Why ‘Trust the Science’ Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Does

In recent years, we’ve heard the phrase “trust the science” repeated like a mantra.

It’s been used to shut down debate, silence questioning, and suggest that scientific truth is something fixed, final, and above scrutiny. But here’s the thing:

Science is not a belief system.

It’s not a moral code.

It’s not a static body of facts.

Science is a process. And that process is messy, flawed, and by design, always evolving.

So when someone says “I trust the science,” I often wonder: Which science?

The science of today? Of 10 years ago? Of 100 years ago?

Because if history has taught us anything, it’s that what we accept as scientific “truth” in one era is often disproven, revised, or radically reframed in the next.

Science Has a History of Being Wrong (Or Incomplete)

Let’s not forget:

– Smoking was once “scientifically proven” to be good for you.

– Thalidomide was declared safe, until thousands of babies were born with deformities.

– Women were excluded from most medical trials for decades.

– Hormonal contraception was tested unethically on women in Puerto Rico.

– The food pyramid was based on industry influence, not biology.

– And countless therapies from leeching to lobotomies were once considered cutting-edge.

This isn’t to say science is bad. I value it deeply.

But it is human. It is limited by what we can measure, by who funds the studies, by what gets published, and by the cultural paradigms of the time.

Science isn’t objective.

It’s shaped by the same forces that shape everything else: money, power, politics, and worldview.

Bias in the System

It’s estimated that up to half of published scientific research is unreproducible. In other words, many findings that make headlines can’t actually be replicated. And yet, these studies go on to inform public health policy, education, and even legal mandates.

Why?

Because studies that confirm dominant narratives get funded.

Because pharmaceutical companies fund a large percentage of medical research and unsurprisingly, studies tend to favour the drugs being sold.

Because journals are more likely to publish sensational findings than nuanced or “null” results.

Because dissenting scientists often lose grants, positions, or credibility if their findings challenge powerful institutions.

This doesn’t mean we should throw science away.

It means we should treat it with the curiosity and humility it actually requires.

From Certainty to Inquiry

The heart of science is not certainty—it’s inquiry.

The willingness to ask better questions. To test, refine, and revise.

So when we stop questioning… when we’re told the debate is over… when science is used like a weapon instead of a tool… we’re no longer in the realm of science.

We’re in dogma.

And that’s dangerous.

Living the Questions

In my own work—with microdosing, with trauma healing, with women’s bodies, I’ve often found myself outside the mainstream narrative. Not because I reject science, but because I hold it accountable. I refuse to outsource my intuition to a system that has historically ignored people like me.

I don’t need “studies” to tell me what my body already knows.

But I welcome research that’s done with rigour, transparency, and ethical care.

Real science makes space for mystery.

For things we can’t yet measure.

For questions that challenge the status quo.

Because true healing like true science, isn’t about having all the answers.

It’s about staying open.

So no, I don’t “trust the science.”

I respect the process.

I question the outcomes.

And I stay curious.

Because that’s what science was always meant to be.

Microdosing & the Feminine Body: Healing in Rhythm, Not Rigidity

For centuries, women’s bodies have been misunderstood, dismissed, and pathologised especially in the realms of medicine, mental health, and spirituality. Healing models have often been designed around linearity, predictability, and control.

But women don’t heal in straight lines.
We don’t move in straight lines.
We are cyclical, emotional, intuitive, and deeply impacted by the seasons of our hormones, our relationships, our stories, and our lineage.

So when we talk about microdosing as a tool for healing, awakening, or nervous system support, it’s essential to recognise that the feminine body may need something entirely different than what the research (largely male-led and male-focused) often suggests.

Why Nervous System Healing Looks Different in Women

Most models of “nervous system regulation” were built on male biology, male hormonal patterns, male stress responses, male rhythms of activity and rest.

But the female nervous system doesn’t operate on a 24-hour cycle like men’s often do. It moves through phases.
It adapts to ovulation, menstruation, motherhood, menopause.
It’s shaped by ancestral trauma, societal pressure, and the invisible labour of caregiving and emotional holding.

Women are more likely to freeze than fight.
More likely to internalise than externalise.
More likely to be told they’re “too much” or “not enough” and carry that deep into the body.

So our healing requires more than tools.
It requires a shift in pace, in permission, and in how we relate to ourselves.

