Why Mothering Is a Radical Act

One of the things that surprised me when I first became a mum was how interested I suddenly became in my own maternal history.

I wanted to know everything. What had my mother's pregnancies been like? How had she felt holding me for the first time? What had motherhood given her, and what had it taken away? What had she loved about it? What had she struggled with? The boredom. The exhaustion. The joy. The parts she might never have said out loud. Questions that had barely crossed my mind before pregnancy suddenly felt deeply important.

Looking back, I think I was searching for reassurance, but also for connection. I wanted to know that other women had been here before me. That the confusion and intensity I felt were not signs that I was doing something wrong. That I belonged to something larger than my own experience.

It's one of the reasons I was so excited to talk to feminist cultural historian Elinor Cleghorn on my podcast recently. Her remarkable book, A Woman's Work: Reclaiming the Radical History of Mothering, traces motherhood across centuries, uncovering stories that have often been pushed to the edges of history or omitted from it entirely.

What stayed with me most was not simply what I learned about the past. It was how differently I began to think about motherhood itself.

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The Stories We Inherit

For so long, motherhood has been presented as something natural. Instinctive. Automatic. As though women simply know how to do it because they are women. As though care arrives fully formed. As though mothering is somehow separate from intelligence, creativity, skill, knowledge or work. But what if that story is wrong?

Throughout our conversation, Elinor returns again and again to the idea that mothering is not simply an instinct. It is a practice. It is labour. It is ingenuity. It is resilience. It is thought. It is decision-making. It is adaptation. It is often extraordinary acts of love performed under less-than-ideal circumstances.

And perhaps most importantly, it is work that has helped shape human history.

That might sound obvious. Of course mothers matter. Of course children need care. Yet when we look at the stories we preserve and celebrate, motherhood has often been treated as background scenery rather than a force in its own right.

History tends to remember wars, political movements, scientific discoveries and powerful leaders. It is much less comfortable recording the work of feeding children, holding families together, passing on knowledge, sustaining communities and helping life continue. Yet without those things, none of the others would exist.

One of the things Elinor does so beautifully is reveal that motherhood itself is a thought kept. Not simply an experience, but a collection of beliefs and expectations, myths and fears, rituals and instructions that have been passed from generation to generation. Some of those stories have offered care and connection. Others have constrained women, diminished mothers' experiences, and reduced complex human beings to ideals that they could never fully inhabit.

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The Hidden Expertise of Mothering

One of the ideas that stayed with me most from Elinor's book is how often motherhood has been framed as instinct rather than expertise.

We are surrounded by stories that suggest women simply know how to mother. That care emerges naturally. That nurturing is somehow built into our biology. Yet anyone who has spent time caring for a child knows that this version of motherhood bears very little resemblance to reality.

Mothering asks us to become observers, interpreters, negotiators, organisers, advocates and problem-solvers. It asks us to adapt constantly to a human being who is changing almost daily. It requires creativity, flexibility, emotional intelligence and endurance. It involves practical decisions, emotional labour, long-term thinking and often an extraordinary capacity to hold uncertainty.

As Elinor points out, one of the great tricks of patriarchy has been to dismiss this work as natural rather than skilled. To suggest that because women perform it, it somehow requires less thought, less knowledge or less expertise. Yet the reality is that mothering involves an enormous amount of wisdom, much of which has been passed from woman to woman, generation to generation, often outside the institutions that traditionally determine what counts as knowledge.

The result is that many mothers find themselves carrying immense responsibility while simultaneously living in cultures that struggle to recognise the value of what they do.

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Mothering as Resistance

One of the reasons I found A Woman's Work so moving is that it refuses to tell a simplistic story. This is not a history of women as passive victims. Nor is it a story about inevitable progress. Instead, it is a story about women finding ways to mother, care, nurture and protect within the constraints of the worlds they inhabited.

Again and again, Elinor introduces us to women who insisted on their right to love and care for their children despite extraordinary obstacles. Women who documented their experiences when few believed those experiences mattered. Women who preserved family histories, maintained connections, fought for custody, challenged expectations and refused to disappear quietly into the background.

The story of Sojourner Truth particularly stayed with me. Born into slavery, denied ownership of her own children, she nevertheless insisted on her right to mother. She fought for her son. She preserved her family stories. She made visible experiences that powerful systems were determined to erase. In Elinor's telling, her story becomes something larger than a historical account. It becomes an example of what it means to understand mothering as an act of resistance.

There was another story that stayed with me too. Elizabeth Jocelyn, writing in the seventeenth century, became convinced she would die in childbirth. In response, she wrote a book for the child she feared she would never meet. It was a private act, hidden away in a desk drawer, and yet it survives centuries later as a testament to a mother's determination to remain present in her child's life, even in her absence.

What emerges throughout the book is a profound sense that motherhood has never simply happened in private. It has always been bound up with power, freedom, rights, visibility and whose lives are deemed worthy of attention.

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The Conditions of Care

Towards the end of our conversation, Elinor reflects on her own experience of motherhood and the immense gratitude she feels for the conditions that allowed her to mother. Not simply her love for her children, but the wider circumstances around that love. Family and friendship. Economic security. Safe housing. Supportive relationships. Access to education. A community around her. The practical and social structures that make care possible.

Listening to her, I found myself thinking about how often conversations about motherhood become focused on individual women. Are we coping? Are we organised enough? Resilient enough? Present enough? Grateful enough?

Yet history repeatedly reminds us that motherhood has never been solely about individual effort. The conditions surrounding mothers matter. They always have.

The question is not only whether mothers love their children. The question is whether societies value mothers enough to create conditions in which care can flourish.

That feels particularly important right now. At a moment when public conversations often celebrate motherhood in the abstract while doing far less to support the people living it. At a moment when many mothers are carrying enormous emotional, financial and practical burdens while being told that motherhood itself should be enough.

Elinor's work offers a different perspective. It asks us to look beyond individual mothers and towards the structures around them. It asks us to recognise that care is not merely a private concern but a social one.

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Mothering Makes History

Perhaps the most powerful shift this book offers is a simple one. It invites us to stop seeing motherhood as something that happens on the sidelines of history. Mothering is not a footnote to the story of human civilisation. It is one of the ways that story is written.

Every generation has been shaped by women who cared for children, sustained families, passed on knowledge, preserved stories and created the conditions for life to continue. Much of that work has been overlooked because it happened in kitchens rather than parliaments, in nurseries rather than boardrooms, in conversations rather than official records. Yet that does not make it less significant. If anything, Elinor's work reveals just how central mothering has always been. Not because motherhood is the only way a woman can live a meaningful life. Not because all women should become mothers. Not because mothering is always joyful or uncomplicated. But because whenever people choose to mother, the work deserves visibility. It deserves value. It deserves care.

And perhaps that is the truly radical idea running through this history. Mothering does not sit outside history. Mothering makes history.

If this conversation resonates with you, you can listen to my full episode with Elinor Cleghorn on A Thought I Kept.

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And if you're navigating the complexities of motherhood - and with that identity, overwhelm or change — you can also explore our coaching sessions. Book now for space to just be, support to think more clearly, and hope for what’s ahead..

When Movement Starts Feeling Like Something You Have to Earn

There was a point in my life when I no longer entirely trusted my body. It happened slowly, through a period of chronic pain and fatigue that changed the way I moved through the world. Without consciously deciding to, I found myself becoming more cautious. I was restricting what I did, avoiding certain movements and quietly absorbing some of the messages about ageing and decline that seem to surround us.

At the same time, I was consuming all the usual wellbeing advice. Walk more. Strength train. Improve your mobility. Increase your step count. Some of it was undoubtedly useful, but much of it left me feeling as though wellbeing had become another job, another set of expectations to meet, another area of life where I wasn't quite doing enough.

That's why I was so relieved when I came across Wendy Welpton's work. Wendy is the founder of Reclaim Movement and author of Move Well for Life. When she joined me on A Thought I Kept, she brought a simple idea that has stayed with her for more than a decade: everyday movement is just as important as exercise.

At first, that might not sound particularly radical. Yet the more we talked, the more I realised how much of our thinking about movement has become tied up with workouts, achievements, measurements and goals. We have become so accustomed to counting, tracking and optimising that we can easily forget movement exists outside of exercise altogether.

Many of us have come to believe that movement only counts if it looks a certain way. A walk becomes something to optimise rather than enjoy. Exercise becomes something to complete rather than experience. We start looking for the ideal routine, the perfect number of steps, the optimum pace, the right time of day. Somewhere along the way, movement stops being something we do naturally and becomes something we perform.

Wendy's story began there too. She was doing all the things she thought she should be doing. Running. Exercising. Ticking every box. Yet she found herself living with chronic pain for four years. It was only when she began paying attention to how she moved during the rest of her day that something started to shift.

That distinction feels important because when most of us say we want to move more, what we often mean is that we think we should be exercising more. Those are not necessarily the same thing. One of the things I loved most about this conversation was Wendy's invitation to widen the frame. Movement is not just a run, a gym session or a yoga class. It is getting up from the floor. It is reaching for something on a shelf. It is taking the stairs. It is changing position after sitting for too long. It is walking because you enjoy walking rather than because your watch tells you to. It is all the small interactions we have with our bodies throughout the day, many of which have become so automatic that we barely notice them anymore.

The more we talked, the more I found myself wondering whether the problem is not that we are moving too little, but that we have narrowed our definition of movement so dramatically. We celebrate the workout while ignoring the twenty-three hours around it. We count the walk but overlook the ways we have stopped bending, reaching, balancing, squatting and playing.

And perhaps most importantly, we forget that movement affects much more than our physical health. It influences our mood, our confidence, our sense of capability and our relationship with ourselves. For Wendy, the journey out of pain was not about forcing her body to do more. It was about rebuilding trust. It was about becoming curious again, playful again and gradually rediscovering a sense of confidence in what her body could do.

If this conversation resonated, you can listen to my full episode with Wendy Welpton on A Thought I Kept, where we explore chronic pain, ageing, body trust, self-compassion and why everyday movement might matter just as much as exercise.

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And if you're feeling anxious, disconnected, uncertain or simply stuck in a pattern that no longer feels helpful, our wellbeing sessions and wellbeing prescriptions offer space to understand what's really going on beneath the surface. Together, we explore where you are, what you need and the small shifts that can help you move forward with more confidence, clarity and ease.

The Difference Between Kindness and People-Pleasing

There is a lot of advice out there about people-pleasing. We're told to stop doing it. To set firmer boundaries. To care less about what other people think. To say no more often. To put ourselves first.

While there is wisdom in some of that, it can also leave us feeling as though people-pleasing is simply another flaw to fix, another habit to break, another reason we're somehow getting life wrong.

Listening to my recent podcast conversation with psychotherapist Alice Bramhill reminded me that there might be a more helpful place to begin. Rather than asking how we stop people-pleasing, what if we got curious about why it exists in the first place? Because for many of us, people-pleasing didn't appear out of nowhere. It developed for reasons that made sense at the time.

Perhaps it helped us feel safe. Perhaps it helped us belong. Perhaps it helped us navigate difficult family dynamics, demanding workplaces, friendships we didn't want to lose, or relationships where conflict felt frightening. Perhaps we learned, consciously or unconsciously, that being easy-going, agreeable, capable, useful, accommodating, or endlessly understanding was the best way to move through the world.

Over time, those behaviours can become so familiar that we stop noticing them altogether. We become highly attuned to the needs, moods, preferences, and expectations of everyone around us, often without realising how little attention we're paying to our own.

This is where many people find themselves feeling lost. Not because they don't care enough about other people, but because somewhere along the way they stopped knowing what they themselves wanted.

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When Kindness Becomes Self-Abandonment

One of the things I appreciated most about Alice's perspective is that she doesn't demonise people-pleasing.

There is a tendency in wellbeing spaces to treat it as something entirely negative, as though caring deeply about other people is automatically a problem. Yet most of us can think of countless examples where being thoughtful, considerate, generous, or compassionate enriches our relationships and our lives.

Many people-pleasers are genuinely kind people.

The challenge comes when kindness stops being a choice and starts feeling like an obligation.

When we say yes because the thought of disappointing someone feels unbearable.

When we agree because we don't know how to express what we really want.

When we take responsibility for everyone else's emotions while quietly carrying our own.

When we become so focused on keeping the peace that we lose touch with ourselves altogether.

