Holly Maree’s journey from trauma to triumph is nothing short of inspiring. Overcoming deep-seated childhood trauma, Holly has navigated a path marked by resilience, personal growth, and healing. Her story is one of not just surviving, but thriving—transforming pain into power. Despite experiencing severe abuse and life-threatening business challenges, she has emerged stronger, using her experiences as a foundation for her success in business and life. Holly’s insight into human potential and the healing process offers a beacon of hope to anyone seeking to break free from cycles of trauma and find true alignment.
Can you elaborate on how your childhood trauma influenced your business experiences and decisions?
Childhood trauma is almost always complex trauma, because it is most often relational. When the trauma you experienced was at the hands of a parent or another immediate family member, the depth of damage from that complex trauma skyrockets, but in a cruel twist, also leaves people in a social position where no help and resources are available. Childhood trauma is the most unresolved, unacknowledged, unsupported areas of trauma. I am no exception to that. I spent decades knowing that I was deeply traumatised. I had been sexually abused by my older brother from the ages of 8 to 21, I had been regularly physically abused by my father, and had been in a co-dependant, emotionally abusive relationship with my mother because I needed her to survive. It was not news to me that I was traumatised, and when I was diagnosed with Complex PTSD at 19 years old, I simply nodded in acknowledgement of such a blatantly obvious truth. But knowing that I was traumatised did nothing to stop the impact of that trauma on my life. Like most complex trauma sufferers, I was an overachiever. I excelled academically, I was highly sought after in every professional field I entered, I had an extensive social network and from the outside, an apparently successful life. But trauma was certainly at the helm of my decision making and in the quiet moments when I could no longer sustain my hypervigilance, hyper independence and anxiety, I was certainly suffering under the crushing weight of my trauma.
To most people, when I decided to leave my business consultancy firm and buy my own big business, it looked like success. It looked like an excellent decision. I was achieving, hustling, and doing big things with my life. But I internally knew exactly how bad that decision was, and I knew it was being driven by my trauma-need to be loved and accepted after a lifetime of abandonment. I bought a business out of bankruptcy and got myself involved with investors and previous owners who had obviously terrible agendas. I thought I could push through it all. And on the outside, I did. Within the first year I turned that bankrupt business into a $1 million turnover, hitting $2.25 million annual turnover by the second year. I supported 50 staff, expanded the business from hospitality into additional retail and events. I even collaborated with charities and built a magnetic media presence for the business. But inside of that, I was suffering immensely. I was having panic attacks, not sleeping, working 100 hours a week and trying to prop up a business with so many debts that despite the millions in income, it was being bled dry, with me along with it. By the end of the first year, I had investors who were physically threatening my life and bringing a constant barrage of abuse. I was recreating the trauma of my childhood and living it in real time as an adult.
What were some of the specific challenges you faced when your business collapsed, and how did they mirror your past trauma?
Like all things built on trauma, the business eventually started to collapse. Really, I was the one who collapsed and the business followed suit. I developed a stress-induced heart condition that worsened until I was going into cardiac arrest and losing consciousness 15 times a day. It was not responding to any treatment and it became clear that I either needed to leave the business or die. I also became suicidal and spent months terrified that my body would die, or I would kill it. The only option was to walk away from the business and hand back everything I had created. To do that, I needed to effectively cut my own arm off. I took on $180k of debt from the previous owners, handed the $2 million dollar business and its stock to the investors, and got out before it took my life. The shame of having been a “failure” in business was immense. My self abandonment and people pleasing tendencies (all aspects of my trauma patterns) became overwhelming and utterly toxic. I buried myself in lining up jobs for my 50 staff to go to, without finding employment or money for myself. I sank into a deep depression and sense of hopelessness that I hadn’t experienced since my sexual abuse had begun when I was a child. That business was a complete, crisp, harrowing mirror of the abuse I had experienced through childhood. From physical violence to emotional abuse, from fighting to survive to disacciating, from aligning myself with destructive people and believing I could still succeed to keeping all of the abuse and stress a secret – all of it was my trauma playing out on a fresh new stage.
How did you navigate the transition from business failure to personal healing and recovery?
