If Lost Start Here is a guide for the anxious, curious, lonely and lost. Featuring everyday places and at-home prompts designed to help you live a life that feels good.
Your Guides
Claire Fitzsimmons x Amanda Sheeren
We launched our company If Lost, Start Here in 2019 to help everyone get to a better place with their mental health and emotional well-being.
Neither of us recognized ourselves entirely in a wellness world that sold one version of how to be and didn’t reflect how we were just trying to get through life.
And though we loved the science of well-being, we wondered how we could apply all that we were learning to our everyday lives when the laundry was toppling and the yoga mats were serving as forts.
We couldn’t find what we were looking for.
We needed something more realistic, more attainable, and even kinder: a place where we could find what we needed, and help others find their way too.
This is that place.
Because the self in help isn’t working and no one should struggle alone.
Claire Fitzsimmons helps people to have more good days by developing an everyday life practice that meets them wherever they are, with whatever it is they need. Claire draws from positive psychology, transactional analysis, somatics, neuroscience, Positive Intelligence, emotions coaching, and the science of well-being to help people understand what it means to be a person in this world, and how we can possibly do life with all that life now needs to contain.
Claire also works with women in mid-life, particularly negotiating shifts associated with (peri)menopause.
Claire is one of the world’s first certified Emotions Coaching Practitioners (with In Good Company), an ICF Associate Certified Coach (ACC), and earned her Certificate in Counseling and Psychotherapy from London’s CCPE.
Claire has long been a seeker of spaces that can support our mental well-being. This has taken many forms from working internationally as an exhibition-maker—at London’s Tate Modern, Institute of Contemporary Arts and Serpentine Gallery, and San Francisco’s CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts—to co-founding places herself, such as the pop-up learning space Storefront Institute and the female-focused co-working space The Indie Alley.
Claire was a YBCA Fellow in the Public Imagination where she produced a final project envisaging the art institution as a site to explore and support our mental health. Claire also assisted in the production of The School of Life’s three-day Conference in San Francisco.
Claire has contributed pieces on mental health and emotional well-being to Liz Earle Magazine, Long Reads, The New York Times, The Independent, Anxy Magazine, Mother, UpperCase Magazine, and Good Therapy, amongst others. Her work has been featured in Stylist, Muddy Stilettos and The Slow Living Guide.
Listen to Claire on the What do people do? podcast.
Claire writes on Substack under More Good Days.
You can find details about Claire’s practice and working directly with her here.
LinkedIn Profile
While formally educated in Psychology, Amanda Sheeren went on to build upon her academic career, developing an interest in human-machine interaction and eventually going on to publish research in the field of Biomedical Informatics.
Having her first child shortly after college (whoops!) Amanda’s career shifted from intensive research to projects that could be done from home, or in odd hours, projects that could co-exist with constant nursing and near-constant crying (from all parties). From her vegan crochet company (My Hooker Friend) to her position as a birth doula and Lactation Specialist to freelance writing and graphic design gigs, Amanda has consistently found a way to keep generating creative and purposeful projects.
It wasn’t until running her own company that she realized business and philanthropy could (and should) exist hand-in-hand. Amanda is one of those rare people that aligns her life, her values and her creative endeavors. She currently works with major and indie record labels designing lyric-based merch with messaging around suicide prevention and sobriety.
With Claire, she is a co-founder of Northern California co-working space The Indie Alley, and collaboration-focused creative agency, The Collective Together. If Lost brings together Amanda’s searching approach to her own life and her shifting relationship with her own mental health.
Also Amanda designed this website and all the graphic touches.
Learn more about Amanda in this interview at All Together Co.
What we stand for:
1. Messy Selfhood
At If Lost we get positively messy in all that is real life. We believe in a version of everyday wellness that can fit within the shape of our daily lives.
2. Collective Care:
The self in help is broken. We bring people together, so you never feel like you’re alone in life.
3. Acceptance over Transformation:
What if instead of always striving to improve you started by accepting more who you are and what you need? That means designing a life that supports you as you are.
4. Personalized to you:
We make you the expert of you. There is no one-size-fits-all way to better emotional and mental well-being. We’ll help you build your sense of Self and a life that matters to you, on your terms.
5. Curiosity-fueled:
We will follow curiosity anywhere. We’re always looking for how we can bring learning to life.
6. Creativity-led:
We create the space for play and are always seeking to get creative with how we approach wellbeing.
7. Compassion:
We’re figuring out life in uncertain times. We make sure we don’t put the pieces of the world that are broken onto you.
8. Community:
If Lost is created by us, but made by you. You can help by submitting places for our guide or helping us support the work of mental health initiatives.
9. Contribution:
We know we can’t do everything so where we can we give back to those who are working to improve our individual and collective mental health. 10% across all our programs goes to initiatives so that we can help more people feel better in their everyday lives.
10. Ethical:
We’ve found ourselves in an industry that likes to hustle and that can be unregulated. We abide by professional standards, work with people who are certified and offer reduced pricing for those who need it.