The difference can be subtle, which is why so many of us miss it.

Making your grandmother happy because you love her and want to spend time with her is very different from feeling unable to say no to anyone, ever. Supporting a friend through a difficult time is different from believing you are responsible for fixing their life. Being considerate is different from constantly abandoning your own needs.

The question is rarely whether we're being kind. The question is whether we're choosing that kindness freely.

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The Hidden Cost of Always Being Good

For many women especially, people-pleasing is tangled up with a much older story about being good.

A good daughter. A good mother. A good friend. A good employee. A good partner. A good person.

These ideas often arrive long before we have a chance to question them. They are handed to us through family, school, work, culture, religion, advertising, and countless everyday interactions. Some serve us well. Some help us become thoughtful, responsible, caring human beings.

Others can become surprisingly heavy. Because when being good becomes the primary goal, we sometimes start rejecting parts of ourselves that don't fit the picture.

Our anger. Our ambition. Our uncertainty. Our need for rest. Our desire for more space. Our wish to change our minds. Our longing for a different life.

The more energy we spend trying to maintain the image of being good, the harder it can become to hear what is actually true.

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The Fawn Response and the Need to Feel Safe

In recent years, more people have become familiar with the idea of the fawn response, a survival strategy where we seek safety through pleasing, accommodating, or appeasing others.

For some people, this language offers an enormous sense of relief. What looked like weakness may have been adaptation. What felt like a personal failing may have been an intelligent response to circumstances. Seen through this lens, people-pleasing becomes less of a character flaw and more of a conversation.

What was this behaviour trying to protect?

What did it help me avoid?

What need was it meeting?

Those questions don't excuse every pattern or remove the challenges people-pleasing can create. They simply invite us to respond with curiosity rather than criticism. And curiosity tends to open doors that self-judgement keeps firmly closed.

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Becoming Curious About Yourself Again

One of the hidden consequences of people-pleasing is that we often become experts in everybody else's needs.

We know who likes what.

We know who is upset.

We know who needs support.

We know who is disappointed.

We know who might be annoyed.

We know who requires reassurance.

What we often don't know is how we feel. Or what we need. Or what we want.

Many people arrive at coaching, therapy, or periods of personal reflection not because they are selfish, but because they realise they have spent years looking outward and very little time looking inward.

This is where the work begins. Not with becoming harder. Not with becoming less caring. Not with learning to stop being ourselves.

But with gradually extending some of the same curiosity, compassion, and attentiveness that we offer other people towards ourselves.

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A Different Question

Perhaps the goal isn't to stop people-pleasing altogether. Perhaps the goal is to understand it well enough that we have a choice.

To recognise when kindness feels nourishing and aligned. To notice when accommodation becomes exhaustion. To understand when caring for others is an expression of who we are and when it has become a way of disappearing from our own lives.

Because there is a difference between kindness and self-abandonment. And sometimes finding our way back to ourselves begins with asking a gentler question than "How do I stop people-pleasing?"

Perhaps it begins with asking:

What has people-pleasing been trying to do for me all these years?

The answer might tell us far more than any boundary script ever could.

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If you’re curious about where people-pleasing and ideas of being “good” show up in your own life, listen to my conversation with psychotherapist, writer, and podcast host Alice Bramhill on A Thought I Kept.

Together, we explore self-trust, boundaries, sensitivity, late-diagnosed neurodivergence, and the thought Alice has carried with her for decades: "I'd rather be whole than good."

If you've ever felt exhausted by trying to be good, struggled to know what you want, or wondered where people-pleasing ends and genuine kindness begins, I think you'll find this conversation really helpful.

Listen to When Being Good Is Exhausting with Alice Bramhill on A Thought I Kept.

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If this piece resonated with you, it may be because you've spent a long time paying attention to everyone else.

Many of the people I work with arrive feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, resentful, or disconnected from themselves. They often know exactly what everybody around them needs but struggle to answer a much simpler question: "What do I need?"

Emotions coaching offers a space to slow down and get curious about those patterns with someone alongside you. Together, we can explore the habits, beliefs, emotions, and expectations that may have helped you navigate life so far, while gently uncovering what you need now.

You don't have to stop being kind. You don't have to become a different person. Sometimes the work is simply learning how to include yourself in the care and attention you've spent years offering everybody else.

If you'd like some support finding your way back to yourself, I'd love to help. Explore emotions coaching and book a free discovery call.

How Creativity Helps When You Feel Lost, Overwhelmed, or Disconnected

Sometimes the problem isn't that we don't know what to do. It's that we've heard so many voices telling us what we should do that we can no longer hear our own. The productivity experts. The wellbeing experts. The people on social media who seem to have figured it out. The friends with strong opinions. The endless stream of advice arriving through podcasts, newsletters, books, and algorithms. None of it is necessarily wrong. In fact, much of it may be thoughtful, useful, and well-intentioned. But there comes a point where all of that input can begin to drown something out.

Our own voice.

We stop noticing what we think because we're busy collecting what everyone else thinks. We stop paying attention to what we need because we're trying to keep up with what everyone else appears to need. We become disconnected. Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just gradually. A little further away from ourselves than we realise.

This was one of the themes that stayed with me from a recent conversation with Claire Venus, founder of Creatively Conscious. Although we talked about creativity, online life, burnout, visibility, trust, and self-expression, underneath all of it was a question that feels increasingly important:

How do we stay connected to ourselves in a world that is constantly competing for our attention?

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The Cost of Overriding Ourselves

One of the most powerful ideas in the conversation was surprisingly simple. Claire talked about paying attention to what feels uplifting and what feels tightening. What expands us and what contracts us. What feels like ours and what feels like something we've absorbed from somewhere else.

It's easy to dismiss this as a small thing.

But many of us have become remarkably skilled at overriding those signals. We push through exhaustion. We say yes when we mean no. We follow advice that doesn't fit. We continue with projects that drain us because we've already invested so much time. We force ourselves to be consistent when what we really need is rest. Eventually, we stop asking ourselves a very important question:

How does this actually feel?

Not how it looks. Not whether it's impressive. Not whether someone else would approve.

How does it feel?

Because our bodies often know something long before our minds catch up.

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Creativity Is Sometimes a Form of Reconnection

When people hear the word creativity, they often think of art: Painting. Writing. Music. Design. But creativity can be something much broader than that. It can be the act of making space for yourself again.

A notebook opened at the end of a difficult day.

A walk without headphones.

A garden.

A sketchbook.

A conversation.

A few quiet minutes spent wondering what you actually think about something.

Creativity creates room. And for people who feel overwhelmed, burnt out, anxious, or disconnected, room can be surprisingly healing. Not because it fixes everything. But because it allows us to hear ourselves again.

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What If The Goal Isn't To Push Harder?

Many of us have absorbed the idea that if something isn't working, we simply need to try harder.

Be more disciplined. More productive. More consistent. More efficient.

Yet Claire challenges that idea in a way I found refreshing. She describes consistency as one of the biggest myths of modern creative life, arguing instead that what matters is understanding your own creative practice and your own rhythms.

That feels relevant far beyond creativity.

Because perhaps the question isn't:

"How do I make myself keep going?"

Perhaps the question is:

"What do I need in order to thrive?"

Those are very different questions.

One asks us to override ourselves. The other asks us to listen.

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Finding Your Way Back

If you've been feeling disconnected lately, maybe the answer isn't another strategy. Maybe it isn't another expert. Maybe it isn't another thing to optimise. Maybe it's simply paying closer attention.

To what lifts you up.

To what drains you.

To what feels alive.

To what feels like yours.

Sometimes finding our way back to ourselves begins with noticing what we've stopped noticing. And perhaps that's what being creatively conscious really means. Not becoming a different person. Just becoming more aware of the one who's already here.

Listen to my full conversation with Claire Venus on A Thought I Kept: How We Stay Creatively Conscious.

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And if you're feeling lost, overwhelmed, creatively stuck, or unsure what you need next, our wellbeing sessions offer space to explore what might help you reconnect with yourself. Creativity often becomes part of that conversation.

Finding the Work You Were Intended to Do

You can spend years building a life that looks successful from the outside while quietly wondering why it no longer quite fits on the inside.

Not in a dramatic, burn-it-all-down kind of way. More subtle than that. More like noticing you feel strangely flat after doing work you once loved. Or finding yourself restless in moments that should feel satisfying. Or realising that the thing you keep thinking about — the thing you dismiss as impractical, indulgent, impossible, too late, too risky — keeps returning anyway.

Maybe it arrives while you’re washing dishes. Or driving home from work. Or lying awake at 3am trying to mentally organise your entire future. Maybe it appears as envy when you see somebody else making the kind of work they were clearly meant to make. Maybe it shows up as grief. Maybe it simply sounds like a very quiet voice saying: “There must be something more true than this.”

This week on A Thought I Kept, I spoke to Natalie Lue about people pleasing, creativity, identity, perfectionism, and what it means to finally stop fighting the thing calling for your attention.

The thought Natalie brought to the conversation was this:

“Do the work that you were intended to do, and your money worries will cease.”

What fascinated me about our conversation wasn’t really the money part. It was the word intended.

Because I think many of us secretly wonder this, especially in midlife or moments of change: What am I actually meant to be doing with my life?

And beneath that question often sits another one we rarely say out loud: What if I already know?

Natalie spoke beautifully about spending years trying to make a version of work continue because she had already invested so much into it. The effort. The loyalty. The identity. The expectation. She talked about how easy it is to become attached not just to a career or role, but to being the kind of person who keeps going, who makes things work, who doesn’t let people down.

I recognised so much of that.

Particularly the idea that if we are competent, thoughtful, caring people, we often mistake endurance for alignment. We think the discomfort means we should simply try harder. Be more disciplined. More grateful. More resilient. We tighten our grip instead of asking whether the thing itself still fits who we are becoming.

And because many of us have been rewarded our entire lives for achievement, reliability, or self-sacrifice, changing direction can feel almost morally wrong. Like we are abandoning something. Wasting potential. Failing.

But what if changing is not failure?

What if a version of your life can be deeply meaningful and still not be yours forever?

One of the most moving parts of the conversation was hearing Natalie speak about creativity. About art. About the thing that had quietly kept calling to her for years while she continued showing up for everything and everyone else first. She described the strange habit many of us have of postponing the thing we most long for until we’ve finally “sorted everything else out.”

The problem is, there is always something else to sort out.

Another responsibility. Another deadline. Another financial worry. Another person to care for. Another reason why now is not the right time.

And yet the longing remains.

I think this is partly why conversations about calling can feel so emotionally loaded. Because they are rarely just about work. They are about permission. About self-trust. About whether we believe our desires matter. About whether we are allowed to evolve beyond the version of ourselves that once kept us safe.

For many people — particularly women — there is also a deep fear that choosing ourselves will disappoint other people. That if we stop being useful in the ways we always have been, we might lose love, approval, belonging, identity.

So we stay in roles, routines, relationships, or versions of ourselves that no longer fully fit because at least they are familiar.

We tell ourselves we are being practical.

Sometimes we are simply frightened.

And to be clear, this isn’t really an argument for dramatic reinvention. I don’t think most people need to quit their jobs, move countries, or become entirely different people to feel more alive. Often the shifts begin much more quietly than that.

Taking the class.

Starting the project.

Making space for rest.

Writing the thing.

Applying for the role.

Letting yourself want what you want without immediately dismissing it.

Allowing the possibility that the thing you keep returning to might matter for a reason.

I also think there is something deeply reassuring in realising that we do not have to become entirely new people to move forward. So much of modern wellbeing culture still quietly suggests that confidence, healing, or success require a total transformation of the self. But what if the goal is not to become somebody else at all?

What if it is simply to become more honest about who you already are?

Throughout our conversation, Natalie returned again and again to the idea that we are allowed to change. Allowed to evolve. Allowed to outgrow old identities without those identities becoming mistakes.

That feels important to me.

Because I meet so many people through coaching and through this work who are exhausted from trying to force certainty before they allow themselves movement. They want guarantees before they begin. They want to know the outcome before they trust the instinct.

But perhaps self-trust is not certainty.

Perhaps self-trust is simply being willing to listen when something inside you keeps whispering: this matters.

Even if you don’t yet know exactly why.