Microdosing as a Feminine Practice

Used with intention and care, microdosing can become a powerful way to reconnect with the feminine body—not by overriding symptoms or pushing for productivity, but by tuning in, softening, and listening more deeply.

It invites us into:

🌿 Cyclical awareness – adjusting doses and practices around the menstrual cycle, or through perimenopause/menopause
🌿 Emotional fluidity – allowing feelings to move rather than be analysed
🌿 Subtle attunement – noticing shifts in energy, intuition, sensitivity
🌿 Sensual embodiment – reconnecting with pleasure, breath, and sensation
🌿 Rest as medicine – trusting that slowing down is often the gateway to deeper healing

This isn’t about hacking your brain or bio-optimising your output.
This is about remembering how to live in your body.
How to honour your rhythms, not override them.

The Medicine Is in the Listening

One of the most common things I hear from women I work with is:
“I don’t feel like I’m doing it right.”
Or, “I’m not feeling much, should I increase the dose?”

But often, the truth is:
Your body doesn’t need more medicine.
It needs more of you.

More presence.
More rest.
More self-trust.
More willingness to feel what’s alive without rushing to fix it.

The feminine body responds to safety. To slowness. To relationship.
Microdosing isn’t a fix—it’s a conversation.
And the more softly you approach it, the more it reveals.

Microdosing in Motherhood and Menopause

In both motherhood and menopause, the feminine nervous system is asked to hold so much—physically, emotionally, and energetically.

Microdosing can be an ally during these initiations, but again, not in a linear or rigid way.

In motherhood, it may support presence, patience, re-regulation after overstimulation, and connection to self amidst the noise.

In menopause, it may support the processing of long-held emotions, the grieving of identity shifts, and the rewilding of parts that were never fully expressed.

But in both, the key is gentleness.
Pushing too hard, too fast, too often can backfire.
We are not machines to optimise, we are rivers to honour.

In a Culture That Teaches Us to Ignore Ourselves…

…microdosing can be a sacred interruption.
A pause.
A subtle but powerful return to the body.

But only if we approach it with reverence.

If we force it, we miss the point.
If we seek only results, we lose the relationship.
If we follow protocols without listening to our bodies, we risk repeating the same patterns of disconnection we came here to heal.

The feminine body doesn’t need fixing.
It needs remembering.

And microdosing, when done slowly, relationally, and with care, can be one way back.

You don’t have to heal in straight lines.
You get to heal in spirals, in cycles, in your own sacred time.

And your body already knows how.

The Truth in the Paradox: Holding Two Realities at Once

We live in a world that wants things to be clear.
Right or wrong.
Good or bad.
Sick or healed.
Mainstream or alternative.
Science or spirit.

But real life doesn’t work like that.
Healing doesn’t work like that.
And neither do we.

One of the most powerful things I’ve learned—through my training, microdosing, motherhood, trauma, grief, spiritual emergence is that two seemingly opposite things can be true at the same time.

And often, they are.

I can love someone deeply, and still need distance.

I can feel joy and grief in the same breath.

I can trust the sacredness of the medicine, and still have boundaries around how and when I use it.

I can believe in the intelligence of the body, and still be terrified when symptoms show up.

I can feel deep spiritual connection, and still doubt everything the next day.

I can be strong and soft.
Resilient and exhausted.
Hopeful and angry.
Healing and still hurting.

There is truth in the paradox.

This isn’t weakness. This is wholeness.

The nervous system doesn't operate in neat categories.
Trauma healing doesn’t happen in straight lines.
Integration isn’t a checklist and being human is wildly complex.

Yet so much of the culture around us even in wellness and spiritual spaces still pushes us toward certainty, polarity, and simplicity.

But nuance is where the real medicine is.

Paradox is where wholeness lives.

Microdosing Taught Me This

When I first began exploring microdosing, I thought it would be about clarity.
I thought it would show me The Truth.

But what I’ve come to see is that the real gift of microdosing is its subtlety. Its refusal to offer easy answers. Its way of gently showing me how layered I am. How many voices live inside me. How two completely different truths can sit side by side and both belong.

Some days I feel like I’m completely at peace.
Other days, I’m crawling through the same old fear.
And both are part of my healing.
Both are honest.

