Hi, I’m claire
I’m a single mum to two young children and love hiking, yoga and reading. I’m a high functioning empath with a great respect for the earth, adopting an organic diet and treading as lightly as I can on our planet.
As a therapist, my lived experiences have fed into and informed so much of my journey to being who I am and doing what I do now. In fact, the reason I wanted to dedicate my time to parent coaching is in large part down to my experiences as a new parent.
When my son was born, I suffered terrible anxiety and intrusive thoughts about awful things happening. I felt exhausted and lonely and couldn’t stop negatively comparing myself and my son with other parents and their children. While everyone else seemed to be coping beautifully, I felt like I was close to toppling over the edge. Returning to work and leaving my son behind at nursery felt like ripping my heart out and I never seemed to be able to strike the right balance between what I interpreted as being a good employee, a good wife and a good mother. There just wasn’t enough of me to go around and I felt a humiliating sense of shame and failure.
After the birth of my daughter, I hit rock bottom and I realised I needed to take an active role in finding a way back up; I started working on my personal development to identify where these negative emotions were coming from. I spent years undertaking counselling, coaching, paid courses, training, in-depth research and reading. I practiced, I reflected, I committed to my journey. In 2023 I got diagnosed with ADHD which helped me understand many of my struggles. Both my children are on a pathway to either an autism or ADHD diagnosis.
So all these years later… am I ‘fixed’? Am I the perfect conscious parent and feel blissfully smug all the time? Well, not quite! Feeling balanced, contented and whole is a lifelong pursuit and we’re all learning all the time. What I can promise though is that I no longer carry the crushing weight of shame that motherhood can bring. I am not the “shouty” parent. I feel so much more peace and can really concentrate on and delight in my children. I can accept them as their are and have arranged my life to support their emotional needs as well as meeting my own.
There’s no fast track to an end goal. It is all about accepting our imperfections, loosening our grip on control and learning to trust, which takes daily practice, a commitment to change and a lot of conviction. But it’s worth it. I’d love to help you get there too!
