capacity to live into only-dreamed of possibility, seemingly against the odds. Despite loss, life has expanded, not reduced.
The launch: How did you start out in the beginning?
By accident! About six months before the pandemic in 2019, I reconnected with an old friend, Menia, whom I’d met in London 15 years before. We coincidentally began working with the same online constellations practitioner and coach. I was looking for help with my own recovery from burn out and depression, and for help with my teenagers. She was also looking for relationships and parenting support. After some time of individual work, we enthusiastically signed up for our coach’s therapeutic training course and subsequently developed our own practice.
Incredibly, Covid was the gift that enabled us to imagine a business that could work for both of us – living well over 1000km apart in the UK and Italy – and mean we can reach our clients all over the world. In 2022, we launched Life Proof Family.
The innovation: What was the biggest breakthrough for you with your business?
At its core, the idea that this work can address transgenerational trauma is its biggest innovation. It’s something that many people are unfamiliar with but very curious about. We’ve all grasped that what happened to us as kids affects us as adults, but what can it possibly mean if we are unconsciously playing out unresolved traumas, losses or disruptions in our family systems – even those from generations ago?
There are so many brilliant somatic practitioners out there now who help people address the body’s stored trauma legacy, thank goodness, in addition to other brilliant talk-therapists who help people become conscious and come to terms with the hardest things. But the research on the transmission or epigenetics of trauma is growing, showing that our nervous systems are ‘moulded’ by the web of our family back in time.
Our work specifically targets, with laser precision, things that are in the deep past that ‘belong’ to a family but need no longer be attached to a person living today. Other modalities would find it hard or impossible to access these kinds of layers of human experience. Clients find that entrenched patterns and compulsions just melt away, softening anxiety and freeing the heart and mind.
Another amazing aspect of this is that a parent can work on behalf of a child – they don’t need to be present or even know about it. There can be so many reasons why a child will not want or be able to talk about what bothers them. This method is a totally non-invasive way to tackle deep issues at the root, relieving children of stress in the most natural way.
Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
We are so lucky! I get to run my own schedule and work from home. I can be available to clients in other time zones and fit it into the jigsaw of other life commitments. That said, this work involves a certain kind of internal focus and concentration. It’s also indoors and sedentary! So it’s really important that I balance this with things like gardening, volunteering in the community, playing sport and walking in nature.
We also find support from other friends and mentors who help us with perspective, checking and balancing our work. No one ever has all the answers by themselves!
