Jessie Shedden
- Oct 23, 2022
- 3 min read

Couch Surfing to Freedom

Updated: Nov 7, 2022

Couch Surfing to Freedom with the Seekers

It’s almost 5 years since I landed with a splat in this world.

Since I dragged the last of my bits quietly down the stairs and into my car and fled.

Stopping in a public car park to ask if I could couch surf with a friend for the night & crossing my fingers, I’d get access to my rental property the next day.

Freedom! Ahhhhhh!

After my back recovered from one night on a chesterfield sofa (they look awesome, but I wouldn’t recommend them for sleeping on – did you know leather is reallllly cold in the dead of winter?) and another night on a blow-up bed that was flat by morning!

Can you imagine my double take when I started making new friends and they would tell me how inspiring they found me doing me was?

Uh?!

Isn’t this what people do out here??

Don’t you all live life to the full, having fun, doing whatever’s right for you knowing that no one will stop you? I’d wonder as I munched toast in my new kitchen and the chooks scratched for grubs in the garden outside.

I came to it that it was just this particular group of people – a bunch of odd socks.

Surely large chunks of humanity couldn’t feel like this.

But I go on to discover they do.

The clubs I joined,
The friends I made,
The models I worked with,
The photographers I worked with,
The doctors, the patients, and the staff I'd worked with in my NHS role,
The other ex-cult members,
My partners,
The women who join the same MLM as I signed up to,
The ones that left it when I did,
The friends I made in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 & 2022,
The family I made,
The clients I serve,

It becomes a by-line.

Thrown around until it almost loses its meaning.

“There is such an outcry of freedom

that has not been heard for millennia.”

– Cat Knott & The Crew

When COVID stepped in and somewhat curbed my physical freedoms – aside from overindulging in raspberry trifle and Indian takeaways thanks to Just Eat, while binge-watching seasons of The Crown on Netflix – my focus shifted to trying to understand why so many of us believed we weren’t free.

Enforced restrictions brought heightened awareness of my mental limitations – supposed limitations and my desire for freedom kicked back in again.

Between deciding to share my story – because hell I was free to now – and throwing myself into 101 healing modalities I strove to pry away the tightly clenched claws that appeared to be wrapped around my brain.

My brainwashed brain, needed ‘unwashing’ – is that a word?

It felt like I had little people running all over my scalp opening manhole covers to release the steam – like you see in downtown Manhattan.

But the steamy smoke never seemed to die down.

It rumbled on like some half-dormant-never-to-be-trusted volcano

And the freedom came in thumbnail-sized doses.

All the while I found myself tethered to my past like a goat staked under a tree, never fully able to wander free.

Semi-free

Freedom didn’t need someone to drill a large crater-sized hole in my skull,

It was much simpler than that

And something that I alone could do.

And like a cat that got the cream, I had just discovered the quickest and easiest route to deep soul freedom

By trialing and testing 101 other possibilities.

And seeing as I still get asked how I live as freely and authentically as I do, what would I share?

The 99 ways I tried and discarded…

Or the couple that made all the difference?

Well, I'd want them all to be lucky ducks so I scribbled down just the very best of my findings.

Why The Soul Seeks Freedom gives the shortcuts to leaving the least interesting part of your life (the past) behind

So you can embrace today, with its fun, its joy, and its freedom!

Talking of fun it's been so much fun, to strip out all the unnecessary steps and condense it down to the cinchy simple shortcuts - because why miss out on any more of life??

Live free!