Meet the founder

With a passion for helping people heal and watching them grow, Maria set out on the ambitious journey of creating Healing The Wounded Child, a foundation that offers global therapeutic support through visualisation, music, art, and expression. 

Working alongside Simon Maryan, the creator of the ICP and SLM. Through Maria’s past work with military and uniformed individuals and families who were suffering from PTSD, she found that children, teenagers, adults, and families can heal through creativity.

Background

Maria realised her life of experience, whether good or bad, was the pathway to Healing The Wounded Child. Every obstacle overcome was a step closer to her true purpose. As a child with undiagnosed Dyslexia, Maria found happiness through dancing and singing. When her dual heritage home life was, at times, very turbulent and challenging, her vivid imagination helped her escape. Life and its challenges enabled her to create "Dream the theme" for children's magical parties.

www.rieasevents.co.uk 

Training as a preschool teacher and learning all about child psychology gave her the passion to grow and create. She then entered into further learning and creative expression through child development, classical vocal training, circus skills, drawing, diet and nutrition, the art of method acting, and advanced counselling and therapy. She also observed and worked, for a year-long period, one-on-one with children with autism and dyspraxia. All of this led to Maria’s three-year-long work with children and parents suffering domestic abuse & victims of crime with the Hertfordshire Police Force. She also worked closely with children and teenagers in palliative care at Great Ormond Street Hospital for two years.

Every child, teenager, or adult she worked with was seeking an unconventional way to heal or manage their current situation. Through her one-on-one therapeutic creative sessions, she realised that healing did not have to be done via an old, worn-out and rigid approach. 

Recognising those with challenges became a skill – Maria could identify children with learning difficulties and those living in dysfunctional and abusive homes. 

The challenges Maria had experienced in her life were, for her, the best teacher. She turned her pain, loss and trauma into a tool to help others. In truth, realising emotional and psychological change is essential to prevent a further cycle of trauma and dysfunction, which can lead to future negative family and relationship dynamics. 

The aim of Healing The Wounded Child:

Create a future for all who have past or present psychological pain and find it difficult to move forward or step away from an unhealthy pattern.

Assist those who have lost confidence or their voice because of life and its challenges, both in the past and the present. 

Using imagination, visualisation, art, and freedom to express yourself through healing the wounded child are the first steps to positive change.