Welcome to my story...
Hi, I’m Laura Flair.
Thank you for stopping by this page, I appreciate you being here.
I’d like to share a brief synopsis of my journey with you, as I have been called by my own soul to share my story and the tools that I have learned throughout my lifelong healing journey.
I imagine that your own path of self discovery brought you here. Perhaps that path is a passion for art, a curiosity about your own purpose, a calling to heal, or a drive to step into your highest self, or perhaps it’s something else altogether. Whatever your path is right now, I trust that you will find something here that will resonate with you and that you can take with you.
We all have the power to heal and grow. By sharing my story I wish to offer a place of relatability if needed, to inspire anyone who may need that spark and to build a safe container to promote the deepest growth.
I’ll give you a heads up, my story is not all rainbows and unicorns and there are many potential triggers in what I have to share. Before you let a trigger warning turn you around, I recommend getting a warm cup of tea and settling into a safe and comfortable space, allowing yourself to feel, as that is where the magic of healing can happen.
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To start where I started, as a young girl, I was raised by my mom and step dad - My biological dad was gone from the time I can remember, we never did meet and he passed on when I was 14 years of age.
I didn’t like my step dad from the moment I met him at the age of 6 (oh that intuition!). He was illegally in Canada from the USA so we moved to remote areas of Northern BC where I grew up in multiple different houses, often completely off grid. I made it very known that I didn’t like him, and he didn’t like me either, our mutual dislike caused much tension in the home and made me feel like an outcast for much of my childhood.
He abused hard drugs and alcohol and often had violent behaviour. I grew up isolated and poor, not a good combo for making friends. I was teased and picked on pretty harshly all through school. My best and only long term friend was my mom's best friend's daughter, who is the same age as me. In grade 6 I did make an ‘uncool kids’ club and had a few friends that year from that. I never talked to them after that year, though I’m sure that they grew up to be pretty dang awesome!
While I wasn’t making friends with other kids, I was making friends with nature, which was a pretty amazing gift that I didn't realize at that time. I spent much of my time outdoors, one of my fondest memories is of walking a log behind my house and singing out loud to the animals.
When I was 11, my step dad started taking an interest in me, and that was when the beginning of my sexual abuse trauma began.
It took a few months for me to speak up, when I did, long story short, I was removed from my family and went to live with my moms best friend and that one friend I had. It didn’t take too long for that to not work out, so I was moved to foster home after foster home, and eventually into group homes. Also eventually losing that one long term friend I had. As an unstable and hurt young human, I was living and creating a pattern of running away from any form of stability, kindness or love.
I moved around in cities in Northern BC where there was the highest drug rate per capita, and there was definitely the crime and lifestyles to go along with that. At the age of 13 I was introduced to drugs, alcohol, sex and petty crimes as a way of life. At 14 I was pregnant. Around that same time I met a foster family that took me in and I credit for saving my life. Most girls that I knew at that time are now gone in one way or another. I never made it through any full grade of school since grade 6, and fully dropped out in grade 10 after being badly harassed at school for being pregnant.
Though in a safe home with my foster parents, I was still not stable, and was pulled to the lifestyle I had been shown. I abused many kinds of drugs and alcohol all through my teen years and for a couple of years I traveled with the carnival, my foster parents caring for my son when I was not there. My foster parents have both now passed, my foster dad when I was still young and his wife a handful of years after. At the times of their passing I was still too numb to grieve, though I feel like as I write this the grieving is being allowed to take place.
Starting when I was a teen, I always had a sorted relationship with sex. As well as sharing it numbly, I was also raped and coerced multiple times by people who were my supposed ‘friends’, on occasions waking up to men having intercourse with me.
When I was 19, I was in a car accident that dislocated my vertebrae, I was immobile for a few months and never really found proper treatment until many years later which caused my injuries to worsen and spread, and left me living in chronic physical pain from then until this day.
The older I got, the worse my substance abuse got and the harder the drugs I would fall into, using things like methamphetamines and crack cocaine until I became pregnant again at 21. After that birth it wasn’t long until the abuse picked back up. I knew that I could not live or raise children this way - I made a heartbreaking decision to give my boys up for adoption when my oldest was 7 and my youngest just a baby. At this time my mom stepped in (a few years divorced from my step dad) and offered to take my boys in.
With my mom caring for my boys, I moved to Alberta, where my substance abuse calmed down a little, though alcohol was quite prominent in my life. There was a point before I left British Columbia that I was offered and accepted a free culinary education through an aborigainl program there, so when I moved to Alberta I worked as a cook and later worked as a chef at a hunting lodge as well as a few other restaurants. Working as a chef was fulfilling, the rest of the cooking jobs were not, and they encouraged a way of life that included a large amount of drinking and partying.
In my mid 20’s, I met a supportive partner, I left cooking and through a series of other random jobs over a year or so, I ended up with a position as a salesperson in a plumbing showroom. I found I loved the design aspect of the work and pursued a diploma in Interior Decorating online. I continued a career as an interior decorator in plumbing showrooms for a handful of years, until I discovered festivals and the Burning Man community in Calgary.
Shortly before I left my career and my stable income, I also left my partner of many years who had been with me in many of my transitions and who I was to marry. I left not because it was a bad relationship, but because I knew I needed change in my life and didn’t know what kind of change or how to make it happen. My previous patterns of running were so wired in that I made big decisions like this on my own, while leaving people who loved me behind.