If this resonates, you might enjoy listening to my full conversation with Natalie Lue on A Thought I Kept, where we explore people pleasing, creativity, identity, self-trust, and what it means to let yourself change.

And if you are sitting with questions about direction, confidence, emotional overwhelm, or the sense that something in your life no longer fits, you can also explore our coaching sessions. Sometimes it helps simply to have space to hear yourself think again.

Thoughts Kept… About Burnout

The first sign was probably the resentment. Just a low, constant irritation that seemed to follow me everywhere. The email arriving five minutes before the end of the day that made my shoulders tense instantly. The friend asking for a favour and my internal reaction feeling disproportionate to the request. Sitting at my laptop already tired before I’d even really begun. Feeling strangely annoyed at tiny inconveniences, while also somehow too exhausted to explain why.

At the time, I wouldn’t have called it burnout. I think I imagined burnout as something more obvious than that, something involving collapse or crisis or the inability to get out of bed. But one of the things I’ve learned from the guests on A Thought I Kept is that burnout often arrives much more quietly than we expect. It can look like functioning. Achievement. Keeping going. Being capable. It can look like replying to emails, meeting deadlines, hosting meetings, making dinner, posting on Instagram, smiling at people in supermarkets, all while feeling increasingly disconnected from yourself underneath it all.

Over the past year of recording conversations for the podcast, burnout has surfaced again and again, sometimes explicitly and sometimes hiding beneath conversations about perfectionism, people pleasing, creativity, ambition, neurodiversity, work, identity, caregiving, or the pressure many of us feel to keep performing wellness while privately struggling to cope with ordinary life.

And the thing that has surprised me most is that very few people describe burnout as simply “working too hard.” Instead, they describe years of overriding themselves. Years of separating achievement from joy. Years of confusing resilience with endurance. Years of not noticing what they needed until their body eventually forced the conversation.

Listening back to these episodes, there are five lessons about burnout that I keep returning to, especially because they say something much bigger about how many of us are living right now.

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1. Burnout often begins long before we recognise it

One of the most powerful things I’ve learned from these conversations is that burnout is not always obvious while you’re inside it.

Matthew Bellringer described how many neurodivergent people become so used to masking distress and unmet needs that they can function at levels of overwhelm that would feel completely unsustainable for somebody else, until eventually “the system cannot continue doing this.” This explains why burnout can be so difficult to recognise early on. Many people experiencing burnout are still functioning. They are still showing up to work, replying to emails, caring for children, making dinners, meeting deadlines, laughing in meetings, organising birthdays, and keeping everything moving while privately feeling increasingly exhausted, emotionally numb, or disconnected from themselves.

Liana Fricker spoke about realising, after a major burnout in her forties, that she could no longer ignore what her body had been trying to tell her for years. “You can’t fight this anymore,” she said. “You’re going to have to learn new ways.” There was something in that conversation that felt deeply relevant to the moment we’re all living through now, because so many people are trying to cope with a world that feels relentlessly demanding. The cost of living crisis, constant bad news, workplace pressure, caregiving, uncertainty about the future, digital overload, the sense that there is always more to respond to, improve, optimise, manage.

It means burnout symptoms often become normalised. Which is perhaps why so many people only recognise burnout once their body, mind, or emotions become impossible to ignore.

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2. Burnout is often connected to grief, loss, and emotional overwhelm, not just overwork

One thing I’ve found myself thinking about while making the podcast is how often burnout conversations are really conversations about loss. Not only the loss of energy, but the loss of identity, meaning, connection, certainty, or the version of yourself you thought you were supposed to be.

In Hiroko Yoda’s episode, she described the period after the death of her mother as feeling as though “the flames of my soul had been snuffed” and “the world had drained of color.” Listening to her speak about grief, spirituality, and slowly finding her way back to herself through nature and ritual made me realise how many forms emotional burnout can take, particularly when we are carrying loss that hasn’t fully been acknowledged.

Similarly, Toni Jones spoke movingly about how much of her life had been spent avoiding her feelings entirely, pushing through burnout during a high-pressure media career before eventually turning toward books, reflection, and self-development as a way of reconnecting with herself. 

I think this matters because burnout is often discussed in incredibly practical terms, as though it can be solved purely through time management or better routines. But many guests described something much more emotional underneath their exhaustion. Grief. Loneliness. Emotional suppression. A life lived too long in survival mode.

And when people search for how to cope with burnout, I think part of what they are often really asking is: how do I come back to myself after a long period of disappearing from my own life?

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3. Perfectionism and people pleasing are often hiding underneath burnout

Again and again, conversations about burnout on the podcast eventually circled back to approval.

Approval at school. Approval at work. Approval in relationships. Approval online. Approval through achievement.

Matthew described learning early in life to separate what felt intrinsically rewarding from what earned praise and validation from other people.

Liana talked about slowly untangling intuition from perfectionism and people pleasing, laughing as she realised they were “three distinct balls of wool.” 

What struck me listening back was how often burnout seems connected not simply to doing too much, but to becoming trapped inside identities built around usefulness, capability, achievement, or being easy for other people to rely on.

For many people, burnout recovery is difficult because the behaviours that created the burnout were also the behaviours that earned love, praise, security, or success.

And that’s why simply telling people to “rest more” often doesn’t touch the deeper issue. If slowing down makes you feel guilty, anxious, purposeless, or unsafe, then burnout management is not just about changing your schedule. It’s also about understanding the emotional engine underneath the overworking in the first place.

Liana put it beautifully when she reflected on her repeated burnout cycles and asked herself: “What is this internal engine that keeps making me run at full speed, ultimately off a cliff?” I suspect many of us are carrying versions of that same question.

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4. Burnout recovery is less about becoming productive again and more about rebuilding your relationship with yourself

Something else that comes through strongly in these conversations is that burnout recovery rarely looks like bouncing back quickly into the old version of your life. Instead, many guests described it as a slower rebuilding process that required them to pay attention to themselves in entirely new ways.

Liana spoke about recognising patterns she now calls “burn downs,” smaller recurring cycles of depletion that eventually accumulate into something much larger if ignored. She described reorganising her calendar around her actual energy levels rather than the version of productivity she thought she should be capable of sustaining, deliberately creating more spaciousness during certain periods because she knew her nervous system needed it. 

There was something profoundly compassionate in that conversation because it wasn’t about becoming perfect at wellbeing. It was about becoming more honest. And honesty appears repeatedly across these episodes as one of the real turning points in burnout recovery. Honest recognition of limits. Honest recognition of exhaustion. Honest recognition of what no longer works.

Matthew described burnout recovery not simply as reducing stress, but as “getting something back” again. Joy. Playfulness. Meaning. Intrinsic reward. Time spent doing things that actually feel alive rather than merely productive.

That feels important because many people experiencing burnout are not simply tired. They are disconnected from pleasure, creativity, curiosity, and spaciousness, the very things that make life feel sustainable over time.

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5. People recovering from burnout are often becoming more curious, not more perfect

Perhaps my biggest takeaway from these conversations is that sustainable burnout recovery seems to involve curiosity much more than self-optimisation.

Not becoming a “better” person.
Not becoming perfectly balanced.
Not finally mastering wellness.

Just becoming more aware.

Aware of patterns.
Aware of emotional needs.
Aware of capacity.
Aware of what depletes you and what restores you.
Aware of the stories you’ve inherited about success, worth, ambition, rest, and productivity.

Liana talked about spending more time in her body rather than only in her rational mind, slowly learning the difference between intuition, perfectionism, and people pleasing.

Hiroko found herself reconnecting with the world again through tiny moments of attention to nature, ritual, and spirituality after profound grief.

Toni’s story explored what happens when we stop avoiding ourselves long enough to really ask how we are living and whether it’s sustainable. 

None of these conversations offered a perfect formula for how to manage burnout, and honestly I think that’s part of why they’ve stayed with me. Because burnout recovery is rarely linear. It is often messy, cyclical, emotional, and deeply personal. But listening to these guests has reminded me that healing doesn’t always begin with dramatic transformation. Sometimes it begins with finally paying attention.

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If this piece resonated, you might want to listen to our special playlist, The Thoughts I Kept… About Burnout, a collection of episodes from A Thought I Kept exploring burnout, emotional exhaustion, grief, perfectionism, people pleasing, identity, overwhelm, and the complicated process of finding your way back to yourself again.

And if you’re feeling emotionally exhausted, overwhelmed, disconnected, or unsure where to begin, you can also explore our coaching sessions through If Lost Start Here.

Our work is not about helping you become endlessly productive again. It’s about understanding what’s happening underneath the exhaustion, reconnecting with yourself more honestly, and building a version of wellbeing that actually fits your real life.

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More ways to explore burnout

Finding a Better Way to Well Without Trying to Fix Yourself

I still remember standing in the wellbeing section of my local independent bookshop years ago, holding three different books in my hands and feeling completely overwhelmed by all of them.

One promised confidence. One promised calm. One promised a completely new life if I just followed the steps properly enough. Around me were shelves and shelves of answers. Morning routines. Better habits. Nervous systems. Boundaries. Purpose. Productivity. Healing. Manifestation. Rest. Reinvention.

And underneath all of it was this quiet but persistent feeling: if I could just find the right idea, the right practice, the right way of living, maybe I would finally feel okay.

I think a lot of us arrive at wellbeing from this place now. Not because we’re shallow or self-absorbed, but because life genuinely feels difficult. The world feels loud. Work is relentless. Relationships can be complicated. Many of us are carrying anxiety, grief, uncertainty, burnout or a low-level sense that we’ve somehow drifted away from ourselves. And when you feel like that, it makes sense to go looking for answers.

In my recent conversation on A Thought I Kept with Toni Jones, we talked about what happens when you spend a decade immersed in self-help culture. Toni has read more than 1,000 self-help books. She founded Shelf Help, the world’s first self-help book club, after burnout and a growing sense that something in her life needed to change.

What I loved most about our conversation wasn’t really the books though. It was the gentler, steadier framework underneath them.

Because Toni spoke so honestly about how messy change actually is. Not cinematic. Not linear. Not “new life in seven easy steps.” More experimental than transformational. More human than polished.

At one point we talked about the pressure that can sit underneath wellbeing culture now — the sense that we should always be improving ourselves. That wellness can become another arena where we fail, compare, strive or feel behind. And honestly, I think many people feel exhausted by that version of wellbeing, even if they can’t quite articulate why.

There’s something profoundly tiring about approaching yourself like a constant problem to solve.

What Toni kept returning to instead was curiosity.

Not: “How do I finally become perfect?”

But: “What happens if I try this?”

Not: “I must completely reinvent myself.”

But: “What if I treated this more like an experiment?”

That small shift feels important to me. Because experiments allow room for being human. They allow for bad days, contradictions, changing your mind, getting it wrong, trying again. They soften the harshness that so often creeps into conversations about growth.

And maybe that’s part of finding a better way to well.

Not turning wellbeing into another performance of goodness or discipline or achievement. But allowing it to become something more personal. More playful. More forgiving. Something shaped around your actual life rather than the life you think you should be living.

During the conversation, Toni described reading her first self-help book while completely burnt out and desperate for something to change. It was called Change Your Life in Seven Days. Looking back now, she laughs at the urgency of it. The idea that her exhausted nervous system was searching for a quick fix because she simply couldn’t carry on as she was.

I think many of us recognise that feeling.

The late-night googling. The saving of posts we never quite return to. The hopeful ordering of books. The quiet thought that maybe this next thing will finally help us feel calmer, happier, clearer, more confident, less overwhelmed.

And sometimes those things do help. Books can change us. Conversations can change us. Therapy can change us. Tiny rituals and practices can genuinely support us.

But what struck me listening to Toni was that the deeper shift seemed to come less from finding the perfect answer and more from slowly building a different relationship with herself.

One with more compassion in it.

More honesty.

More willingness to be seen.

More permission to need support.

That feels important too because I think a lot of us have absorbed the idea that wellbeing is something we should master privately. Quietly. Alone. We should hold everything together. Cope beautifully. Be low maintenance. Keep functioning.

And yet the thought Toni brought to the podcast — borrowed from Brené Brown — was this: “We don’t have to do all of it alone. We were never meant to.”

I kept thinking about that afterwards.

Because maybe a better way to well isn’t just about what we do for ourselves. Maybe it’s also about who we let sit beside us while we figure things out.

The friend who notices you’re not okay before you admit it yourself.