We Don't Need to Choose

The culture we live in makes us feel like we have to pick a side.

Are you pro-medicine or natural healing?
Are you spiritual or scientific?
Are you in the light or in the shadow?
Are you for this or against that?

But the deeper I go into my work, the more I find myself in the and.

I believe pharmaceuticals can help and I believe many people are over-medicated.
I trust in intuition and I value evidence.
I hold boundaries and I lead with compassion.
I honour the sacred and I stay rooted in the body.

Learning to Stay With the Tension

It’s not always easy to sit in the space between.
It can feel uncomfortable. Exposed. Even lonely.

But this is the work.
Staying with the discomfort of not knowing.
Resisting the urge to collapse into a fixed position.
Allowing the opposites to coexist in your body, without forcing resolution.

This is where integration happens.
This is where wisdom is born.
This is where the spiral path begins to make sense.

Two things can be true at once.
Often, they need to be.
And that’s not confusion—it’s capacity.

What Does It Really Mean to Be Holistic?

When I was 18, I went straight into nursing and then midwifery. I never thought to question what I was being taught. Doctors were the authority. The system was something to trust. If something was published or protocol, I believed it. I was deeply institutionalised but I didn’t know it at the time.

That began to change after the birth of my first son, Harry.

It was a complicated birth that shook me. Not just emotionally and physically, but ideologically. I began to see cracks in a system I had once believed to be flawless. Slowly, my trust began to unravel, not just in the institutions I had trained in, but in the entire model of care I had once devoted myself to.

So I swung the other way.

I became very alternative in my outlook. I distrusted mainstream medicine entirely. I saw pharmaceuticals as toxic. I avoided anything that came with a label or a logo. If it wasn’t “natural,” I didn’t want it.

And like many people who wake up to the limitations of the mainstream, I went through that phase of rejection, of mistrust, of anger. And maybe that was necessary for me to start finding my own way.

But it wasn’t the whole truth either.

Over time, through my own healing—physically, emotionally, spiritually, I came to realise that extremes rarely serve us. That black-and-white thinking keeps us stuck in the same patterns, just in different packaging. And more than anything, I began to understand what it truly means to be holistic.

It doesn’t mean being anti-pharma.
It doesn’t mean rejecting doctors or surgery or science.
And it certainly doesn’t mean choosing nature over medicine, or intuition over evidence.

Being holistic means seeing the whole picture.

It means asking deeper questions. Looking for root causes. Acknowledging the emotional and spiritual alongside the physical. It means understanding that the body doesn’t operate in isolated parts and neither does our health.

Yes, I often prefer to begin with more alternative routes when something feels off. I look at nutrition, nervous system state, relationships, stress, trauma, beliefs, ancestral patterns. I’ve seen profound transformation come from these gentle and sacred places.

But I also believe that pharmaceutical medication has a place. Sometimes it saves lives. Sometimes it buys time. Sometimes it stabilises enough for deeper healing to happen.

So to me, being holistic isn’t about being alternative, it’s about being inclusive.
It’s about honouring the full spectrum of support available to us, without shame or dogma.

This journey from blind trust, to total rejection, to finding my own middle path has shaped everything I do today. As a mother, a therapist, a guide, a space-holder.

And I offer this reflection because I know many of us are navigating similar journeys—trying to make sense of a world that wants us to pick sides. But maybe the truth lives somewhere in between.

Maybe wholeness lives in the middle.

All or Nothing: Learning to Walk the Middle Way

I’ve always leaned towards the extremes.

For much of my life, I thought that was a strength. I was the kind of person who could go all in, commit fully, push myself hard, and get results. Whether it was study, work, health, or relationships, I didn’t do things by halves.

But over time, I began to realise that this pattern—this addiction to extremes, was costing me far more than it was giving.

After my youngest son Archie was born, this became painfully clear. He was just eight weeks old when I laced up my trainers again and started running. Not gentle jogging either. I was getting up at 5am and running for one to two hours, six days a week. I was fasting every other day. The weight dropped off. People probably thought I was thriving.

But I was burning out. Fast.

I can see now that I was trying to regain a sense of control, of identity, of something solid to hold onto. But in the process, I pushed my body to the brink and completely bypassed what it needed most: rest, nourishment, kindness.

