If you’d met me ten or fifteen years ago, you wouldn’t recognise me.

From the outside, I probably looked like I had my life together. I had a job. I owned a house. I was doing what you’re “supposed” to do. But inside, I was falling apart, and I mean that in the most literal way, not just struggling a bit, or having a hard season, but genuinely falling to pieces whilst appearing *mostly* fine to everyone around me.

I was eventually diagnosed with clinical depression and Generalised Anxiety Disorder, but even with that diagnosis, nobody really got to the root of what was going on. Looking back now, with an ADHD diagnosis at 33 finally making sense of so much of my life, I can see there were layers to it all that nobody understood at the time, including me. I wasn’t just sad. I felt completely trapped, like I was living a life that had been handed to me by a script I’d never agreed to follow.

Every Sunday Night I Had a Knot in My Stomach

Every job I had felt wrong in a way I couldn’t fully articulate. I’d spend Sunday evenings with that familiar ‘Sunday Scaries’ dread, knowing Monday was coming and that I’d spend another day sitting at a desk wondering if this was just what life was supposed to feel like for the next forty years. I knew I was creative. I knew I wanted more. I knew, really knew, somewhere underneath all the fear, that I wanted to build something of my own. But wanting it and actually believing it was possible were two entirely different things, and the gap between them felt enormous.

Eventually everything caught up with me. My mental health became so bad that I had what can only be described as a complete breakdown at work. I was signed off sick, then left the job entirely, and had to move back in with my mum and rent my house out because I couldn’t cope with the basics of daily life. That was one of the lowest points of my life. I had suicidal thoughts. I couldn’t see a future that felt different from where I was. Everything felt too much, getting out of bed felt difficult, making simple decisions felt impossible, and I was drinking far too much, feeling completely disconnected from myself, honestly believing that life was just something to be survived rather than actually enjoyed.

I’m not sharing this to for sympathy. In fact, sympathy is probably one of the quickest ways to wind me up! It’s here because context and knowing where this started matters. Because if the work I do now looks polished or sorted from the outside, it was built on a foundation that was anything but… it’s been quite the transformation story.

A Book I Thought Sounded Ridiculous (That Changed Everything Anyway)

A while later, almost by accident, I came across The Secret.

I thought it sounded completely ridiculous, if I’m honest. The idea that your ‘thoughts became things’ and mattered? That your beliefs shaped your life? That there might actually be another way to exist in the world? It all felt a bit too “woo” for someone who had been in the middle of an actual life crisis and needed actual solutions. But I was desperate enough to read it anyway, and whilst that book didn’t magically cure my depression or suddenly make everything easy, it planted one tiny seed that lingered and little did I know it was about to change the direction of everything.

It made me question whether maybe, just maybe, I wasn’t completely powerless and just a victim of my circumstances.

For the first time in years, I found myself wondering whether my life didn’t actually have to stay exactly as it was. That sounds like a small thing. It wasn’t.

Over the next few years I became obsessed with learning, personal development, psychology, habits, mindset, neuroscience, business, manifestation, anything that might help me understand why some people completely transformed their lives while others stayed stuck for decades doing the same things and getting the same results. I still had plenty of setbacks. I still had major limiting beliefs I couldn’t see yet. I still spent far too much time believing that life was happening to me rather than recognising how much power I actually had. But something had genuinely shifted, and the victim mindset I’d lived in for years slowly started loosening its tight grip.

COVID, Marie Kondo, and the Moment My Brain Stopped

Like so many people, I was furloughed during COVID and eventually made redundant. I remember reading Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up during that period and having one of those moments where your brain almost stops mid-sentence and you have to put the book down.

Wait… people actually do this as a job?

I’d always loved organising. Even as a little girl I’d rearrange my room, organise the bookshelves, and create systems for absolutely everything, something that makes a lot more sense now I understand my ADHD brain’s relationship with order and control. For the first time, it felt like there might actually be a real business hiding inside something I’d naturally loved my entire life. Of course, I still didn’t fully trust myself, so instead of just starting, I took another “safe” job first. It lasted about two months. I hated every single moment of it. Every evening I came finished completely drained, and eventually I reached the point where I realised I couldn’t spend another day pretending that was the life I wanted.

So I left. No grand plan, no guaranteed income, no financial safety net. Just the overwhelming conviction that staying would cost me far more than leaving ever could.

“People think confidence is something you wait for before you change your life. It isn’t. Confidence is usually the receipt you get after you’ve done the scary thing.”

Starting the Business (When Failure Wasn’t an Option)

Starting the business was terrifying in a very practical, non-motivational-poster way. We had debt. We had a mortgage. There wasn’t some huge financial safety net waiting for me to fall back on. Failure simply wasn’t an option, so I made it work, which, looking back, is its own kind of interesting, because that pressure forced a version of resourcefulness and commitment I don’t think I’d have found without it.

People often assume confidence came first. It didn’t. Action came first, and confidence came afterwards, which is one of the most important things I’ve learned and the thing I see most often in the women I work with.

The ones who are waiting to feel ready, waiting to feel confident, waiting for the fear to go away before they start, they wait a long time… The ones who take the action in spite of the fear, even badly, imperfectly, or when every part of them is convinced it’s going to go wrong, those are the ones who end up somewhere different.

This is especially true in business. I work with a lot of professional organisers and self-employed women, and what I see over and over is that the real obstacle isn’t strategy. It’s not the marketing, the pricing, the systems, or the lack of a business plan.

It’s the identity of the person trying to run the business.

The self-doubt that masquerades as “I just need to figure out my niche.” The perfectionism that keeps the website in draft form for nine months. The fear of being seen that turns into an endless cycle of planning, tweaking and never quite launching. The inability to hold money, or charge properly for work, that comes directly from deeply held beliefs about worthiness and what success is allowed to look like. I know all of these patterns intimately because I have lived every single one of them.