Although I would never want to repeat a business failure like that again, for me it was the catalyst I needed to begin healing myself. I simply had no other choice but to heal. I had nothing left physically, emotionally or even financially. I was absolutely broken. I began with journaling once a day to try to quieten the voice in my head. I found that what came out of me was pain mixed with such self-love, that I began to wonder if there was more that I could be doing for myself. Certainly what I had been doing for 30 years wasn’t working. I moved from there into daily meditation, calming my body until I could sit for 45 minutes without having a panic attack. From there, it all opened up. I threw myself into personal development and discovering what spirituality and healing really meant to me. I didn’t have a plan for what I was doing, but looking back I see that I was really just following my own intuition as it guided me through healing myself.
Can you describe a pivotal moment in your journey that helped you realize the need to focus on spiritual growth?
Like most people after a huge business failure, I needed to get a job. I had $180k of debt to pay off, a house mortgage that the bank was about to foreclose on, and huge medical bills. So I went back to work and found quickly that I was repeating the identical trauma patterns again. My first job after the business collapse lasted 5 months, and it was with an emotionally abusive boss. I worked 90 hours a week, was constantly pushed to do more, and lived in a state of anxiety-filled coercive control. I quit, took a breath, and moved into another job with far less responsibility. I thought that I could hide out in a less stressful environment, but within 4 months my boss attempted to sexually assault me. It was a moment of reclamation for me to go through the process of reporting and charging him, something I hadn’t been able to do as a child. Leaving that job was a door closing moment for me. I couldn’t be in a work environment, and I didn’t feel strong enough to create another big business, so I started a blog in the hope that I could hide my face away and still build a successful online business from it. It didn’t take me long to realise that what I was resisting was spiritual growth. Sitting down to work on that blog (it was about vintage clothing, of all things!) I could feel the stories of my own spiritual journey screaming to come out. It was up to me to take the risk to publicly build a
In what ways did your approach to success change after your business collapse, and why?
One of the most unexpected parts of having a hugely successful business was that it illuminated to me how much it didn’t feel like success at all. I hit all the milestones of conventional success – I had millions of dollars, a prominent business, was the face of a brand and was definitely achieving success by all the measures I’d been taught. And yet I hated it. I detested it, in fact. It didn’t feel successful to me at all, but rather it felt like torture. As though I had sold my soul for a success that didn’t even feel good. It completely reshaped my view of what success actually is. Even when I began succeeding in the online space as a coach, I found myself repeating the same patterns. Doing all the success things, getting the money, becoming a popular brand – and I felt empty. I didn’t connect to the success at all. So I took the leap to shut my business completely. I closed off my programs, refunded clients and archived my business for a whole year, even though I had just reached the income status that most entrepreneurs dream of. I was sick of repeating the same cycles. I definitely knew how to succeed in business by that point, but I wanted to learn how to succeed within myself in a way that felt peaceful and aligned. I wanted my success to feel like success. That’s really where Human Design entered my life, alongside a deep period of healing the wounds and traumas I had around needing to be a high achiever, and needing to do things the way I was taught to.
How did you discover and embrace Human Design, and how has it impacted your personal and professional life?
Human Design came into my life in 2018, but I resisted it almost entirely for 2 years. I had already learned so much from other spiritual and esoteric systems and I felt like Human Design would just be another set of acronyms that didn’t mean much. Kind of like, “What’s your Sun, Moon and Rising signs?” or “What is your life path number?” Any system can be helpful for self awareness but I wasn’t looking to add more to my knowledge bank. But it continued to come back into my space over and over, from various people, until I eventually threw my hands up in the air (literally!) and told the Universe that if it really wanted me in Human Design, I would do it. From that moment, I opened myself up to what it could teach me, and this system revolutionised my whole world. Learning that I’m a Manifestor energy type completely represented my entire life experience. From being deeply creative, to needing long periods of rest, to struggling with consistency, to being angry and even to being repelling to other people. Human Design, on many levels, unlocked parts of me that were in need of healing, but also in need of reclamation. It gave me permission to be myself in a way that no other language ever had. Throughout my business shutdown in 2020, I certified in Human Design (and Gene Keys, which is a counterpart to Human Design) and completely devoted myself to whatever it would teach me. At the end of that year, after 8 months of deep rest and healing, I came out and created the million dollar business I have now, which is a community of Human Design teaching dedicated entirely to Manifestors. It was the first time someone had taken a single energy type and built a business off it, but four years down the track, there are now communities available for all energy types. It’s so beautiful to see. I don’t believe Human Design, or any system, is the one true way. I believe there is so much experience and healing beyond Human Design, but I can’t deny that it is a powerful language for accessing yourself on deeper layers and coming into alignment with who you truly are in ways that genuinely change the world.
