Tell me more who is Donna stichbury

I believe that we support the child to BE the very best version of themselves. At the same time as we untangle the wounds that the adult has experienced from the past. This is my definition of conscious parenting and teaching.

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For over a decade, Donna Stichbury has been quietly watching—observing not just children, but the way adults move, respond, react, and relate to them. Her lens was never judgment, but deep curiosity. What she saw was profound:

So often, our struggles with children are not about them… they’re echoes from our own untended past.

This realisation became the beginning of what would eventually become Inside OUT—a powerful, tender, and transformative approach to caregiving, parenting, and self-understanding.


🌱 Where It All Began

Donna's path was lit early on by the influence of the Pikler Institute in Budapest. Their radically respectful way of being with infants touched something in her—something deep, ancient, and quietly revolutionary. She began to understand: the child doesn’t need fixing. They need space. They need presence. They need us—regulated, healed, and whole.


And so Donna began weaving.


Neuroscience – understanding the developing brain
Nervous system theory – what safety feels like in the body
Attachment – how we connect, disconnect, and come back
Intergenerational healing – where the past lives in the now



And then came Interplay... and everything changed

It was when Donna met Donna Berry, founder of Interplay, that the final thread clicked into place. Berry’s trauma-informed, play-based work gave Donna the embodied language she had been searching for. Suddenly, everything she’d been sensing, observing, and quietly holding for years had a shape.



The healing path wasn’t about “doing better” for the children—it was about untangling our own stories, so they could unfold freely into theirs.



Inside OUT became a space for both adults and children to be seen, heard, and held—where behavior is no longer judged but deeply understood.

The Golden Thread

Finding your starting place - This is my cheapest work to find where to start or of you need to go deeper.

  • The Golden Thread - is where everything weaves together. This is my membership and really where all my online work is now focused. I have created this for only $10 for the NZ market as I have found that parents struggle financially and I wanted to do my bit to offer quality guidance at a LOW price.I

  • Every 13 weeks I offer a different LIVE mini course relevant to parenting and teaching. In July 2025 it will be Chaos to Calm. My course in the nervous system and in October 2025 it will be Bridges to Security my LIVE course to support adults to understand attachment wounds.

  • Start when you like as I am creating it that you can access at the point that you can PULL on your Golden Thread. In 2025 there is no extra charge to join LIVE session BUT you will still need to register for them.

Find your starting place

Starting 1 July 2025 - MINI SERIES Chaos to Calm

My go to for parents is my Circle of Security course

My preference is that couple come together where in a group or private 1:1 session. Just listen to Ashleigh and Sam about their experience

We have an almost 3-year-old daughter, and we have just completed the Circle of Security course with Donna. 


We are so glad that we did this course, and we noticed positive changes right from the first session. The Circle of Security framework was easy to follow, and we had a lot of "ah-ha" moments when we started to understand each other's perspectives and experiences better and how these impacted our respective parenting styles and approaches to different scenarios. 


Donna was very flexible and helpful in letting us complete the sessions in our own time, as we were limited by child care options. 

She created a safe, welcoming environment that enabled us to open up without judgment and discuss whatever was on our minds. The course provided a "language" that we could use to clearly communicate to each other what was occurring with our daughter and within the family dynamic.  


From a father's perspective, I think this course should be compulsory for all couples. As a busy father, it is easy to be overwhelmed when little people experience big emotions but the course gave me such helpful tools to deal with this. Prior to the course, I often felt I was just trying to keep up and was pushed to my limits. The course helped me to understand my child's emotional needs and respond with more kindness and compassion, while also feeling confident to hold boundaries with her. The course has helped me to be more present and to feel more connected to both my daughter and my wife. Many thanks to Donna and your ability to convey this information in such a safe space and an easy to understand manner. 


As a mother, it was so helpful to do the course as a couple and both hear the same information in a neutral environment. It has definitely had a positive impact on both our parenting and our relationship with each other. Thanks so much, Donna. 


Ashleigh and Sam

Want to know more

share you email and I'll be in touch to help you with your starting place

Thank You

InsideOUT 12 week mentoring programme.

If you want to deep dive


After more than a decade of supporting families and early childhood professionals, a clear and recurring pattern began to emerge. I noticed that many of the adults I worked with—caring, dedicated people—were unknowingly carrying wounds of their own. Not dramatic or overt trauma, but what Dr. Gabor Maté so insightfully refers to as “small-t” trauma: the subtle, often invisible injuries of disconnection, unmet needs, and unacknowledged pain that accumulate quietly over time.