The conversation that helps you feel less strange.

The book club where people finally say the quiet parts out loud.

The person who reminds you that you’re allowed to need care too.

The older version of yourself who can look back and realise: things did change, slowly, even when it didn’t feel like they were changing at all.

One of the things I loved most from the episode was Toni talking about how, years ago, she felt desperate for something — anything — to change. Whereas now, after years of reflection and experimentation and self-discovery, she approaches life with more curiosity than panic. More openness than grasping.

Not because she became a completely different person.

But because she became more connected to herself.

I think that’s the part of wellbeing we don’t talk about enough. That perhaps the goal isn’t becoming somebody new entirely. Perhaps it’s becoming more honest about who we already are. Understanding what supports us. Learning what drains us. Allowing our version of wellbeing to look different from somebody else’s.

And maybe that’s why Amanda and I created the If Lost, Start Here wellbeing journal in the way we did. Not as a rigid plan or perfect prescription, but as an invitation into curiosity. Into experimentation. Into asking better questions about what actually helps you feel more alive, connected, grounded or held.

Not wellness as performance.

Not self-improvement as punishment.

Just a steadier, kinder relationship with yourself and your life.

If this conversation resonates, you can listen to my full episode of A Thought I Kept with Toni Jones, where we explore vulnerability, burnout, self-help, friendship, identity, emotional wellbeing and what it means to stop carrying everything alone.

And if you’re feeling a little lost in your own life right now — unsure what wellbeing even means for you anymore — you’re also very welcome to explore my coaching work or the If Lost, Start Here journal. Not as a way to become someone else. Just as a place to begin listening to yourself again.

A Thought I Kept… About Connection

There are moments when the world can feel too loud to properly hear yourself think. You wake up already behind. The news is unbearable again. Somebody somewhere is shouting online. The food shop costs more than you thought it would. Your phone keeps filling with reminders, requests, headlines, notifications. Work spills into evenings. Even rest starts to feel strangely performative. We scroll instead of pausing. We cancel plans because we’re tired. We tell ourselves we’ll reply properly tomorrow.

And slowly, often without noticing, many of us begin retreating from one another. Not dramatically. Quietly.

We stop reaching out first. We stay home more. We become suspicious of people who think differently to us. We compare ourselves. We convince ourselves everyone else is coping better. We move through life slightly armoured — overstimulated, emotionally exhausted, and unsure how to find our way back to each other again.

But one of the thoughts I’ve kept from making A Thought I Kept is this: human connection matters most precisely in the moments when we’re tempted to withdraw from it.

Not because connection fixes everything. Not because friendship erases grief or anxiety or burnout or uncertainty. But because being with other people — really being with them — can remind us that we are still here. Still human. Still part of something larger than our own spiralling thoughts.

As I pulled together conversations with Cathy Rentzenbrink, Tanya Lynch, Hiroko Yoda, Laurence McCahill, Suzy Reading, Liana Fricker and Lauren Barber, I realised that although these episodes explored very different corners of life — grief, spirituality, creativity, burnout, friendship, books, business, midlife, rest — they kept circling back to the same idea. Connection is not an optional extra to wellbeing. It might be the thing holding so much of it together.

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1. We Retreat When Overwhelmed But Isolation Deepens the Feeling

One of the strange things about difficult periods is how quickly they can make us disappear from our own lives. You stop texting back properly. You feel too tired to explain how you are. Going out starts to feel like effort. You tell yourself you’ll reconnect when you feel calmer, less overwhelmed, more yourself again.

But listening back to these conversations, I kept noticing how often people found their way back through other people. Not through becoming shinier or more productive or more emotionally “together,” but through being alongside somebody else long enough to soften a little.

In my conversation with Laurence McCahill, we talked about how growth and change so rarely happen in isolation. We can read the books and underline the quotes and listen to the podcasts and still feel strangely stuck. Sometimes what’s missing isn’t another idea. It’s other people. Someone sitting opposite you saying, “Yes, I know exactly what you mean.” A room where you don’t have to explain yourself quite so much. A gathering that reminds you life can feel different to this.

I think modern wellbeing culture sometimes forgets this. So much advice is aimed at the individual: your morning routine, your mindset, your habits, your healing, your optimisation. And while solitude can absolutely be restorative, there is also something profoundly regulating about being witnessed by another human being. The friend you voice note while unloading the dishwasher. The person who notices you’ve gone quiet. The neighbour you always end up chatting to longer than intended. The group chat that suddenly becomes honest at 11pm. These moments can seem tiny from the outside, but emotionally they can be enormous.

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2. Connection Doesn’t Have to Look Big or Impressive

What struck me listening back to these episodes was how often connection appeared in ordinary forms. Not grand gestures or perfectly curated social lives, but cups of tea, shared books, walks, retreats, conversations that drift unexpectedly from logistics into longing.

In my conversation with Tanya Lynch, we spoke about the feeling of being gathered — of spaces where people are allowed to arrive exactly as they are, whether that’s hopeful or grieving or emotionally threadbare. There was something in that conversation that stayed with me because I think so many of us are craving precisely that kind of space right now. Not networking. Not performance. Just moments where we can stop pretending to be fine for a minute.

I think many of us accidentally make connection feel harder than it needs to be. We imagine thriving social lives and elaborate dinner parties and huge friendship circles maintained through impeccable emotional availability and perfectly colour-coded calendars. But often connection is much quieter than that. It’s somebody saving you a seat. Somebody remembering what you said last week. Somebody sending you a photo because it made them think of you.

These tiny gestures matter because they remind us we exist in other people’s minds and lives. That we are held somewhere beyond our own stress and self-criticism.

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3. Being Witnessed Changes Us

There’s a moment in my conversation with Cathy Rentzenbrink where we talk about books and grief and the relief of feeling recognised by somebody else’s words. I think that’s one of the deepest forms of connection there is: the feeling that someone else has inhabited something adjacent to your own experience and survived long enough to describe it.

Loneliness is not only physical isolation. It’s also the feeling that your inner world is somehow unshareable, too strange or messy or contradictory to be understood by anyone else. Which is why it can feel so unexpectedly emotional when somebody articulates the thing you haven’t been able to say yourself.

This is part of why art matters so much to me. Why conversations matter. Why podcasts matter. Why books matter. Not because they solve life, but because they make our inner worlds feel more shareable. Somebody else has also sat in the car park crying. Somebody else has also felt lost at a dinner party or uncertain in midlife or disconnected from themselves after years of coping. Somebody else has also stared at the ceiling at 3am wondering what on earth they’re doing with their life.

Being witnessed doesn’t remove pain, but it can make pain feel survivable. Sometimes another person’s honesty becomes a bridge back to our own.

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4. Rituals and Shared Experiences Help Us Feel Human Again

I kept thinking about this during my conversation with Hiroko Yoda, where we explored Japanese spirituality and the way it can live quietly inside ordinary rituals and everyday life. Shared meals. Seasonal practices. Returning to certain places. Moments of pause and reverence that tether people back to each other and to the world around them.

It made me realise how many of us are quietly searching not only for connection with other people, but connection with meaning itself. Something beyond productivity and algorithms and constant consumption. Something that helps us feel part of a wider human experience again.

Maybe this is why small rituals can feel so unexpectedly important during difficult seasons. Cooking for somebody. Reading in bed beside another person. Returning to the same café every Saturday morning. Listening to a familiar voice on a podcast while commuting home in the dark. These things can seem insignificant until you realise they are helping hold you together.

There’s comfort in repetition. In familiarity. In tiny practices that remind us we belong somewhere — to a person, a community, a season, a place, a version of ourselves we’re trying not to lose.

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5. Other People Help Us Remember Who We Are

Perhaps this is the thought I’ve kept most strongly from these conversations: we do not become ourselves entirely alone.

Other people reflect us back to ourselves all the time. A friend remembers the version of you that existed before burnout. Someone notices your excitement returning before you do. A conversation unlocks a part of yourself you thought had disappeared. A community helps you imagine a different future.

We are constantly shaped by what we share, what we witness, and what we allow ourselves to receive from one another. Which feels particularly important in a culture that simultaneously encourages hyper-independence while exhausting us emotionally.

Maybe wellbeing was never supposed to be something we carry entirely alone. Maybe part of feeling better is allowing ourselves to be held — by conversations, friendships, rituals, stories, books, communities, shared meals, and moments of recognition that arrive unexpectedly in ordinary life.

Putting together this playlist reminded me that connection rarely arrives looking cinematic. More often it appears quietly. A message sent at the right moment. A conversation that stays with you for weeks afterwards. Somebody making you laugh when everything has felt unbearably heavy. A voice in your headphones helping you feel a little less alone as you move through another complicated Tuesday.

And maybe, for now at least, that’s enough.

If you’d like to listen to the full A Thought I Kept… About Connection playlist, you can find it here:

How Japanese Spirituality Can Help Us Feel Less Lost

The park was the same one Hiroko Yoda had walked through countless times before. Same paths. Same trees. Same shrine tucked quietly amongst the landscape. But after her mother died, she could barely see any of it. She describes walking with her head down, shuffling through the park and back home again, where she would cry. Then repeat it the next day. And the next. Until one day she looked up.

She noticed the birds first. Then the maple trees. The shifting light through the leaves. A shrine she must have passed hundreds of times before. And in that moment, something changed. Not because her grief disappeared or because she suddenly understood everything about life or death or spirituality, but because she no longer felt entirely alone inside the world.

I haven’t stopped thinking about that since we recorded our conversation for A Thought I Kept.

Partly because I think many of us know what it is to move through life with our heads down. To become so overwhelmed by grief, anxiety, burnout, uncertainty or simply the sheer weight of being human that the world narrows around us. Our lives become logistical. Functional. We focus on getting through the day, answering messages, making dinner, remembering appointments. We stop noticing what is around us because we are working so hard to hold ourselves together within it.

And yet so much of what Hiroko shared in our conversation was about exactly that: noticing.

Noticing what remains. Noticing what connects us. Noticing the things that quietly hold us when we feel lost.

Her book, Eight Million Ways to Happiness, explores Japanese spirituality not as a rigid belief system but as something lived alongside everyday life. Something woven into nature, rituals, food, language, grief, playfulness and community. In Japanese spirituality, kami — spiritual presences — exist not just in shrines or sacred spaces, but in trees, rivers, mountains, words, objects and everyday acts of care.

I think what struck me most was how different this felt from the way spirituality is often discussed in wellbeing spaces. So much modern wellbeing culture seems obsessed with certainty. Morning routines that promise transformation. Manifesting practices that suggest we can think ourselves into a better life. The pressure to optimise, improve, transcend.

But Hiroko kept returning to something much softer and more spacious than that.

The Japanese idea of hanshin hangi — half belief, half doubt. The permission to remain somewhere in the grey zone. To not fully know. To allow uncertainty to exist without rushing to resolve it.

Honestly, it felt like a relief.

Because I suspect many of us already live there, whether we admit it or not.

We carry objects that mean more to us than they logically should. We talk to people we’ve lost. We feel calmer by the sea. We light candles. We keep rituals we cannot entirely explain. We sense that some places hold energy. We wonder whether there might be more to life than what we can immediately see or prove.

And then, often, we dismiss ourselves. We tell ourselves we’re being silly. Irrational. Dramatic.

What I loved about Hiroko’s perspective was that it made space for both curiosity and scepticism. Both wonder and uncertainty. Both grief and joy.

At one point in the conversation she talks about eating a banana at breakfast and saying itadakimasu beforehand — “I humbly receive.” And suddenly the banana stops being just a banana. It becomes the people who grew it, transported it, stocked it, bought it. It becomes weather and soil and labour and unseen connection.

That stayed with me because I think many of us are searching for meaning whilst overlooking the small moments where meaning already exists.

Noticing can become a kind of spiritual practice.

Making coffee in the morning. Opening the curtains. Walking the dog. Watering plants. Speaking kindly. Taking the long route home. Sitting quietly before the rest of the house wakes up.

Not because these things solve our lives, but because they return us to relationship with them.

And perhaps that matters especially when we feel lost.

Often when we feel uncertain, we assume we need dramatic change. A new version of ourselves. A breakthrough. A complete reinvention. But sometimes what we actually need is a gentler way of relating to where we already are.