This same tendency showed up in other areas too.

In friendships, I would cut people off quickly. If we didn’t align on the big stuff—health, parenting, values, I didn’t see the point in maintaining a connection. It was black-and-white thinking, even if it came from a place of wanting to protect my energy. Thankfully, there were a few exceptions. And I’m grateful for them. They reminded me that relationships, like healing, live in the grey.

This all or nothing pattern is something I still struggle with. It’s sneaky. It disguises itself as discipline, dedication, discernment. But often, it’s coming from fear or old wounds trying to protect me from uncertainty or pain.

These days, I’m learning to walk the middle way.

Not perfectly. Not always gracefully. But with more awareness.

It means asking myself, “What’s the kindest thing I could do right now?” instead of “What’s the most impressive?”

It means letting myself rest without guilt.

It means staying open to people who see the world differently without needing to agree on everything.

It means recognising that healing doesn’t happen in the extremes, it happens in the spaces in between.

The middle way isn’t bland. It’s not mediocre. It’s powerful. It’s where nuance lives. Where true choice lives. Where the body and soul finally feel safe enough to soften.

So if you’ve ever lived in the extremes, if you’ve swung between overdoing and shutting down, between obsession and avoidance—you’re not alone. You’re not broken.

You’re just being invited, again and again, to return to the middle.

To the space where life gets to be a little more gentle. And a lot more real.

The World Is on Fire—and It’s Also a Mirror: Finding Peace in the Chaos

Some days, the world feels unrecognisable.

We’re witnessing war, collapse, polarisation, anxiety, and fear on a massive scale. People are overwhelmed. Families are fractured. Social media has become a battleground. Our nervous systems are overstretched. And it’s hard not to wonder: Where is this all going?

It’s tempting to point fingers. To blame the system. To blame each other. To retreat or rage.

But something I keep coming back to again and again is the idea that the chaos we see in the world isn’t just “out there.”

It’s also a mirror.

As Within, So Without

The violence, the division, the rigidity, the fear—it’s everywhere.
And yet, I’ve seen those same patterns alive in me too.

In my own all or nothing thinking.
In the ways I’ve cut people off for not aligning perfectly with my views.
In the times I’ve felt at war within myself, my body saying one thing, my mind saying another.

The macro reflects the micro.
The collective mirrors the personal.
The world is a fractal of our inner terrain.

And that might sound overwhelming at first because it puts some responsibility back in our hands.

But it’s also where our power lives.

Inner Peace Is Activism

I used to think that inner work was private. Separate. The older I get, the more I see that how we tend to our inner world ripples outward.

When I soften instead of shut down…
When I stay present instead of react…
When I choose curiosity instead of certainty…
That creates a small but powerful shift in the field around me.

Microdosing has helped me with this in ways I never expected.
It hasn’t made the world less chaotic but it’s made me more anchored. More discerning. More able to hold the discomfort of not knowing, not fixing, not fighting.

And in that space, healing becomes possible.

Practicing the Middle Way in a Polarised World

We are being constantly pulled toward extremes.
Online, in politics, in health, in identity—everywhere.

It takes real strength to stay centred.
To sit in nuance.
To say “both” instead of “either.”
To humanise the people we’re told to hate.
To acknowledge the complexity of what we’re facing without becoming paralysed.

For me, this has become a spiritual practice.

I still get it wrong. I still polarise, react, retreat. But now I notice it sooner. I come back quicker. I pause more often. And I keep asking: Where am I at war within myself? Because I know that’s where peace needs to begin.

The World Needs Regulated, Resourced People

It’s easy to feel powerless in times like this.

But you tending to your nervous system is not irrelevant.
You speaking gently to yourself is not insignificant.
You choosing to breathe instead of lash out is not meaningless.

This is how worlds change.

From the inside out.
From the nervous system up.
From the heart first.

If the world is a mirror, then peace must begin somewhere.
Let it begin in you.

Psychedelics Aren’t a Shortcut: Why Preparation and Integration Matter

We live in a culture that worships the quick fix.

We want instant results.
Immediate healing.
One ceremony to clear all the trauma.
One trip to meet God and come back changed forever.

And to be clear—psychedelics can be utterly life-changing.
They can awaken something deep and ancient.
They can remind us of who we really are beneath the layers of pain, fear, and forgetting.