These wounds, often formed in our earliest relationships, go unnoticed because we are so focused on caring for others—our children, our students, our communities. We rarely turn inward. We rarely pause to ask, Where have I been hurt? What am I still carrying? How is this shaping the way I relate to others and to myself?

Driven by these questions, I chose to deepen my understanding. I trained to become a relationship mentor with a focus on attachment wounds—the kinds of wounds that shape not just our emotional lives, but our nervous systems, our beliefs, and our daily interactions.

From this work, I created a 12-week mentoring journey.

Part One: The Inner Work (Weeks 1–6)

The first half is devoted to you. Not the parent or teacher role you occupy, but the person within.

We begin by identifying your first attachment wound and exploring how it still shows up in your life today. Together, we gently bring this to awareness, not to pathologise, but to understand. This stage is deeply personal, often tender, and always grounded in compassion.

We then move toward uncovering your core needs—the essential emotional and relational needs that may have gone unmet in your early life. Many people describe feeling like they “self-sabotage,” but what we often discover is that these patterns are actually attempts by the body and mind to meet those core needs in the only way they know how.

This work is not about fixing you. It is about reclaiming yourself.

By the end of these six weeks, I recommend a period of reflection and integration. True healing cannot be rushed, it needs space to settle into the body.

Part Two: The Outer Work (Weeks 7–12)

Once we’ve laid the groundwork, we begin to explore how you show up in your relationships with your partner, children, colleagues, and the world around you.

We look at:

  • How you ask for your needs to be met

  • What might be blocking those needs

  • Your relationship with boundaries

  • How you communicate, and how you’re heard

Depending on your journey, we may also draw on nervous system regulation, somatic practices, or shadow work—always paced according to what your system is ready to hold.

Let me be clear: I do not offer quick fixes or miracle cures. I am not here to "heal you." What I offer is mentorship—compassionate guidance through the complex, beautiful, and sometimes painful work of self-discovery. You do the work. I walk beside you and help you find the tools that resonate most deeply for your healing.

There are at least 21 known emotional wounds, and they may surface at different stages in our lives. This is not a linear journey. But what I can give you are lifelong skills—tools that will continue to serve you long after our sessions are over.

If you are a parent or teacher who senses that something deeper is calling for your attention, not in the children you care for, but in this work that is about you.


Interplay

Working with attachment wounds and connecting parents back to their children through play

There is so much that goes unsaid in early life.


The body remembers what the mind cannot yet name.


Over the past year, I’ve been working with a remarkable approach called Interplay, developed by Donna Rego (Berry). It has quietly, yet powerfully, reshaped how I support children and the adults who care for them.


What makes Interplay so profound is that it gives children a voice to what was never spoken. The losses, the unmet needs, the confusion or overwhelm that may have occurred before they had the words or the support to process them.


My role in this process is not to "fix" or diagnose. Instead, I listen. I interpret the subtle cues, the play, the behaviour, the silences, and begin to give language to the unsaid.


Together, we walk a path of recognition, reorganisation, and ultimately, a rewriting of the stories that live in the nervous system. We don’t change the past, but we change how it lives in the present.


I continue to be amazed by what Interplay can unlock for both children and their families. It is gentle, respectful, and deeply intuitive work. And like all meaningful healing, it is grounded in relationship.


If you’re curious to learn more, I invite you to watch my first conversation with Donna Berry. Her presence and insight are truly something to experience. You’ll find our second conversation within my membership community, where we go deeper into the possibilities of this work.



A workshop NOT to be missed

Donna talks about her IMPORTANT work

Your guide

and still remembering this is your GOLDEN THREAD

Donna is not just a facilitator—she’s a space holder, a thread weaver, and a quiet force of nature. People who work with her often say the same thing: “She holds the deepest, safest space I’ve ever known.” With calm presence, heartfelt integrity, and unwavering compassion, she invites adults back to themselves—so they can show up in new ways for the children they love or work with. She’s not in it for fame. She’s not in it for money. In fact, she offers her most powerful work—The Golden Thread membership—for just $10 a week, because she believes healing should be accessible to everyone.

Donna Stichbury