Who am I?

You'd imagine that after a decade of helping other people figure things out, I'd be uniquely qualified to cope when my own crisis arrived.

Unfortunately, not the case.

When I first felt the tell-tale signs that something had to change, I did exactly what I'd done with so many clients. I sat myself down and tried to figure it out. I did all the right things. I reflected. I talked to my family and friends. I made a plan.

Nothing came.

Unable to sit with the lack of answers, I threw myself into work that was familiar, safe, and quietly draining.

Unsurprisingly, that wasn't the answer either, and it began to pull the life out of me. Months passed, and I noticed a rising anxiety, my mind looping the same vicious circle:

There was something much deeper going on that I couldn't see at the time. Surely, if I just worked harder and found the answer to what I wanted, I'd feel better?

It was like smacking my head against a wall. And eventually, the wall began to win.

I'm indebted to a teacher who said to me: Chloë, why are you trying to get through the wall? Maybe you're not ready. Perhaps you should sit in front of it and understand why it's there in the first place.

Ah. Why was I so desperate to figure it out? Why did it feel so important to know what I was doing at every moment? Because I was terrified of the opposite.

I was, and sometimes still am, terrified of not knowing. And that was exactly where I needed to start.

As time passed, and with the help of people who'd been there, I became curious about these parts of me that were at once driving me and exhausting me. I began to understand them, and to unwind a lifetime of conditioning around the need for constant productivity.

After almost a year of questioning and then quietening, it became abundantly clear: what is in the way is the way.

Only then did a whisper of clarity come: I realised I wanted to help others who find themselves in the same season of life.

We live in a world that demands certainty, plans, control. They make us feel safe. But there are moments in life when certainty falls away, when things stop making sense and we're left rudderless.

Those moments aren't failures.

They're some of the most important seasons we get: for rest, for restoration, and eventually for rebuilding. It was only by truly letting myself not know that I could begin to grow again.

Learning to be comfortable with the discomfort is still a work in progress, but I know now that, as fearful as the unknown can be, it's also where creativity and meaning live.

So that's what I do now: I help people sit with and work through what feels like it's in the way, and then, and only then, begin designing a new life that aligns with who they are now, not who they were.