MY BACKSTORY
I used to have very low self-esteem, a litany of problems, including bad boundaries, toxic relationships with emotionally unavailable and shady folk, and a crippling immune system disease, but this all changed in the summer of 2005.
The combination of my consultant’s prognosis for my illness (it was the dead by 40 kind) and yet another breakup from a barely there guy triggered an awakening. Until that point, I’d regarded life as something that was happening to me, something I had little say in because of my pain and past, and suddenly I wanted to fight back.
My life changed dramatically in less than a year, including going into remission from my incurable disease, growing my self-esteem to include boundaries, coming to terms with my fear of abandonment, rejection, and more, and meeting the man who would become my husband.
I didn’t read a self-help book or even go to therapy to bring about this transformation because when I looked around for advice for my then twenty-something self, it was the likes of:
- Books that didn’t speak to my inner turmoil, reinforcing my belief that I was alone and very screwed up.
- Too much ‘noise’, including family, implying it was my lack of ‘enoughness’ causing my problems.
- A lot of positive thinking your way out of things. Not that healthy beliefs and a positive mindset a crucial part of living a happier life, it’s just that trying to happy-clap my way out of years of emotional baggage was like cutting off the heads of the weeds while leaving the root and the environment they grew in untouched.
- Crappy advice in women’s magazines about fifty ways to please your man when the relationship isn’t going your way, as if people pleasing solved being mistreated. No amount of sexy underwear, cooking, prancing around like a performing seal and contorting myself into a pretzel to be ‘pleasing’, was gonna fix my love life.
So, I began looking within, asking questions and compassionately exploring my past. I road-tested ideas, letting go of baggage so that I could allow myself to heal, letting myself get the right support. Basically, I allowed myself to take steps every day to grow my self-esteem and live.
I wrote it all down and shared as I went along. My mission was, and remains the same: if I can help even one person avoid what I went through and can support others who have struggled with abandonment, rejection, trauma, people pleasing, emotional unavailability, and feeling ‘not good enough’, to name but a few, I’m doing my part in the world to spread more compassion.
The result… is Baggage Reclaim.
Since 2005, I’ve shared, not just insights and observations from my journey, but my gift for understanding our patterns, behaviour, emotions and relationships, bringing clarity and healing to experiences and situations that people either couldn’t name or describe, or that they thought they would never get over.
I know a hell of a lot about emotional unavailability, emotional baggage, how and why certain patterns are created, and how to unpack this all and reclaim yourself from it so that you can live and love with self-esteem and freedom from your past.
I am straight-talking, but I do what I do with deep compassion, empathy and plenty of humour.
I’m so good at what I do people can tell me a small nugget of their story and I can provide deep insight into what’s going on, even able to tell them what happened next before they do. Clients, readers and listeners frequently ask if I know their person personally, whether I live inside their head, and how the hell I know what I know.
Baggage Reclaim is read in more than 140 countries, with Reclaimers from all walks of life.
I’m the author (and self-publisher) of four books, Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl, The No Contact Rule, The Dreamer and the Fantasy Relationship, and Love, Care, Trust and Respect.
My fifth book, The Joy of Saying No, was published in January 2023 by Harper Horizon, an imprint of HarperCollins.
I also hosted The Baggage Reclaim Sessions podcast, which has over 4.9 million downloads.