I started doing event decor with inspiring friends in a local event production crew, led decor teams, found a passion in costume making thanks to another dear friend, started drawing again (which I used to do quite well in my early teen years), worked vending clothing at festivals and started creating my own clothing and accessories. I learned about spirituality and energy healing, I received Reiki training and now hold my Reiki Master Practitioner Certification, thanks to yet another precious friend..
I found some incredible healing by tuning into my creative passions and energy work as well as having this creative and caring community to connect with.
The downfall of this all was that the drug abuse came back, and though I know there were healthy outlets within the community, I would spend much of my time in party atmospheres and was becoming quite unhealthy mentally and physically, often breaking down and being socially anxious and depressed.
I opted to ‘go and find myself’ and wanted to travel to do so. Given that I had no money and no job, I took my TESL (teaching english as a second language) certification and was offered a teaching position at a school in central Mexico. I didn't teach long until I found busking and startign doign hula hopping and poi at stop lights. I spent a handful of years living mainly in tents and vehicles traveling around Mexico, the US and Canada, busking, selling art or picking up odd jobs for cash. I met an inspiring partner in California who I grew with for a couple years before parting ways, we traveled through the USA working with stage build crews at some amazing festivals in the USA, which gave me the opportunity to work with many incredibly talented and inspiring artists and healers. I took an Art Therapy Diploma online and I started facilitating Mandala Art Healing workshops, as well as creating large scale art projects at Canadian festivals.
Around the New year of 2018 my oldest son was placed in jail. He had been living on the streets on Vancouver Island at that point already for 2 years, and had been using opiates for at least that long. At the same time, my youngest son was placed in a foster home after he had left his grandmas a year or so earlier and had a series of his own life events.
I was living nomadically in my van at the time with no stable income or place to be, and I made the decision to do whatever it took to create a safe space for them.
Without ‘real’ work experience for nearly 10 years, not many people were interested in hiring me, so a job search was not easy. After many applications, thanks to my prior entrepreneurial work I was offered a position at an amazing E-Commerce company where I still work today helping entrepreneurs build and grow their businesses. I credit a large amount of my entrepreneurial growth and knowledge to this company.
At this point, with a stable income and the freedom to live where I wanted in BC, I moved to the Southern Interior as 2 of my siblings had already set roots here and I had fallen in love with the area from previous visits.
In July 2018, after a long search in a very tight rental market, I found a home for myself and my boys. At this same time, my mom made huge shifts, leaving a life that had not been serving her in Northern BC, and came to live with us as well.
So after a lifetime of disconnect from my family, and many little stories between us all, we were all together sharing space, plus I was now working a full time job after nearly a decade of being on my own schedule.
Every day was a new lesson as we all got to know each other. We all had different things we were working through and all coped with them differently. Around the new year of 2019, my eldest son admitted to relapsing on opiates. The journey of trying to find treatment is a whole other story that is it's own chapter. After around a month of searching, we did find a private treatment center that was somewhat affordable, so my mom helped me and we paid for him to go. The day after I picked him up and brought him home, he overdosed and his brother found him unconscious, we had to call 911 and resuscitate.
After some very trying weeks, I drove my son back to the west coast, which was where he wanted to be. That same year, 6 months after my eldest son left, my mom moved out as well, leaving the home with just myself and my teen son. In this space that was full of silence and emotions, I really started diving into ways to pull all of my tools together so I could pick myself up and move forward.
I started reutilizing old practices, studying Feng Shui, Sound Healing, Reiki, Food as Medicine, Soul Purpose Work, Meditative Mandala Art and Movement I reached outside of myself for psychotherapy, physical therapy, chiro, massage, as well as multiple other modalities in healing.
As I finish writing this to share, on the day of my 40th birthday, I am also just now learning to grieve, with the passing of my previous partner just weeks ago, who I had shifted away from in my 20’s.
This is the first time I’ve not been too numb to grieve at a loss, it is also a reminder full of happy and sad memories that have shone a bright light on patterns I have lived. This has brought me a heavy heart, though also a strong drive to break old patterning and live into every moment.
Healing is a lifelong practice. I am still processing traumas and emotions, still healing physical injuries. I still see therapists and specialists of multiple modalities on a regular basis. I still live with depression, anxiety, chronic pain and have recently been diagnosed with hyper mobility and a high possibility of being on the autism spectrum.
Though I am here and I have collected many tools to pick myself up and build myself into a solid human that can withstand any storm. I have uncovered my purpose and live with passion. In doing so, I’ve built myself in a way that I can move forward with grace, confidence and self compassion. I am joyful, passionate and full of love, and I am embracing my Soul's Flair For Life, which is to learn, grow, heal and share. I know that I have the strength for whatever comes next.
My work now as a Life Artist is to inspire and guide others to heal, grow and live with purpose by removing blockages through the art of sacred space, creative expression and authentic dialogue. I am putting my story out into the world, allowing myself to find strength in my vulnerability with the knowledge that there is still more to learn and share.
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SoulFlair wearable art is a passion project of mine that I have been working on in different forms for nearly ten years. To embrace my purpose, I am currently building my Holistic Coaching and Wellness services and am excited to be on my way to sharing these offerings more publicly soon. Stay tuned!
As I step into this new decade of being, I have stepped out of fear and into courage, and I invite you to step with me into your own Soul’s Flair