What advice would you give to someone who feels stuck in a cycle of trauma and failure?
Unfortunately what gets overlooked in trauma is that we need a complex toolkit to address it. In medical science (like psychology), the focus is on recovering from the injury trauma leaves. Trauma is an injury to the brain and the nervous system which needs treatment in order to recover. Without treating that (the dysregulation in your nervous system and the incorrectly formed neural pathways in your brain), you don’t get anywhere. You just keep looping in trauma patterns like I did, because that is literally what your brain is directing you to do. But when you enter spiritual/personal development spaces, the focus is on healing the trauma by looking at it as a spiritual and emotional experience only. This overlooks the physical injury. In truth, recovery is only half the journey, and healing doesn’t occur without recovery first. So both medical science and spirituality need to work together in your trauma healing. When you feel stuck, it is because you are stuck. There are ways out, but it won’t take care of itself.
What have been some of the most rewarding aspects of your journey from trauma to success?
I could list a lot of the success milestones and accolades. Things like money and status and how many people follow me, and even how often I speak on global platforms. But to me, all of that is just the daily work. The most rewarding part has been in seeing how my relationship to myself and the people around me have changed. Being free from daily trauma triggers has been a massive reward. Being able to regulate my own body and mind when trauma resurfaces. Even being able to publicly tell my trauma story is huge. The most rewarding part of going from being that traumatised, sexually and physically abused, emotionally destroyed little girl (even in going from being the abused business owner I previously was) is that I now feel so much freedom from it. I’ve been able to make my trauma my medicine, as well as a medicine for others.
How do you maintain balance and well-being while managing a successful business?
I’m careful and attentive to my energy every single day. It’s a lifetime devotion. I have to look after my physical body so much, because my trauma was so extensive that my brain and nervous system will always be a little bit more sensitive than most people are. So I eat well, I exercise every day and I make sure I get good sleep. Beyond that, I rest and play far more than I work. I have set up systems of people and platforms around me that help me share the load of the work I do. It would seem like this gets easier to do when you have more money in business, but the opposite is true. The more financial success you get, the more pressure there is to keep it up at that level, even going higher, consistently. So I take a lot of breaks for holidays and days for total disconnection from the world. It keeps me connected to my own energy rather than getting caught up in the expectations and pressures from other people. I recognise that I’m not a machine, I’m a healer and a creator, and those parts of me need to be looked after.
What message would you like to convey to women who are currently facing significant personal or professional challenges?
It’s all happening for a reason. The philosophy of Eckhart Tolle, that everything is happening FOR you, not TO you, is undeniably true. This challenge you are experiencing, even this trauma that you are struggling to heal, isn’t here to make you suffer. It is here to prompt you to heal. You can heal. It is possible for you. There is more to life than challenges and pain and roadblocks. Often, we give up too soon and chalk it up to failure. I’ve experienced major failure in a very public way, and while I don’t feel the need to repeat it, I also know it was a very powerful catalyst for me. Without it, I would still be floundering in a dissatisfied life and wondering when my life is really going to start. Take the challenge as the invitation to the healing and the medicine.
How do you envision using your experiences and expertise to support and inspire others in the future?
While the last four years have been all about building The Manifestor Community, it now feels like I have achieved that and there is space for a new vision to come through. The Manifestor Community is thriving with tens of thousands of people, a recognisable name in the Human Design space, and a secure high 6-figure income. So my focus has turned to what I can create in the world that helps people to truly heal from trauma. Long term I see a collaborative treatment center where people with trauma can come and access the whole range of recovery and healing tools from psychology to therapy to somatic healing and spiritual modalities (like breathwork, sound healing, light therapy, channeling, etc). I want to create spaces that converge the gap between trauma recovery and trauma healing, so that true healing is actually possible. We are living in an age where trauma is our greatest pandemic, yet we are still so unaware of its impact on an individual and collective level. I mean to meet that with spaces that offer answers. It might take me a while, but lucky I know how to make businesses that succeed! So I’m already on my way, starting small, and watching it gain momentum.
IG: @themanifestorcommunity and @beingmewithcptsd
W: www.themanifestorcommunity.com
