For thirty years, I was the woman who had it handled.
Leadership roles across Deloitte, KPMG, government and universities. Big responsibilities. Bigger expectations.
I was good at it — the kind of good that means people stop asking if you’re okay, because you always seem to be. On paper it looked like success. And in many ways, it was.
But there’s a particular kind of tired that comes from holding everything together for everyone else. It doesn’t announce itself. You simply, slowly, forget what it feels like not to be bracing.
Then grief arrived in a way I couldn’t manage or outwork.
I went from being a wife to a widow overnight. And the life I’d built my plans around simply… stopped.
I learned resilience the hard way — not as a concept, but as the thing that gets you out of bed when getting out of bed is the only goal you can manage.
I rebuilt, slowly, because there was no other option. But I carried that loss in my body long after I’d learned to function again.
In time, I began again — on the other side of the world.
I emigrated from Wales to Australia with my husband and our three children. A new country, a new life, and all the invisible work of holding a family steady through enormous change.
I built businesses. I raised children. I kept achieving. And I kept doing what so many women do without realising it — putting myself last on a list that never ended.
Eventually, my body stopped negotiating.
Menopause, trauma and years of quietly running on empty caught up with me all at once. The old strategy — try harder, manage it, push through — stopped working. If anything, it made everything worse.
I did all the “right” things. More discipline. More routines. More willpower.
And I still felt exhausted, anxious and disconnected from myself.
That was when the truth finally landed: I wasn’t failing. I was unsupported.
My nervous system had been in survival mode for so long that no amount of effort could think its way out.
What changed everything wasn’t a course or a cure.
It was learning to regulate my nervous system. To come back into my body through breath, movement, yoga and Pilates. To feel safe again — not by doing more, but by finally letting myself be supported.
For the first time in decades, I stopped bracing. And from that steadier place, so much of what I’d been forcing began to come more easily.
New Dawn Wellness grew out of that homecoming.
I built the space I’d needed all along — somewhere women could put down what they carry, come back to their bodies, and remember who they are underneath the roles and the responsibility.
Today I bring that lived experience to stages, boardrooms and private clients. I speak, coach, lead retreats, and hold a community of women doing this work together.
Because I know what it costs to hold everything alone — and I know what becomes possible when you finally don’t have to. No woman should have to choose between her success and her wellbeing. My work exists so she doesn’t have to.