If you’re a professional organiser or small business owner and any of that just landed a bit too accurately, that’s exactly the work I do inside Pro Organiser Academy, alongside the business strategy. Because the strategy is the easy bit when the identity piece is sorted.

What the Last Few Years Actually Looked Like

I want to be honest about this because I think the version of “transformation” that gets shared online often skips the middle part.

I’d had multiple identity shifts following that fateful breakdown. But I still wasn’t where I needed to be mindset wise in life or business. The eighteen months after I made another big decision to seriously change things again were some of the hardest and most transformational of my life, and those two things were happening at the same time, not sequentially. There were house purchases collapsing, moving house multiple times, burnout, emotional overwhelm, temporary living situations, family conflict, single motherhood, an ADHD diagnosis, huge periods of extreme overworking, and stretches of time where everything felt impossible and I often wanted to give up.

That’s the part that doesn’t usually make it onto the highlights reel.

But there was also something else building alongside all of it. A growing sense of freedom that I hadn’t felt before. A real, quiet confidence that wasn’t dependent on everything going well. Self-respect that felt earned rather than performed. The gradual realisation that I was becoming someone who no longer needed her circumstances to be perfect in order to feel okay.

I’ve since experienced an emotional rollercoaster, burnout, financial stress, and even more lessons that brought me to my knees. The difference is that I no longer believe those moments define my future, because I understand now that identity changes first and everything else follows. That’s not a motivational quote, it’s the most practically useful thing I know. When you change who you are at the level of identity, the behaviour changes automatically because it becomes incoherent to behave the old way.

You don’t have to white-knuckle the habits. You don’t have to convince yourself every morning. You just stop being available for the version of your life that no longer matches who you’ve decided to be.

If you want the full, unfiltered version of what one of those years actually looked like in real time – the ‘housegate’ saga, Airbnb, and the decisions that made no logical sense and worked out anyway – you can read it here: The Year Everything Fell Apart… And Somehow Everything Worked Out.

Why Decluttering Was the Doorway Into All of It

Here’s where it all connects, and why this work matters in a way that goes so far beyond tidying.

When I started seriously decluttering, really decluttering, not just having a sort-out, I realised that every single item in my home was carrying something. Old versions of myself I hadn’t consciously let go of. Relationships I’d never properly processed. Aspirations I’d given up on without admitting it. Standards I’d quietly lowered without noticing. The physical stuff was never really the issue, it was what the stuff represented. And the act of clearing it out, making those hundreds of small decisions about what belonged in my future and what didn’t, was also the act of deciding who I was becoming.

That is the work. That’s always been the work.

And that’s why a woman who does a big declutter whilst doing this work properly doesn’t just end up with a tidier house, she develops a completely different relationship with herself. As she lets go of the physical clutter, she’s also questioning the beliefs, habits and identity that created it in the first place. Her confidence changes. Her standards change. Her tolerance for situations that no longer serve her drops, because she’s spent weeks practising the act of saying, “This no longer belongs in my life,” and actually meaning it. Those skills don’t stay in the wardrobe. They transfer into her relationships, her business, her finances, her health and her sense of what’s actually possible.

This is why money blocks and relationship patterns and business execution problems often crack open when women do this work with me, because they’re all the same problem. They’re all identity problems. The inability to hold money, to charge what you’re worth, to maintain a client boundary, to actually follow through on the business plan you’ve been drafting for two years, those are not strategic problems. They are self-concept problems, and self-concept is exactly what changes when you do the deeper work.

If you want to understand this more before you’re ready to jump into a programme or coaching, the Life Upgrade Audit is a great place to start, it’ll show you clearly where your biggest identity gaps actually are.

What I Want You to Know

I invested tens of thousands of pounds and thousands of hours learning what actually creates lasting transformation, not just temporary motivation. I have lived it, made every mistake in it, and come out the other side with something that genuinely works, not because I found a shortcut nobody else knows about, but because I became positively obsessed with understanding why people change and refused to stop until I had an answer that held up in real life.

I’m not special. The version of me that once couldn’t imagine getting through another day, I’m not that woman anymore, but I haven’t forgotten her either, and she’s the reason I do this work with such specific intensity. Because if someone who was sitting in her mum’s spare room, debating living, with no clear future and no idea how to get from there to here can build a life she genuinely loves… I know beyond any doubt that you’re capable of far more than you currently believe.

You don’t need more information. You probably already have most of it. What you need is to become the woman who can actually implement it, and that is a completely different problem with a completely different solution.

If you’re ready to work on that, here are the ways I can help:

For your home and life: Break Up With Your Stuff is my flagship programme combining practical decluttering, identity work, mindset, and real accountability. Join the waitlist here and I’ll let you know when the next round opens. If you’re looking for a highly personalised experience with my full attention, tailored strategy, 1:1 coaching and direct access to me throughout, apply for private coaching here.

For your business: If you’re a professional organiser or self-employed woman and the identity-in-business piece of this post hit hard, come and find out about Pro Organiser Academy, the business strategy and mindset support I offer for professional organisers. Business Strategy Sessions are for organisers who want a focused, high-impact session to work through what’s actually getting in the way.

If you’re not sure where to start: The Life Upgrade Audit will give you clarity on where to focus first. And if sentimental clutter is the thing keeping you stuck, grab the free guide Why You Can’t Break Up With Your Sentimental Clutter, it goes into exactly why letting go of meaningful objects feels so hard and what to actually do about it.

And if you want to hear me talk through all of this in real time, come and listen to the How to Break Up With Your Stuff podcast.