But without support before, during, and after, they can also leave us unanchored, confused, overwhelmed, and more disconnected than when we started.

Because psychedelic experiences don’t happen in a vacuum.
They happen in the body.
In a culture.
In a nervous system.
In a life that likely wasn’t built to hold the kind of spiritual or emotional unraveling that they can catalyse.

The Myth of the One-Time Cure

Some people are drawn to psychedelics hoping for a cure and understandably so.
When you’ve carried pain for years, when traditional approaches haven’t helped, when nothing else has worked, it makes sense to hope that this might be the thing that finally shifts everything.

But healing isn’t a one-night event.
It’s a layered, complex, and often non-linear journey.
Psychedelics might open the door but walking through it is where the work really begins.

And yet we see it all the time:
No preparation.
No intention.
No context.
Just a desire to break through or be “fixed.”

But you can’t shortcut the soul.

Spiritual Awakenings Can Feel Like Crises

We rarely talk about how destabilising awakening can be.
We celebrate peak experiences—light, bliss, love, oneness but what happens when someone comes back and can’t make sense of what they’ve seen?

What happens when old trauma rises fast and hot to the surface?
What happens when the veil thins and they have no framework, no guide, no support to help them integrate it?

In a world that doesn't speak the language of spirit, altered states are often pathologised.
In many western psychiatric systems, there’s no space for mystical experiences.
They’re misread as mania. Delusion. Psychosis.

I once did a training on how to support someone through a psychedelic crisis. A psychotherapist shared a story about being called into a hospital—one with a strong Catholic foundation. A patient had taken a large dose of psychedelics and reported “meeting God.”

The psychiatrist on duty was a devout Catholic.

You’d think, of all people, he might hold space for that kind of experience. But instead, he insisted it was impossible. That what the patient had encountered couldn’t be real.

He wanted to have them sectioned.

The irony still strikes me: here was someone whose entire faith tradition is built on the belief in divine encounter—and yet when someone actually experienced it, outside of doctrine and dogma, it was instantly pathologised.

This is the kind of contradiction that lives in our culture. We say we believe in the soul, in spirit, in mystery but we don’t know how to hold it when it shows up unfiltered, unscheduled, or inconvenient.

And meanwhile, we see the opposite distortion happening in the media.

Headlines that say: “Psilocybin cures depression in a single dose.”
“LSD may rewire the brain.”
“New research shows psychedelics heal trauma faster than therapy.”

It’s framed as a miracle cure. A magic bullet. A quick fix.

But what’s often missing is nuance.

Healing is not just about neurochemistry. Psychedelics aren’t just "rewriting the script" in the brain, they’re bringing people into contact with their deepest pain, their unlived grief, their repressed rage, their fractured sense of self. And for that to be truly healing, it needs context. Care. Safety. Integration.

Without that, we risk retraumatising people instead of supporting them. We risk opening doors we’re not prepared to help people walk through.

What We Need Is a New Culture of Care

We need more than access to psychedelics.
We need safe containers. Skilled facilitators. Trauma-aware support. Integration circles. Nervous system literacy. Community.

We need people who understand that a 6-hour journey can open a 6-month portal.
And that what happens after the ceremony is just as important as what happens during it.

We need to move from consuming medicine to relating to it.
From chasing highs to honouring the deep, slow work of healing.

This Isn’t About Shame—It’s About Love

If you’ve had a difficult journey, or gone into an experience unprepared, please know this:
You are not broken.
You are not naive.
You are not alone.

Most of us weren’t given the tools to understand what this path really demands.
We weren’t taught how to hold ourselves through unraveling.
We weren’t shown how to tend to the soul.

This is why I do the work I do.
Not to gatekeep psychedelics but to protect the sacred.
To create containers that are safe, slow, embodied, and grounded in care.

So that when the door opens, you don’t have to walk through it alone.
And when you meet God, your body is ready to receive the message.
And when your trauma comes to the surface, there’s enough love in the room to hold it.

Psychedelics aren’t the healing.
They’re the invitation.

Integration is the healing.
Relationship is the healing.
Being seen, held, and slowly becoming yourself again—that’s the healing.

Let’s build a world that knows how to hold people through it all.