About

You Are Allowed to Want More Than Survival.

Sometimes the difficult experience ends, but survival mode does not.

You may still find yourself bracing for what could go wrong. Overthinking. People-pleasing. Shutting down. Struggling to rest. Feeling disconnected from yourself. Carrying grief you never had space to process. Knowing intellectually that you are safe while your body seems to have missed the message.

Or perhaps you have already done a great deal of healing and are asking a different question:

What comes next?

How do I rebuild my confidence?
Who am I beyond what happened to me?
What do I actually want from my life?
How do I stop merely coping and begin living more intentionally?

The Blooming Practice exists for both parts of that journey.

The healing.

And the becoming.

Hi, I’m Marelize.

I’m Marelize Krieg, a Cape Town-based Specialist Wellness Counsellor designated by the Association for Supportive Counsellors and Holistic Practitioners (ASCHP), working across counselling, personal development, and life coaching.

My particular areas of interest are trauma recovery, post-traumatic growth, emotional wellbeing, and nervous-system healing.

I created The Blooming Practice to offer something I believe many people need: a compassionate space where we can acknowledge what has happened to us without allowing it to become the entirety of who we are.

My work is not about fixing people.

It is about helping people understand themselves, develop new ways of navigating difficult experiences, reconnect with their own agency, and gradually build lives that feel safer, fuller, and more authentically their own.

You are more than what you survived. And healing is only one part of the story.

Healing. Growth. Becoming.

The Blooming Practice sits at the intersection of healing and personal growth.

Through counselling, I support people who may be navigating trauma, anxiety, grief, chronic stress, difficult relationships, life transitions, emotional overwhelm, or patterns that are making everyday life harder.

Through life coaching and personal development, the focus can shift towards the life you want to create: your goals, identity, confidence, habits, values, direction, relationships, wellbeing, and the person you are becoming.

Sometimes we need support tending to the wounds.

Sometimes we are ready to plant something new.

And sometimes both are happening at once.

That is why The Blooming Practice is not built around the idea of endlessly working on yourself.

It is about learning how to live.

Don’t be sad that roses have thorns.
Be glad that thorns have roses.
Lee Child

My Approach

My foundation is person-centred, integrative, holistic, and trauma-informed.

I believe that you are the expert on your own life. I bring training, knowledge, questions, perspective, psychoeducation, practical strategies, and professional support—but I do not believe someone else should decide what your healing or growth is supposed to look like.

Together, we work with your experiences, your goals, your circumstances, your needs, and your pace.

My work may incorporate principles relating to:

trauma-informed counselling
nervous-system awareness and emotional regulation
mindfulness and grounding
body-based and trauma-sensitive practices
cognitive and behavioural strategies
strengths-based and solution-focused approaches
self-compassion and emotional awareness
psychoeducation
personal growth, goal-setting, and lifestyle design

I am particularly interested in helping people understand the connection between mind, body, emotions, behaviour, relationships, and lived experience.

Because human beings rarely fit neatly into one box.

Neither should the support we receive.

FIND OUT MORE!

More Than Counselling

The Blooming Practice is also an educational and personal-growth platform.

Not everyone is ready for counselling. Not everyone needs counselling. And much of what helps us understand ourselves can happen between sessions — or outside a counselling room altogether.

That is why I create accessible, trauma-informed content designed to help you understand what you are experiencing and give you practical ways to support yourself.

You will find:

long-form articles and reflections on trauma recovery, post-traumatic growth, grief, relationships, emotional well-being, and healing
psychoeducational content that makes psychological concepts easier to understand
journaling prompts and reflective exercises for deeper self-exploration
grounding, mindfulness, nervous-system, and emotional-regulation practices
guided meditations and gentle body-based practices
quizzes, guides, workbooks, and downloadable resources
courses and programmes for healing and personal development
practical content about self-compassion, boundaries, identity, resilience, meaning, personal growth, and creating a life beyond survival

Across my website, newsletter, social platforms, resources, counselling, and coaching, the aim remains the same: to turn psychological knowledge into something you can actually use in your everyday life.

Why “The Blooming Practice”?

Blooming is not a destination. It is a practice.

No garden flowers continuously. There are seasons for opening, seasons for shedding, seasons for tending roots, and seasons when almost everything important is happening beneath the surface.

Human beings are much the same.

The lotus at the heart of The Blooming Practice represents this philosophy.

A lotus does not grow despite the mud by pretending it was never there. It grows from where it is rooted and reaches towards something new.

That is how I think about healing.

We do not have to erase our history to grow beyond it.

We can understand what shaped us. Honour what helped us survive. Grieve what was lost. Learn what we need now. And slowly cultivate something different.

My Profiles

My Background and Qualifications

Learning is an important part of my practice, and I intend for it to remain that way.

The more we understand about human beings, trauma, relationships, bodies, emotions, and change, the more thoughtfully we can support the people sitting in front of us.

2019

Short Learning Programme in Counselling Children and Adolescents
(University of South Africa)
Short Learning Programme in Life Coaching (University of the Free State)

2022

BA Health Sciences and Social Services (Psychological Counselling) (University of South Africa)
- Minored in Victimology and Criminology

2023

BSoSci Honours (Psychology) (South African College of Applied Psychology)
- Honours research thesis on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

2024

Counsellor training and 220-hour internship as a Specialist Wellness Counsellor (Vita Nova Humanitas and Optimystic Bikers Against Abuse)
Working with teenagers (self-harm and suicide) (Vita Nova Humanitas)

2022 – 2024

Managed a support group for depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for young adults (ages 18-35) (South African Depression and Anxiety Group)

2025

Introduction to trauma counselling (Candice Clark)
Counselling in the school setting (Vita Nova Humanitas)
Working with couples (healthy communication, infidelity, and attachment styles and behaviours) (Vita Nova Humanitas)
Working with teenagers (foundational) (Vita Nova Humanitas)

2026

Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Facilitator Training (Level 1) (Candice Clark)

Currently in Progress

Life Coaching (New Insights Africa)

There are always flowers for those who want to see them.
Henri Matisse

The Person Behind the Practice

The Blooming Practice is professional work, but it is also deeply personal to me.

My interest in trauma recovery is not purely academic.

I understand that healing can look far messier from the inside than it does when condensed into inspirational quotes and neat before-and-after stories.

Real growth can involve progress and regression. Courage and fear. Hope and grief. Rest and effort. Learning something intellectually long before your body is ready to believe it.

Starting again more times than you thought you would have to.

That lived understanding is part of why I care so deeply about creating work that does not shame people for where they are.

I want The Blooming Practice to be a place that says: You can begin here.

Not when you are more confident. Not when you have everything figured out. Not when you have finally become the person you think you should be.

Here.

As you are.

And yes, outside the counselling room, I am also a devoted reader, writer, learner, nature lover, and unapologetic cat lady.

One person’s weed is another person’s wildflower.
Susan Wittig Albert

What I Hope You Find Here

Whether you arrive because you are hurting, healing, rebuilding, searching, learning, or simply wondering whether life could feel different, I hope The Blooming Practice gives you something useful to carry with you.

Perhaps that is a new understanding of yourself. A practical tool. A moment of recognition. Permission to rest. A different way of thinking about an old wound. A goal worth pursuing. A little more compassion for the person you have been. Or hope for the person you are becoming.

You do not need to bloom all at once.

You simply need somewhere to begin.

Welcome to The Blooming Practice.

Your space. Your pace. Your way of blooming.