Nice to meet you
Let me introduce myself properly...
I spent most of my life 'working on' becoming anything other than the me that I felt I was stuck with, a 'me' that was a source of constant disappointment. This me lacked confidence, was timid and fearful, couldn't get started in a career, was over-performing and under-earning in menial jobs, was too frightened to date. This me was full of anxiety and constantly self-critical. I was deeply ashamed of who I was.
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To make matters worse, there was another version of me inside my head. This me was bold and courageous, outspoken and dynamic, fun and flirty; this me was really making a difference in the world. The gap between the two felt like an unbearable burden.
Then I came across this quote:
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"Change occurs when one becomes what he is, not when he tries to become what he is not." Arnold Beisser
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Reading this was like a HUGE penny dropping. There was a powerful moment of recognition; all the running away from myself had been an exercise in futility. I needed to accept and become more of who I already was if I was ever to find peace.
As the penny dropped, I was reminded of something my therapist had said to me 20 years earlier. I’d arrived in his therapy room a sobbing mess after a relationship break up, being made redundant and feeling lost and at sea in my life. With the most tenderness I have ever experienced from another human, he simply said,
"It sounds as if you want to come home."
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​Those nine words spoke directly to my heart and enabled me to connect to a compassion for myself that I had, until that point, not experienced.
I have spent the last decade (nine and half years to be precise but it’s not as pithy!) coaching other people. I have worked with hundreds of people across whole spectrums of society – from people serving life sentences in prison to senior civil servants running the country, from interns to CEOs, from women fleeing domestic violence to GPs.
I have been invited behind the personas into people’s inner worlds - and what have I seen, again and again, regardless of who I’m talking to? The gap. The same gap that tortured me, between the reality and perception of self.
I’ve worked with so many fabulous, talented, funny, caring, brilliant people who can’t see how brilliant they are because they’re too busy trying to become someone they’re not. It’s humbling.
Put all of this together and what do you get?
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My mission:
to support others to come home to who they TRULY are.
to offer simple and accessible ways for people to experience more peace and ease in their lives by becoming more of who they already are.
to help others redirect their energies away from ‘improving’ and ‘working on’ themselves and towards building a loving relationship with themselves.