Hiroko spoke beautifully about how Japanese spirituality allows opposites to coexist. Joy and sadness. Gratitude and anger. Light and darkness. She talked about how grief changed shape over time, how writing about her mother softened certain memories and complicated others, how healing was not neat or linear but layered.

I think there’s comfort in that too.

Because many people arrive at wellbeing feeling as though they are failing at it. Failing at being positive enough, resilient enough, healed enough, grateful enough. But perhaps wellbeing is not about eliminating darkness or uncertainty. Perhaps it is about learning how to stay connected to ourselves and the world around us whilst those things exist.

To look up occasionally, even when life feels heavy.

To notice the shrine amongst the trees.

To let a cup of coffee become a moment of connection rather than simply fuel.

To allow for half belief and half doubt.

If this resonates with you, you might enjoy my conversation with Hiroko Yoda on A Thought I Kept. We talk about grief, spirituality, uncertainty, belonging, rituals and the unseen threads that connect us to each other and the world around us.

And if you’re navigating your own season of uncertainty or emotional overwhelm, you can also explore coaching and support through If Lost Start Here. Not to fix yourself or become someone new, but simply to have somewhere to think things through more honestly and openly.

Connecting While Human

You’re halfway through a conversation and realise you’re not really in it. You’re nodding, saying the right things, keeping the tone light enough, agreeable enough. You hear yourself laugh at something that isn’t quite funny. You offer an explanation you’ve offered before, one that lands just well enough to move things on. And at the same time, there’s something else happening underneath — a more insistent feeling that says: this isn’t quite it.

You might notice it later, when you’re walking home or making dinner, replaying the conversation in your head. The bit you didn’t say. The way you softened something. The way you tried, once again, to explain yourself into being understood. And then, almost reluctantly, the thought arrives: I don’t think this is about explaining anymore.

It’s a subtle shift, but once it’s there, it tends to stay.

This is the place Jacky Power and I found ourselves in during our conversation — not just the moment of clarity that so many wellbeing conversations promise, but in what comes just after it. The part where you realise something about yourself or your relationships, and then very messily try to do something about it.

Jacky described believing, for a long time, that if she could just say things the right way, people would meet her there. That the gap between her and others was something she could bridge with better words, more careful explanations, a little more effort. It’s such a human instinct — to assume that understanding is something we can earn if we try hard enough.

And sometimes that’s true. But not always.

Sometimes what we’re up against isn’t a lack of clarity, but a difference in direction. A difference in how we see things, what we value, what we’re willing to hold or not hold anymore. And that’s much harder to resolve, because it doesn’t bend as easily.

What follows that realisation isn’t a clean decision. It’s more like learning to walk again on uneven ground.

You say something you’ve been meaning to say, and it comes out slightly wrong. Or it lands in a way you didn’t expect. You question yourself almost immediately. Was that too much? Too blunt? Not quite right? You tell yourself you’ll try again next time, maybe in a softer way, a clearer way. You adjust, you retreat, you step forward again.

Jacky described it as “stumble, trip, stumble, trip.” And it’s exactly that. Not a confident stride into a new way of being, but a series of attempts, some of which don’t go to plan.

There’s a kind of vulnerability in this stage that doesn’t get talked about much. Because from the outside, it might look like growth — becoming more self-aware, more aligned, more boundaried. But from the inside, it can feel uncertain and exposing. You’re no longer fully comfortable in the old way of relating, but you’re not yet steady in the new one either.

And that can feel lonely.

Not necessarily in the obvious sense of being alone, but in the quieter sense of not quite being met. Of noticing that the ways you’re beginning to show up don’t always fit neatly into the relationships you’ve had before. Of realising that not everyone will come with you, or understand you in the way you hoped.

Jacky spoke about this without dressing it up. That there can be grief in it. That choosing your own direction — even gently, even kindly — can create a kind of separation. Not because you want it to, but because something has shifted, and you can’t quite go back to not knowing that.

And still, there was something else in what she said that felt just as important.

That the alternative — ignoring what you’ve noticed, continuing to override yourself for the sake of keeping things smooth — comes at a cost too. A quieter one, perhaps, but one that builds over time. A sense of being slightly out of step with yourself. Of saying yes when you mean maybe, or maybe when you mean no. Of slowly losing touch with what feels true.

This is where connection becomes more complicated than we often allow it to be.

Because it isn’t just about being close to other people. It’s also about how close you are to yourself within those relationships. Whether there is space, even in small ways, to be honest about what you feel, what you need, what you see differently now.

And that honesty doesn’t have to arrive all at once.

One of the things I took from this conversation is that connection doesn’t depend on getting it perfectly right. It might be something much smaller than that. A moment where you say a little more than you usually would. A conversation where you don’t immediately tidy up your feelings. A pause where you notice the urge to explain, and choose, just for a second, not to.

It might be noticing where you feel able to do that, and where you don’t.

Because not every space will hold it. And that, too, is information.

Jacky talks about “human tricky things” — the parts of being alive that don’t resolve easily. The feelings we don’t always have words for. The experiences that sit somewhere between connection and disconnection, between being seen and staying hidden. And what struck me is that learning to connect while human isn’t about smoothing those things out. It’s about finding ways to stay with them.

To stay with yourself when you’re unsure. To stay in relationship where you can, without forcing it where you can’t. To allow for the possibility that connection might look different now — less about being perfectly understood, and more about being real in the places that can hold it.

If you’re in that space at the moment — noticing something has shifted, but not yet sure how to live it — it might help to know that this part doesn’t need to be rushed.

You’re not behind. You’re not getting it wrong. You’re in the middle of learning something about yourself that takes time to settle.

And there is a kind of steadiness that can grow here, even if it doesn’t feel like it yet. Not from having all the answers, but from beginning to trust what you notice. From allowing that to matter, even when it complicates things.

If you’d like to hear more of this conversation, you can listen to my episode with Jacky Power on A Thought I Kept, where we explore emotions, loneliness, and what it means to stay connected — to ourselves and to each other.

And if you’re looking for somewhere to think about your own relationships or feelings a little more gently, explore our coaching and resources here If Lost Start Here.

How to Trust That Things Will Be OK (Even When You Feel Lost)

You arrive a little more tired than you expected, the kind of tired that isn’t just about the journey but about everything you’ve been carrying before you even set off.

The train was delayed, the coffee wasn’t great, and there’s already a message waiting for you from home asking something that requires more of you than you feel you have to give. You hold your bag a little tighter as you step off, aware of that familiar hum underneath it all — the one that says you’re doing your best, and still wondering if it’s enough.

And then, slowly, something begins to shift.

You’re welcomed in, properly welcomed in, with a warmth that doesn’t ask anything of you in return. There’s a cup of tea placed into your hands, a chair that feels like it was waiting for you, and a sense — rare, and difficult to create on demand — that you don’t have to perform or explain or improve anything about yourself in this moment.

You have arrived.

This is the kind of space described in my recent conversation with Tanya Lynch on A Thought I Kept, but more than that, it’s the kind of space many of us are quietly searching for in our everyday lives, especially when we find ourselves feeling lost without quite knowing how we got there. Because feeling lost doesn’t often look dramatic. It tends to look like carrying on, showing up, doing what needs to be done while holding a question in the background about whether this is how things are meant to feel.

When Life Doesn’t Look Like You Thought It Would

Tanya’s work, through journaling, retreats, and bibliotherapy, is rooted in something both simple and surprisingly hard to practice, which is the idea that everything is welcome.

Not just the parts of life that feel resolved or hopeful or easy to share, but also the uncertainty, the heartbreak, the restlessness, and the moments where you don’t know what comes next or how you’re meant to move through them. These are the parts we’re often encouraged to fix or move past, and yet they are also the parts that tend to shape us most.

There is a phrase she returns to, one that you may have heard so many times it risks losing its meaning:

Every cloud has a silver lining.

It can feel too neat for the complexity of real life, too polished for the moments when things are genuinely hard, but the origins of the phrase tell a different story. It dates back to the 17th century, from a line by John Milton in Comus, where he describes a dark cloud revealing a silver edge when caught by light.

It wasn’t written as advice or reassurance, but as an observation, a moment of noticing that even within something heavy, there might be something else present at the same time. And perhaps that is where this idea becomes more useful to us, not as a way of reframing everything into something positive, but as an invitation to look a little more closely at what is already there.

Learning to Stay With the Hard Parts

One of the things that stayed with me most from this conversation is the way Tanya speaks about challenge, not as something to avoid or move quickly beyond, but as something that is woven into the shape of a life. There isn’t a single moment where everything resolves or becomes easier, and there isn’t a version of life that is made up only of blue skies and straightforward narratives. Instead, there are multiple moments, some expansive, some difficult, some that ask more of us than we feel ready to give, and all of them becoming part of the story we are living.

Over time, something begins to build alongside that, and it is not certainty or control but a quieter kind of trust. Not the kind that insists everything will work out exactly as we hope, but the kind that recognises we have moved through difficult things before and found our way, even when it didn’t feel possible at the time.

What It Means to Feel Held

So much of what Tanya creates through her retreats is about this idea of being held, and it’s something that feels increasingly important in a world that often asks us to keep going without pausing to notice how we actually are. Being held doesn’t mean being fixed or guided towards a better version of yourself, and it doesn’t come with a list of things to do or ways to improve. It is something quieter than that, an experience of being seen without needing to justify yourself, of being able to arrive as you are without editing or softening the edges of what you’re feeling.

It’s the difference between being asked what you need to do next and being given the space to sit with where you already are. And while retreats can offer a more intentional version of that experience, the question it opens up feels relevant far beyond those spaces.

Where in your life do you feel held, and where might you need a little more of that than you currently have?

A Way to Begin Again, Gently

If you are in a moment that feels uncertain right now, this isn’t about finding a solution or creating a plan, and it doesn’t ask you to turn everything around or see things differently straight away.

It might begin somewhere much smaller.

The next time you find yourself caught in the noise of everything you’re holding, the questions, the pressure to figure things out, the sense that you should know what comes next, you might step outside if you can and allow yourself a moment to look up rather than down. Not in a symbolic or forced way, but simply to notice what is there.

Clouds moving, light catching edges, space opening up in ways you hadn’t registered before.

This is not about convincing yourself that things are better than they are, but about allowing for the possibility that more than one thing can be true at the same time, that alongside what feels difficult, there may also be something else present that you hadn’t yet seen.

A Thought to Keep

Every cloud has a silver lining may not be something you believe all of the time, and it may not be something you want to hold onto in every moment, but it can sit gently in the background as a question rather than a conclusion.

What else might be here that I haven’t noticed yet?

If you’d like to spend more time with this idea, you can listen to the full episode of A Thought I Kept with Tanya Lynch, where we explore what it means to trust that things will be OK without needing to force that belief.

And if you are finding that you need more support in understanding what you’re feeling or where you are, you can explore our private coaching at If Lost Start Here, where we make space for all of it, not just the parts that are easy to explain.

Sometimes, finding your way doesn’t begin with knowing what to do next, but with allowing yourself to arrive exactly where you are.

Creativity as a Mental Health Tool: How Art Can Support Wellbeing and Self-Trust

Often when we think about wellbeing, our minds go to the things we’ve been taught to reach for. Yoga classes and early morning runs. Cold water swims, breathwork, journaling practices carefully folded into the edges of the day. There is a familiar shape to it now, a sense of what counts as looking after ourselves and what does not.

And yet, there are other ways of feeling better that sit just outside of that frame. Quieter, less prescribed, often overlooked. Creativity is one of them.

Not because it is unavailable, but because many of us stopped recognising it as something we were allowed to have. Somewhere along the way, it became something reserved for other people. The creative ones. The artistic ones. The ones who knew what they were doing.

So when we find ourselves searching for support, for something that might help us feel a little steadier or more like ourselves again, creativity rarely makes the list. It feels optional, or indulgent, or something to come back to when everything else is in place.

But what if it is not an extra at all. What if it is one of the most overlooked ways we have of supporting our mental health and wellbeing.

This is something that came into sharper focus for me in a recent conversation with Imogen Partridge, a watercolour illustrator and workshop host whose work sits at the intersection of creativity and everyday life. Not in a way that asks us to become more creative, but in a way that reminds us we already are.

What she speaks about is not creativity as output or identity, but as a practice. Something we can return to in the middle of ordinary days. Something that can sit quietly alongside everything else we are holding, offering a different way of being with ourselves when things feel uncertain or overwhelming.

