IT’S NEVER TOO LATE

In 2006 I left a well-paying job at the Institute of Directors to follow my heart.
I’d been coached for a long time and I finally reached the point when I didn’t belong there anymore.
A broad range of life experiences, including the transformation in every area of my life wrought about by being coached showed me the power that life coaching can bring.
I’d been married 37 years – 37 years where I mostly felt lonely, unloved and taken for granted.
But it didn’t start there.
It started with my choice to pursue Jim to prove to myself that I was attractive.
Unfortunately, I succeeded.
Why do I start with this story?
Because when our relationship with ourselves is poor, so are our choices.
With the support of Alan, my life coach, I finally found the courage to leave my marriage aged 60 still blaming Jim for the breakdown.
It was another couple of years before I had the most painful and liberating insight – that I hadn’t been the innocent bystander I had always believed.
I saw with the most painful clarity how I had contributed to the death of my marriage.
It was incredibly liberating because I realised that you cannot change another person; you can only change yourself.
Over the next 10 years I learned to know myself – what I really needed and wanted, what I needed to feel loved, what I really believed, what really mattered to me.
I wrote my autobiography (‘Dancing with the Mask: Learning to love and be loved’ available on Amazon) because I wanted people to know there is another way to live. That was my mission at the time.
I learned to attract wonderful friends – something that had eluded me all my life up until that point.
I learned that like attracts like. in my case, an in-authentic people-pleaser isn’t going to attract genuinely loving and supportive friendships. Letting go of my masks intended to be accepted and perhaps even loved was the goal of my coaching.
I established my coaching practice and I started going on holidays by myself including adventures. My last one, in late October 2015 was to Turkey on a paragliding holiday.
I thought my life was complete. I felt happy and fulfilled.
And then, at the beginning of December aged 70, I met Dave, the man who turned out to be my soulmate, my best friend and now my husband.
The relationship was easy from the start which really intrigued me given my history.
I did a lot of research into why marriages break down and what it takes to build a strong and loving relationship.
Dave and I have been together just over 5 years (in 2021) and married just over a year.
I like to share my part in screwing up my first marriage and I also, together with Dave, take the credit for creating something solid and beautiful.
All of these experiences, including having been coached for a long time and a deep understanding how we destroy what we say we love the most as well as how we create relationships that are solid and loving are skills and qualities I bring to my coaching clients.
Happy relationships are not just ‘nice to have’.
They affect everybody in our environment and are a critical component to our health and wellbeing.
In my first marriage I developed severe health conditions ranging from strong pains to various episodes of clinical depression and bulimia.
Today, 35 years later I have none of the conditions associated with people my age and I am the happiest I have ever been.
Teaching people to create happy relationships – first by learning to know, like and respect themselves so they can make good choices. And then learning to build loving and supportive relationships with others – that is my mission.