Hey there, you’re so welcome here. I am Amari Love, a writer and filmmaker, a mind-body practitioner and somatic coach who recovered from over 30 years of chronic pain and illness, including three years bedbound and housebound with Long Covid and M.E./CFS and cancer. For so much of my life I lived with unexplained symptoms and a long list of diagnoses. Treatments came and went, but nothing created lasting change. It wasn’t until I understood how hidden stressors, suppressed emotions, and behavioural survival patterns shape the brain and nervous system that real recovery became possible.

From childhood, my body gave me constant signals that something was wrong. I had growing pains as a small child, then chronic back pain from the age of sixteen — pain that never fully left, and that I was treated for from that age. By my twenties I had accumulated a long list of diagnoses: fibromyalgia, a slipped disk, widespread bone pain, severe gut problems, breathing difficulties, depression and anxiety. Like many people, I kept pushing through. I focused on career, ambition, and contribution, often working more than one job at a time. When I became a mother I added that to the rest, determined to excel there too. By this point I had exhausted every healing protocol I could find: diets, retreats, supplements, fasts, juice cleanses, intensive gym routines. I battled cancer and kept going. Outwardly fighting fit; inwardly, my symptoms kept multiplying.

It was a lifetime of searching; sometimes for relief from pain or discomfort, sometimes for love and connection, and sometimes for life’s deeper meaning. I was an artist, a filmmaker, a coach to actors and creatives, and then I became a mother. Under all these roles, I was a workaholic, a perfectionist, a high achiever, and a people-pleaser. I never felt good enough, so I kept striving, doing more and more, hoping to reach that elusive goal of connection and understanding. But no matter how hard I tried, it never satisfied my heart.

I now understand I was living with M.E. / chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic pain and fibromyalgia all along, but at the time I had no idea my symptoms were connected. I managed through sheer willpower, but pain, fatigue, and loss of capacity meant my world kept shrinking.

When the pandemic hit, everything crashed. I was one of the first in the UK to contract Covid, told to stay home in bed because hospitals were unprepared. I thought my new symptoms would last a few weeks, but instead, it took the next three years. I lived with a revolving list of diagnoses, conditions and symptoms that added to my existing ones: I had brain fog, PEM, blackouts, and other new issues to manage. My life kept getting smaller until I could no longer eat, nor walk, nor read, nor lift my arms. It became so that I couldn’t leave my bed and I was stuck in a room with blacked-out windows. 

I thought I had reached the end. Then I finally discovered neuroplasticity and mind-body healing, particularly the TMS work of Dr John Sarno, pain reprocessing (PRT) and nervous system healing. For the first time, everything started making sense; the decades of pain and symptoms that nothing had touched. Everything shifted.

What followed was a focused journey through brain rewiring, somatic healing, and emotional integration. These approaches reshaped how my brain and nervous system functioned, and my mind and body began to recalibrate. I immersed myself in neuroplasticity research, somatic approaches, emotional healing frameworks, and cross-disciplinary training. I learned how to identify and release the hidden stressors and emotional patterns that drive chronic pain and systemic illness, and I studied and trained so I could guide others through the same process.

Now that I have fully regained my health (I say I am “150% recovered”), I finally feel connected and can sense the meaning in it all. Joy arises naturally.