At the heart of her own experience is a thought she has kept for years. A reminder that appears on her phone at the end of the day, asking her to give herself more credit for how hard she is trying .

It is a simple idea, but one that shifts something fundamental. Because so often, even when we are looking after ourselves, we are still measuring. Noticing what we have not done, where we have fallen short, how far we feel from where we thought we might be. And so even our wellbeing practices can quietly become another place where we are trying to get it right.

What happens if we begin somewhere else.

If instead of asking whether something is working, we notice that we are trying. If instead of evaluating the outcome, we stay with the experience of being in it.

This is where creativity begins to feel different.

In Imogen’s workshops, people often arrive with a certainty that they are not creative. It is not something they have questioned for a long time. It sits quietly in the background, shaping what they reach for and what they avoid. And so there is hesitation at first. A sense of being outside of something. Of not quite belonging in the space.

But when they begin, something shifts. Not because what they create is suddenly good or finished or worthy of being shown, but because they are in it. They are making marks, however tentative. They are noticing what it feels like to try without knowing exactly where it will lead.

There is a vulnerability in that. In being seen trying, even by yourself. In allowing something to exist that is unfinished, uncertain, not quite right.

And there is also something quietly steadying about it.

Because when the focus moves away from outcome, there is space for something else to emerge. A different kind of attention. A moment of calm. A feeling of being absorbed in what is in front of you, rather than pulled in multiple directions at once.

This is where creativity begins to show up as a mental health tool, not in the way we might expect, but in the way it meets us where we are.

It does not ask us to be consistent or disciplined or to improve. It does not require us to share or perform or turn it into something more. It simply offers a place to land. A way of settling into the present moment, even briefly, when everything else feels like too much.

And over time, those moments can begin to matter.

Not because they change everything, but because they offer something different. A pause in the noise. A way of coming back into your body. A reminder that you can be with yourself without needing to fix or move beyond what you are feeling.

I have seen this in small, everyday ways. Children drawing without hesitation, moving from one idea to the next without questioning whether it is good. Adults returning to creative practices after years away, unsure at first, then gradually finding a rhythm that feels their own. A partner coming home from a long day and picking up a paintbrush, not to create something finished, but to let the day settle.

There is something important in these moments. Not just the act itself, but what it represents.

That creativity is not something we have to earn.
That it does not need to be productive to be valuable.
That it can sit alongside the rest of our lives, quietly supporting us in ways we might not have considered.

In a world where so much of wellbeing is shaped by structure and expectation, creativity offers something softer. A way of being rather than doing. A practice that can exist in small pockets of time, without needing to be perfect or complete.

It is not the only way of supporting your mental health, and it does not replace anything else that works for you. But it is one of the tools that often goes unnoticed, even though it has been there all along.

And perhaps that is where this thought continues to land.

Not as something to achieve, but as something to recognise.

That trying counts.
That effort, even when it is unseen, has value.
That you do not need to feel ready or confident to begin.

If you find yourself searching for ways to feel better, it might be worth looking not just at what you can add, but at what you might return to. Something simple. Something small. Something that allows you to be in the moment without needing to change it.

You can listen to the full conversation with Imogen Partridge on A Thought I Kept, where we explore creativity, mental health, motherhood and the quiet power of trying in more depth.

And if you are curious about how creativity might support your own wellbeing, you can explore our wellbeing prescriptions at If Lost Start Here, where we share gentle ways to bring more creativity into your everyday life in ways that feel possible and personal to you

Why Nothing Changes Even When You Try Everything: The Missing Role of Connection

Do you ever feel so frustratingly stuck? And it’s not because you haven’t tried things. If anything, you’ve tried a lot. You’ve read the books, listened to the podcasts, saved the quotes, maybe even written things down in a notebook with the hope that this time something might land. And for a moment, it does. Something resonates. Something makes sense. And then, somehow, nothing really changes.

You’re still in the same patterns. Still circling the same questions. Still feeling that low-level sense that something isn’t quite shifting in the way you hoped it might.

It can be easy, in those moments, to assume the problem is you. That you haven’t understood it properly. That you haven’t applied it well enough. That you need to try harder, or find the right framework, or finally come across the one idea that will make everything click into place.

But what if that’s not what’s missing?

In a recent episode of A Thought I Kept, I found myself returning to a simpler idea. That sometimes it isn’t another piece of insight we need. It’s other people.

Not in a dramatic or overwhelming way. Not in the sense of needing a whole new community or a complete change of life. But in the small, often overlooked ways that we are with each other. The conversations that go a little deeper than expected. The moments where someone really listens. The feeling of being alongside someone rather than trying to work it all out alone.

Because so much of what we are trying to understand about ourselves doesn’t fully emerge in isolation.

We can think about something for weeks, months even, and still feel unsure. And then, in the space of a single conversation, something becomes clearer. Not because the other person has the answer, but because they’ve asked a question we hadn’t considered. Or reflected something back to us that we couldn’t quite see on our own.

There’s something about being witnessed that changes the shape of things.

In my conversation with Laurence McCahill, we talked about the role he plays in bringing people together. A friend once told him that he was the glue in a group, the person who connected people who might not otherwise have found each other. It wasn’t something he had consciously set out to be. It was something he recognised in hindsight, something that had always been there.

And I think there’s something important in that too.

That the things that help us feel more connected, more ourselves, are often not the things we need to learn from scratch. They are the things that already exist in us, but only really come into focus in relationship with other people.

Listening. Noticing. Making space. Asking a question at the right moment. Sitting with someone without needing to fix what they’re going through.

These are not grand gestures. They are small, human ones. But they create the conditions for something else to happen. They create the conditions for change.

It also made me think about how much of modern life encourages us to do things on our own. To self-reflect alone. To improve alone. To figure things out internally before we share them with anyone else. Even our versions of connection can become structured or transactional. Networking rather than relating. Updating rather than opening up. And in all of that, we can lose something essential.

The in-between spaces where things unfold more naturally. The conversations that aren’t heading anywhere in particular. The moments where we’re not trying to get something out of the interaction, but simply being in it. Those are often the places where something shifts. Not because we’ve found a better answer, but because we’re no longer holding everything on our own.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, or like you’re circling the same thoughts without anything really changing, it might be worth gently asking a different question.

Not “what haven’t I figured out yet?” But “who might I need to be in conversation with?”

That might look like reaching out to someone you trust. Sitting with a friend a little longer than usual. Joining something where the intention is simply to be with other people, rather than to achieve or fix anything.

It might even be noticing where, in your own life, you are already the one who brings people together. The one who listens. The one who creates space for others. And considering what it would mean to allow that to be something you receive as well as give.

There isn’t a neat formula for this. And it won’t always feel comfortable, especially if you’re used to holding things on your own. But there is a different kind of steadiness that can come from it.

The kind that doesn’t come from having all the answers, but from not having to find them alone.

If this idea resonates, you might want to listen to the full conversation with Laurence on A Thought I Kept, where we explore connection, community, and what becomes possible when we do life together.

And if you’re looking for somewhere to begin, we’ve created a series of wellbeing prescriptions at If Lost Start Here that gently centre connection in everyday life. Not as another thing to get right, but as a way of finding your footing again, alongside other people.

When Grief Changes You But Doesn’t Define You: Finding Your Way Through Loss

Rachel Hart-Phillips is in the car, driving away from the hospital mortuary. It is one of those days that feels almost impossible to hold — the kind where everything is too much, too raw, too real. She has just seen her husband. The future she thought she had is no longer there. And alongside the shock and the grief, there is another feeling beginning to take shape.

Fear.

Not just of what has happened, but of what it might mean. That this could be the thing that defines her. That from this moment on, she might always be “the person this happened to.” That her life might narrow around this one experience, this one loss, this one story.

She says it out loud to the friend driving her home. And he responds, simply and almost casually, “don’t let it.”

It isn’t a solution. It isn’t even something she can fully take in at the time. How could you, in the middle of something so overwhelming? But she keeps it. She carries it with her, even when it feels impossible to believe. And over time, it becomes something she can return to. Not as an instruction to be okay, but as a way of orienting herself inside something that has changed everything.

There is something in that moment that many of us will recognise, even if our circumstances are different. That quiet, often unspoken fear that the hardest thing we go through might become the thing that defines us. It might not be grief. It might be anxiety, burnout, a loss of confidence, a period of feeling lost or stuck. But the shape of the fear is often the same. That this is who I am now. That this is how it will always be.

And yet, life is rarely that singular. It is not one thing, even when one thing feels overwhelming. What Rachel’s story holds, gently and without forcing it, is the idea that we can be shaped by what happens to us without being entirely defined by it.

This is not about dismissing the impact of what we go through. Loss does change us. Grief changes us. The experiences that stop us in our tracks — the ones that make us question who we are and how we go on — they leave their mark. Rachel speaks about the many emotions that came with her grief: sadness, of course, but also anger, guilt, fear, even moments of something like joy returning in unexpected ways And perhaps one of the hardest parts is that these emotions don’t arrive neatly. They don’t follow a clear path. They can feel contradictory, confusing, and sometimes even shameful.

We are not always given space to experience that fully. There is often a subtle pressure, from the world around us and from within, to be strong, to hold it together, to find a way through as quickly as possible. Rachel described being told she was strong after earlier loss, and how that became something she felt she had to live up to — as if showing her grief might mean she was doing it wrong But over time, she came to understand that strength, in this context, looks very different. It is not about holding everything in. It is about allowing what is there to be there.

This is a different kind of orientation to the one many of us are used to. Rather than asking “how do I fix this?” or “how do I stop feeling like this?”, it becomes something more like “how do I stay with this, without losing myself inside it?” It is slower. Less certain. But also, perhaps, more human.

Rachel spoke about grief as something that lives in the body, not just the mind. Something that needs to be felt and moved through, rather than thought away And that might look like very ordinary things. A walk. A song. A moment of crying that comes out of nowhere. A small flicker of light that catches you by surprise. None of these are solutions. But they are ways of staying connected to yourself, even as everything shifts.

There was something else in our conversation that stayed with me, and it sits alongside that original thought. The idea that when something hard happens, we don’t just struggle with what we’re feeling — we also struggle with how to be around each other. The not knowing what to say. The fear of getting it wrong. The way we can sometimes back away, even when we care deeply.

Rachel has built her work around this space — around helping us find words when words feel impossible. And what she returns to, again and again, is that it doesn’t need to be perfect. Often, it is the simplest expressions that matter most. A message. A card. A “I’m here.” A “love you.” Not to fix anything, but to sit alongside it.

Because when life becomes difficult, what we are often looking for is not a solution, but a sense of not being alone in it.

And maybe this is where that original thought — don’t let it — becomes something softer, something more spacious. Not a demand to overcome or to move on. But a quiet reminder that even when something changes you, it doesn’t have to take everything with it. There can still be other parts of you. Other moments. Other possibilities that sit alongside the hard.

Rachel speaks about the metaphor of a disco ball — something made up of broken pieces that still reflects light. Not in spite of what it’s been through, but because of how those pieces come together. It feels like a more honest image of how we live. Not perfectly put back together. Not untouched by what has happened. But still capable of reflecting something back into the world.

If you are in a moment where things feel uncertain, or heavy, or difficult to name, it might not be about finding a way to change yourself. It might be about staying close to yourself, even here. Allowing what is present to be present. And trusting, even if only a little, that there is more to you than the thing that has happened.

If this feels close to home, you can listen to the full conversation with Rachel on A Thought I Kept.

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And if you’re looking for a steadier way to navigate what you’re feeling, or to find your footing again, you’re always welcome to explore the coaching and resources here at If Lost Start Here.

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For now, perhaps just this thought to carry gently with you:

What is the thing you’re afraid might define you?

And what might it mean, in your own time, not to let it?

How to Have a Better Relationship with Your Emotions (Without Trying to Fix Them)

Ok we need to talk about emotions because there can be so much going on with that aspect of our lives — much of it unseen. Maybe there’s a sense that we should be handling them better. That we should feel calmer, clearer, more in control. That if anxiety shows up, or grief lingers, or something in us feels heavier than it “should,” then something has gone wrong.

