My story in 90 seconds… ish!

My life has been an interesting series of twists and turns!  I originally was a baker, an archaeologist, a town planner and then settled on my corporate career as a strategist.  It was a very fast paced, and at times very stressful job, but it also pushed me and was a great intellectual challenge.  For many years my home life wasn’t happy and following a very distressing divorce I thought my life was finally heading in the right direction.  Sadly my body had different ideas and just when I thought I was through it all I became very, very ill.

I contracted a severe bout of shingles which then led quickly into post-viral fatigue/chronic fatigue and post-herpetic neuralgia (nerve pain).  The pain was like nothing I have ever felt before and there were times when I didn’t think I would be able to make it. I had damaged the nerves on my face, scalp, eye, ear, jaw and neck.  The damage was extensive and severe.  The viral infection left me with total brain fog and I went from someone who was very active to not being able to get out of bed and a simple task like filling the washing machine would be a 5 or 6 hour ordeal.  I was broken.

I was told by my doctors I would feel much better after a month, so I waited patiently on the couch and when the month passed I was actually worse not any better! It was clear that my doctors didn’t have any plan for me and that if I wanted to get better I was going to have to do it myself.

I believed that if you give your body the right conditions then it can do miraculous things. I sat down and looked at my life and tried to decide what was helping me heal and what was hindering me.  It was depressing to have to admit to yourself that the majority of your life wasn’t contributing to making you healthier.

I first started by making a promise to myself that I was going to do everything in my power to get better.  I hadn’t gone through my divorce and made all these positive changes to my life to spend the next 60 years of it as a vegetable on the couch.  I put everything on the table and nothing was off-limits.

I did then the only thing I knew how to do when faced with a problem, I researched it.  I read, watched YouTube videos, read medical journals and tried to understand what had broken in me to leave me like this.  This was no easy task when you have zero energy and constant brain fog, I am still not really sure how I managed.  I designed a series of protocols and set about systematically changing each piece of my life, bit by bit.  I was an experiment of one, based on the best information I could find at the time.

Almost immediately I noticed some positive improvements, and with each improvement I was able to research a bit more and further refine or expand what I was doing.  My recovery was my 100% focus each day and I set my day up to maximise it.  It was not easy to do it, it was not easy to research it and it was not easy to silence those around me that thought some of the changes I was making were very dramatic!

I returned to work after 7 months off.  I returned and did some of the best work of my career.  I was more focused and able to operate at the same high level as before.  I still kept going with my daily routine though, I still prioritised my healing and still continued to get better.  The progress slowed slightly when I had to go to work and couldn’t just focus all my attention on recovering, but I made dramatic gains after I returned.

Something in me had changed.  I now understood why only 5% of people recovered, because it’s so hard! My story of recovery isn’t unique but what is very unusual is that I started my recovery almost immediately after getting unwell.  Sadly many people spend 5 or 10 years sick before they begin to start their journey to recovery.  I just wasn’t willing to accept that at the time. 

I had all this experience, all this information and understood the journey so intimately that I felt compelled to help others go on this journey.  Coaching was the obvious fit for me to help as many people recover their lives, as I have recovered mine.  It’s my mission now to help others recover and to inspire fellow chronic sufferers that you can be healthy again.  Radical health for all.

What’s it like today?

Well firstly it’s amazing! I love my life and I’m so proud of where I have got to and I am so excited about what is yet to come.  I have healed myself more deeply and completely than I ever thought was possible, and I am not stopping here.  Given the complexity of my conditions, and their severity, I am still not 100% symptom free, 100% of the time; I still have nerve damage, especially around my eye and scalp.  It’s a journey that I am still proudly on, and I try and share that as authentically as possible on my Instagram. But the reality is, I’m no-longer life limited by fatigue or by pain and I’m searching and playing at the edges of what is possible now. I’m focused just on how healthy I can get! Bottom line is - I have my life back. If you’ve had your life taken away you will know how important that statement is.

The funny thing is, even with all that’s happened I’m actually healthier now than I was before! I respect my body and I am grateful every single day that I am where I am now. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, but it was also the most important thing I have ever done. I wake up everyday knowing that I am helping others do the same, but without the added stress and pressure of having to do it alone.

You can do it too.