So we try to manage what we feel. We minimise it, move past it, explain it away. We tell ourselves we’ll deal with it later, or that it isn’t that big a deal, or that other people have it worse. We learn, often without realising it, to close the door on parts of ourselves that feel inconvenient or uncomfortable.

And yet, for many of us, that doesn’t actually make things easier. It just makes us feel more disconnected. From ourselves, from other people, from what’s really going on.

In a recent conversation on A Thought I Kept, I spoke with Dr MaryCatherine McDonald about this — and in particular, about a simple but quietly radical idea: that our emotions might not be something to fix or control, but something to relate to.

She shared a poem by Rumi that has stayed with her for years, about being human as a kind of guest house, where emotions arrive as visitors. Joy, anxiety, grief, irritation. Some welcome, some less so. All of them coming and going, whether we invite them in or not .

It’s such a different way of seeing things.

Because many of us have been taught to do the opposite. To decide which emotions are acceptable and which need to be shown the door. To believe that if something uncomfortable is present, then something must be wrong — and the goal is to get back to a more “acceptable” state as quickly as possible.

MaryCatherine described living like that for years. Feeling as though she was at war with her emotions, trying to control them, contain them, make them behave. And underneath that, a quieter belief: that if anxiety or grief were there, they would take over. That they might ruin everything.

It’s a feeling I recognise, and one I see often in my work. That fear of what might happen if we really let ourselves feel what’s there.

But what if the work isn’t to get rid of what we feel?

What if it’s to sit down with it?

To offer it a chair, rather than pushing it out of the room. To get curious, even gently, about why it’s here. Not because we want to analyse it or solve it, but because we’re willing to be in relationship with it.

That idea of relationship feels important.

Because emotions don’t arrive neatly, one at a time. They overlap. They contradict each other. We can feel anxious and hopeful, tired and grateful, grieving and still find something to laugh at. And yet, we often try to simplify that complexity into something more manageable. I am anxious. I am fine. I am coping.

But that can leave us feeling stuck. As though we’ve become the emotion, rather than someone experiencing it.

What I found grounding in this conversation was the idea that we don’t have to identify so completely with what we feel. We can be in it, without it being all of us. We can let something move through, rather than holding onto it as a fixed state.

And that matters, particularly when things feel heavy.

MaryCatherine talks about something she calls “rehearsing loss” — the way our nervous system, often shaped by past experiences, tries to protect us by anticipating what might go wrong. Imagining endings before we’ve fully lived the beginnings. Bracing ourselves, just in case.

It makes sense, when you see it like that. It’s not weakness. It’s protection.

But it can also make it harder to access the moments that are here. The small, ordinary experiences that carry something lighter in them. A conversation that lands. A moment of connection. A flicker of joy that doesn’t erase what’s hard, but sits alongside it.

This is something else she reframes beautifully — the idea that joy isn’t something we reach once everything is sorted, but something that appears in the middle of things. Not fluffy or superficial, but steady and tenacious. Something that helps us stay, rather than escape.

And maybe that’s part of what a different relationship with our emotions can offer.

Not a life where we only feel the “right” things. But a life where we feel more of what’s real, without it meaning something has gone wrong.

Where we can notice when we’re trying to push something away, and instead soften, even slightly, towards it.

Where we don’t have to be at war with ourselves.

If you’re someone who has been trying to manage or control what you feel, it might be worth asking a different question.

Not “how do I fix this?”

But “what might it be like to sit with this, just for a moment?”

There’s no perfect way to do that. No right or wrong response. Just a gradual shift, over time, from resisting what’s there to being alongside it.

And if that feels unfamiliar, you’re not alone in that either.

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If you’d like to explore this idea further, you can listen to my full conversation with Dr MaryCatherine McDonald on A Thought I Kept. It’s a thoughtful, honest exploration of emotions, grief, joy, and what it means to be in relationship with what we feel.

And if you’re looking for a little more support in understanding your own emotional world, you can also explore my emotions coaching sessions — a space to gently make sense of what’s going on, at your own pace.

How We Learn to Cope Without Alcohol

Rethinking emotional regulation, drinking, and the stories we inherit about coping

There are moments in life when something quietly stops working.

Not dramatically, not all at once, but gradually, almost imperceptibly. A glass of wine at the end of the day that once felt relaxing begins to feel necessary. A way to soften the edges of stress, to slow a racing mind, to take a brief step away from the feelings that have been gathering in the background.

For many people, alcohol becomes woven into the way we cope with everyday life. It sits comfortably in the rituals of the evening, the social rhythms of weekends, the celebrations and the commiserations. It promises relief, connection, relaxation — and often, at least for a while, it delivers.

But sometimes there comes a moment when the question begins to surface: Is this actually helping?

That question was at the heart of a recent conversation on my podcast A Thought I Kept with sober coach and writer Ellie Nova. Ellie spent more than a decade feeling trapped in a relationship with alcohol that was increasingly tangled up with shame and self-judgement. And the thought that ultimately helped her begin to step away from it was surprisingly simple:

There is nothing wrong with you.

At first glance, that might not sound like a thought powerful enough to change a life. But the more we talked, the clearer it became just how radical it can be.

Because when people begin to question their relationship with alcohol, the story they often tell themselves is one of personal failure. Why can everyone else seem to drink normally? Why does this feel so difficult for me? Why can’t I control myself?

But what if alcohol was never really the problem in the first place?

What if, instead, it had simply become a way of coping with emotions that felt too big to hold?

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The quiet role alcohol plays in emotional regulation

One of the things Ellie and I explored together was the role alcohol can come to play in regulating our emotional lives. Not because we consciously choose it as a coping strategy, but because many of us grow up without ever being taught how to sit with difficult feelings.

Anxiety, loneliness, grief, pressure, shame — these emotions can be uncomfortable and confusing, especially if we’ve learned, consciously or unconsciously, that they are not entirely welcome. Perhaps we were told we were too sensitive, or that we needed to toughen up, or that certain feelings were inappropriate in certain situations.

Over time, many of us become quite skilled at pushing emotions aside. We distract ourselves, we stay busy, we find ways to numb what we’re feeling just enough to keep moving.

In that context, alcohol can begin to make a certain kind of sense. It offers a socially acceptable way to soften emotions that feel sharp, to quiet thoughts that won’t settle, to step briefly outside of the intensity of being human.

And because alcohol is so culturally embedded — in celebrations, socialising, relaxation, and even self-care — it can take a long time before we start to question the role it’s playing.

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When drinking stops feeling like relief

For some people, that questioning begins when alcohol stops delivering the relief it once promised. The drink that once helped take the edge off anxiety begins to bring its own kind of discomfort. The sense of escape becomes tangled up with regret, exhaustion, or a quiet awareness that something isn’t quite right.

At that point, it can be tempting to interpret the problem as one of discipline or willpower. Perhaps I just need to be stronger. Perhaps I need more control.

But Ellie’s experience — and the experiences of many of the women she now supports — suggests something quite different.

If alcohol became a coping strategy, it likely did so because something inside needed support. Something needed soothing, or understanding, or simply space to be felt.

And when we begin to look at our relationship with alcohol through that lens, the conversation shifts.

Instead of asking What’s wrong with me?, we begin asking more curious questions.

What am I actually feeling?
What have I been trying not to feel?
And what might help me cope in a way that truly supports me?

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Learning to cope without numbing

Letting go of alcohol can feel daunting not simply because it is a habit, but because it has often been doing important emotional work behind the scenes.

Without it, many people suddenly find themselves face to face with feelings that have been carefully managed for years — anxiety, grief, loneliness, stress, even the quieter emotions like disappointment or regret that are easy to push aside in a busy life.

Learning to cope without alcohol, then, is rarely just about stopping drinking. More often, it becomes a process of learning a new relationship with our emotional lives.

That might involve recognising emotions earlier, before they gather into overwhelm. It might involve paying attention to the physical sensations that accompany anxiety or stress in the body. It might mean finding other ways to regulate ourselves — movement, conversation, rest, time in nature, creative expression.

But perhaps most importantly, it involves replacing judgement with curiosity.

When we stop seeing emotions as problems to eliminate and begin to understand them as signals, something shifts. The very feelings we once tried to escape can begin to feel more manageable, even informative.

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A different understanding of self-care

In our conversation, Ellie and I also reflected on the way self-care is often presented as a form of escape — a brief pause from the pressures of life, a small indulgence designed to help us get through the week.

But real emotional care often looks quieter and deeper than that. It might mean slowing down long enough to notice what is actually happening inside us. It might mean allowing feelings that are uncomfortable rather than immediately trying to distract ourselves from them.

Sometimes it means asking for support.

For many people, learning to cope without alcohol becomes part of a broader shift toward self-trust — a growing sense that our emotions are not something to suppress or manage away, but something to understand.

And that shift often begins with a simple but powerful idea.

There is nothing wrong with you.

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Listen to the conversation

If this perspective resonates with you, you can listen to the full conversation with Ellie Nova on the podcast A Thought I Kept.

In the episode How We Break Free From Alcohol, Ellie shares her own experience of stepping away from alcohol and the thought that helped her begin to see her emotions, and herself, in a different way.

Looking for support with your emotions?

If you’re navigating emotional overwhelm, anxiety, or simply trying to understand your feelings more clearly, you might also find our emotions coaching sessions helpful.

These sessions offer a calm, thoughtful space to explore what you’re feeling and to develop ways of working with your emotions that feel supportive rather than overwhelming.

You can learn more about emotions coaching with Claire here.

The Day You Realise You’ve Been Living With Your Eyes Closed

We tend to think confidence arrives fully formed. A clear decision. A bold move. A moment where everything clicks into place. But often it begins with something far less impressive.

It begins with discomfort that doesn’t quite have a name. A low hum of restlessness that follows you through meetings, through conversations, through evenings on the sofa. You might not be able to point to anything that’s broken. You might even feel slightly ungrateful for questioning it. And yet the question lingers.

Am I actually choosing this?

That was the pivot in my conversation with Erica Moore, founder of speciality tea brand eteaket on the podcast this week. Not a dramatic exit. Not a grand reinvention. Just a quiet noticing that she had been progressing through a life she hadn’t consciously shaped. She had been capable, competent, successful but not fully awake.

There’s something unsettling about realising you’ve been living slightly on autopilot. It can feel like you’ve missed something. Like you should have known sooner. But I don’t think that’s what’s happening.

I think sometimes we simply reach a point where the life that once fitted us begins to feel tight around the edges. We outgrow ways of coping. We outgrow expectations we once accepted without question. And because the outside world still sees us as “fine,” it can be hard to admit the internal shift.

This is often where people arrive here. Not because they want to become someone new. But because they want to feel more like themselves. And that’s a different thing entirely.

In the episode of the podcast, we talked about tea as a container — a small moment in the day where you can pause without having to justify it. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. How rare it is to have moments that aren’t productive, reactive, or outward-facing. How easy it is to move from task to task without ever checking whether the direction still feels right.

When you’re feeling lost, the instinct can be to find a bigger answer. A plan. A strategy. A reinvention.

But sometimes what’s needed is smaller. A little more space. A little more honesty. A little more willingness to sit with what’s true before deciding what to do about it.

Uncertainty doesn’t always mean something is wrong. It can mean something inside you is ready to be heard.

And the steadiness I come back to — in my own life and in coaching conversations — is this: you do not need to dismantle who you are in order to move forward. You do not need to be more disciplined, more confident, more impressive. You need to feel safe enough to notice.

When you allow yourself to notice what feels heavy, what feels enlivening, what feels misaligned, you begin to orient yourself again. Not through force. Through awareness. The work is not becoming someone else. It’s coming back to yourself, gently and repeatedly, until your choices begin to reflect who you actually are.

That’s not dramatic. It won’t make a good headline. But it does create a steadier life. And if you’re in that space right now — questioning quietly, searching for clarity, wanting change but not chaos — you are not behind. You are not broken. You may simply be opening your eyes.

You can listen to the full conversation with Erica on A Thought I Kept wherever you get your podcasts, and sit with the idea a little longer.

If you’re in a season of questioning or change and would value support as you find your way forward, our coaching sessions offer space for clarity, self-trust, and meaningful direction — at your pace.

You Don’t Have to Change Who You Are to Move Forward

Sometimes the feeling of being lost doesn’t announce itself loudly. It slips in quietly, disguised as self-doubt or restlessness. You find yourself wondering why the things that seem to work for everyone else don’t quite stick for you. Why your energy rises and falls. Why you can be so capable one week and so uncertain the next. Why the common advice about confidence or consistency feels faintly misaligned, as though it were written for someone else.

Many of the people who arrive here are not looking to reinvent themselves. They are looking for steadier ground. They are tired of trying to fix what might not be broken.

In a recent episode of A Thought I Kept, I spoke to writer and ADHD coach Gabrielle Treanor about a thought that had quietly reshaped her life: “I get to be here.”

When she said it, it wasn’t defiant. It wasn’t triumphant. It was calm. Considered. Almost surprised.

Gabrielle was diagnosed with ADHD in her late forties. For years she had assumed that her fluctuating motivation, her sensitivity, her tendency to procrastinate meant she simply wasn’t disciplined enough. She had tried to follow the prescribed routes to wellbeing — the routines, the systems, the ways of doing things “properly.” When she couldn’t sustain them, she thought the fault lay with her.

What changed was not her personality, but her understanding. Her brain worked differently. The expectations she had internalised were not neutral; they were shaped by a culture that prizes steadiness, productivity and linear progress. Realising this did not give her a new identity so much as a new understanding. A new willingness to stop apologising for the way she was wired.

I get to be here.

It is such a simple sentence, but it carries weight. It suggests that your presence is not conditional on becoming more efficient, more certain, more contained. It does not demand that you take centre stage; it simply reminds you that you belong in the room.

Many of us have been taught to make ourselves smaller in order to move through the world more smoothly. To temper our sensitivity. To soften our opinions. To be grateful for what we have and not ask for more. Even the language of wellbeing can subtly reinforce this shrinking — as though if we could only master the right practice, wake earlier, focus harder, meditate longer, we would finally become the sort of person who functions without friction.

But what if friction is not evidence of failure? What if it is simply information?

Gabrielle’s approach to wellbeing is rooted in experimentation rather than compliance. Instead of asking, “Why can’t I stick to this?” she asks, “What might work for me right now?” The difference is small but profound. It shifts the emphasis from self-criticism to curiosity. It acknowledges that we are not static creatures. Our energy shifts. Our capacity changes. The practices that nourish us in one season may not suit us in another.

For those of us who feel overwhelmed by self-improvement culture, this can be a relief. It allows us to step out of the exhausting cycle of starting and stopping, trying and failing, promising and abandoning. It invites us to pay attention to who we actually are, rather than who we think we ought to be.

If you are feeling unsure of your direction, it may not be because you lack ambition or courage. It may be because you have been trying to travel using someone else’s map.

To say “I get to be here” is to begin from your own coordinates. It does not solve everything. It does not remove uncertainty. But it offers a place to stand. From there, you can notice what feels steady and what does not. You can experiment gently. You can allow for inconsistency without interpreting it as collapse.

This is not an argument against change. Growth still happens. We still learn, adjust, stretch. But growth that begins from self-rejection rarely feels sustainable. Growth that begins from recognition — from a quiet acknowledgement of your temperament, your history, your rhythms — tends to be kinder.

If you are questioning whether the usual wellbeing advice works for you, that questioning may be wisdom rather than resistance. If you are tired of feeling behind, it may be because you have been measuring yourself against a timeline that was never yours.

You get to be here. As you are. With the brain you have, the experiences you carry, the particular mix of steadiness and fluctuation that makes you you.

If you’d like to hear the full conversation with Gabrielle, you can listen to the episode of A Thought I Kept where we explore this idea in more depth — including what it means to discover ADHD in midlife and how experimentation can replace striving.

And if you’re feeling especially untethered, our coaching sessions are here to help you explore these questions at your own pace.

There is no rush to become someone else. Sometimes the first step forward is allowing yourself to be exactly who you are.

What to Do When Life Falls Apart and You Feel Lost

There are moments in life when the ground gives way without your consent.

You didn’t choose the ending. You didn’t plan the disruption. A relationship ends because someone else makes a decision. A parent dies. A health diagnosis lands. A job disappears. And suddenly you are standing outside the life you built, holding pieces that no longer fit together.

In my recent conversation with Ray Martin on A Thought I Kept, what struck me most wasn’t the romance of fourteen years of travel. It was the year that came before it. In a single stretch of time he lost his marriage, his business partnership, and his father The identity he had constructed — successful businessman, husband, son— fractured all at once.

He didn’t wake up one morning and decide to reinvent himself. Life pushed him out.

And that is often how it happens.

When something unexpected pulls the rug from under us, the first instinct is to restore what was. To fix. To replace. To rush toward a new beginning so we don’t have to sit in the in-between. Ray became fascinated by this middle space — what William Bridges calls the neutral zone The place where the old life has ended but the new one hasn’t fully formed. From the outside, nothing looks dramatic. Inside, everything is shifting.

If you are in that space, it can feel disorienting. You might not recognise yourself. The roles that once organised your days no longer apply. The confidence that came from knowing who you were can wobble. You may feel lost not because you are indecisive, but because the map you were using is no longer valid.

Ray’s core thought — the one he kept — is living in surrender

Not surrender as defeat. Not resignation. But surrender as a different way of orienting when control has already slipped from your hands.

He began to pay attention to where his energy went. After visiting an elephant sanctuary and an orphanage, he couldn’t stop thinking about them. Instead of dismissing that tug as sentimental, he followed it. That eventually led him to train for and run a marathon to raise money, something he had never imagined doing before

What I take from that is not “run a marathon.” It is this: when life has already dismantled your plans, perhaps you can afford to listen more closely to what quietly draws you.

Unexpected endings often strip us back to something more elemental. Ray speaks openly about how, earlier in life, he overrode his instincts in order to stay in character After everything fell apart, he found he could no longer ignore those nudges. He began treating life as a series of experiments rather than a fixed destination

There is something gentle in that framing. If you have been kicked out of the life you built, the pressure to “get it right” next time can be immense. An experiment carries less weight. It allows you to try, to notice, to adjust.

Another shift that came for him was around feeling. He moved from living primarily in his head to allowing himself to express emotion more freely. That matters when we are navigating grief, anxiety, or overwhelm. Emotional states are not permanent addresses. They are places we pass through. Letting yourself feel does not mean you will be swallowed by it. Often it means the feeling can move.

He also rethought the idea of “ties.” Work, relationships, community, home. The issue, he suggests, isn’t being tied to something. It’s being unconsciously tied When life tears away a tie without your permission, there can be freedom hidden inside the shock. Not the freedom you would have chosen, but the freedom to ask: what do I now choose, consciously?

Later in the conversation, Ray talks about calculating how many days he might have left — around 5,700 at this stage Not as a dramatic countdown, but as orientation. If time is finite, what is worth fighting? What can be softened? What is no longer necessary?

When the unexpected happens, we often look for certainty. For guarantees. For a clear five-step plan. What Ray’s story offers instead is steadier and perhaps more honest. You may not get certainty. But you can cultivate attention. You can notice what feels alive, even faintly. You can allow the neutral zone to do its quiet work inside you.

Being lost is not always a failure of planning. Sometimes it is the inevitable consequence of loving, committing, building — and then losing.

If you find yourself outside the life you built, perhaps the question is not immediately “What should I do next?” Perhaps it is “What is drawing me, even now?”

You can listen to the full conversation with Ray on A Thought I Kept:

And if you are in the middle of your own unexpected transition, our coaching sessions at If Lost Start Here offers a place to think, feel, and find your footing again without pressure to rush toward a new identity.

You are allowed to be in between. You are allowed to listen before you leap.

When the Story You’re Living No Longer Feels Like Yours

You might be standing in the kitchen, making packed lunches. Nothing dramatic is happening. No argument. No crisis. Just the familiar rhythm of the morning — coffee cooling on the side, toast popping up, your phone lighting up with emails you already feel behind on.

You might catch yourself thinking, I’m good at this. At holding things together. At anticipating what everyone else might need. At getting through the day without making too much noise. And then, almost immediately, another thought follows: But I don’t remember choosing this version of myself.

It’s not that you dislike your life. You’re capable, loved, respected. From the outside, things look fine. But there’s a growing sense that you’re performing a role you’ve learned very well — one shaped by expectation, responsibility, and what once felt necessary — rather than living from a place that feels true to you now.

When you try to put words to it, they’re hard to find. You don’t want to sound ungrateful. You don’t want to blow things up. You just know that something about the story you’re carrying feels outdated, like clothing that once fit perfectly but now restricts your movement in small, tiring ways.

This is often how it begins. Not with a bold decision or a clear turning point, but with a quiet noticing. A moment where the life you’re living feels slightly misaligned with the person you’re becoming. Where the way you’re seen — dependable, easy-going, capable — no longer matches how you feel on the inside.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since my recent conversation on A Thought I Kept with Hilary Salzman. We talked about storytelling, voice, and self-trust — not as something polished or performative, but as something deeply everyday. The stories we absorb, repeat, and live inside, often without realising we’re doing it.

Hilary shared a thought that has stayed with her for years: if you don’t tell your story, someone else will. It isn’t a warning or a call to action. It’s more like a lens — a way of noticing what happens when we stop authoring our own lives and allow habit, expectation, or other people’s assumptions to fill in the gaps.

Most of us aren’t consciously choosing to live someone else’s story. It happens gradually. We adapt. We respond. We take on roles that make us legible and useful. We learn how to be good — good at work, good in relationships, good at coping. And for a long time, those stories can be protective. They help us belong. They help us get through.

But protection can quietly turn into distance. From ourselves. From our feelings. From the sense of aliveness that comes from knowing why we’re doing what we’re doing.

In the conversation, Hilary spoke about the discomfort that arises when the way the world sees you no longer matches how you see yourself. That mismatch can show up as anxiety, restlessness, or a low-level dissatisfaction that’s hard to explain. You might feel unsettled or unsure, even though nothing is obviously “wrong”.

What stays with me is how rarely this is about needing a better plan or a more confident version of yourself. More often, it’s about noticing. Becoming curious about the stories you’re living inside. Asking gentle questions, not to fix or optimise, but to understand.

Whose expectations am I carrying here?
What version of myself am I maintaining?
What would it mean to tell this story in my own words?

We live in a culture that treats uncertainty as something to overcome — as though clarity must arrive quickly, and confidence comes from having answers. But what if uncertainty is simply information? A sign that something is shifting. A signal that the story you’ve been living has reached its limits.

Hilary talked about how clarity often doesn’t arrive as an answer, but as a feeling in the body — a sense of constriction or ease. A quiet knowing that something no longer fits. And noticing this doesn’t require dramatic change or brave declarations. It can begin by allowing yourself to feel what’s already there, without rushing to make sense of it.

This is where self-trust comes in — not as confidence or self-belief in the motivational sense, but as a willingness to stay present with your own experience. To let your emotions inform you rather than embarrass you. To trust that discomfort isn’t a personal failure, but a reasonable response to living inside a story that’s outgrown its usefulness.

Many people arrive at If Lost Start Here feeling overwhelmed, behind, or unsure why familiar wellbeing advice isn’t helping. Often, that’s because what’s needed isn’t another strategy, but orientation. A way of standing still long enough to feel where you are, and what might be asking for attention.

Living your own story doesn’t mean having a perfectly articulated narrative. It doesn’t require sharing everything or knowing exactly who you are becoming. It’s less about broadcasting and more about authorship — about being able to come back to yourself and say, this is who I am, for now. This is what matters. This is what I’m no longer willing to override.

The stories we tell ourselves shape our nervous systems, our relationships, our sense of belonging. When those stories are borrowed, inherited, or outdated, it makes sense that we feel unsettled. And when we begin to gently reclaim them — not by rewriting our lives overnight, but by listening more closely — something steadies.

You don’t need to force a new story into existence. You don’t need to perform authenticity or prove your voice. Sometimes it’s enough to notice the gap. To recognise the feeling of misalignment without judging it. To stay curious about what’s trying to emerge.

If this resonates, you might want to listen to the full conversation with Hilary on A Thought I Kept. It’s a thoughtful exploration of voice, identity, and what it means to feel more at home in your own life.

And if you’re in a season of questioning — unsure, overwhelmed, or quietly ready for something to shift — there’s support here too. Not to fix you, but to help you find your footing, in your own time, and in your own words.

You’re allowed to pause. You’re allowed to question the story you’re in. And you’re allowed to take your time deciding what comes next.