I fell into the world of hospitality while I was studying in Australia. I fell in love with the practical aspect, the fast pace, the energy, and the people.

I spent years working with coffee, with food, and in service.

The hospitality industry (like many others) rewards and expects hard work, long hours, endless giving, showing up no matter what with a smile on your face and multitasking – amongst many other things.

Listed like this, you can see why this is a recipe for burnout over many years.

I spent over 15 years working in this industry (and some would say being pretty damn good at it)

I also ended up opening my own café in London – which you can imagine was even more demanding.

I loved a majority of my time in this world (I won’t lie and say I loved every minute, there were many overworked, underpaid, sleep deprived, badly treated moments that I pretty much hated) but ultimately, hospitality felt like my calling.

I chose to open a café in London because I was super passionate about what I did, I felt that there was a lack and a need and what I wanted to offer, and it also felt like a logical next step having worked my way up in various cafés, restaurants, bars over the years.

While these industries teach us to work hard, to be good at our jobs, to be good with people and so on – nobody ever teaches us to look after ourselves.

I will add here that somewhere in between all of that I trained as a yoga teacher, I actually practised yoga myself for over 10 years, I learned and practice meditation, I was really into food, health, taking care of myself and my well-being.

And yet even with all of that, I found myself stuck, frozen in a state of total burnout while running my café.

It wasn’t my first time experiencing this (no surprise given all these years in such a hectic and demanding industry) but it was the worst that I’d ever experienced.

It took me a while to really take a step back and recognise that the way that I was living, and the way that I was operating my life and my business was not only not sustainable, but it was outright harming me.

I won’t bore you with all the details here, but it took me getting to a breaking point to make some real changes in my life - a point where I could barely function outside of the bare minimum, where I was totally drained and had no capacity for anything else because I had given so much to my business, a point where I had no life…even though I was still able to successfully run my business and pour energy into that…that’s no way to live.

These changes weren’t major overhauls – because those never stick – but really it came down to me getting real with my needs, creating space to slow down and listen to myself, getting clear on my values – and then creating space for all of that within my capacity at the time.

As someone who was running a café, and wearing pretty much all of the hats you can while running a business – my capacity was limited, and my time even more.

Nevertheless, I created the space, I started the making small changes, intentional moments, and set some serious boundaries around my mental health.

I don’t exaggerate when I say that this seriously changed my life – no joke

Ultimately in slowing down I also realised that after all this time, this industry of hospitality, and it’s demands on my time and energy – were just not suitable for me as an energetic, sensitive, and cyclical being.

All my knowledge and wisdom on cyclical living is all well and good – until you’re running a business that doesn’t allow for it because it’s open when it’s open and you’re needed when you’re needed (all the time when you’re the owner)

After steering my business ship through uncharted territories of a pandemic, I eventually closed down my café and sold my shares and got the hell out of London (a city somehow got stuck in, and eventually woke up to “what the fuck am I even doing here? This is not the life for me”)

In the 6 years since I’ve left London I have been on a journey of grief (having lost my father to cancer), the deep, wrenching personal work of an intense coaching certification, along with a lot of deep personal work on more personal level, moved more times than I can count, to many different countries, grew and birthed my daughter, left an abusive relationship, and eventually have found myself in my home in Bali (that is way over-simplified and you might imagine that it was one hell of a journey to get here)

All that to say that I’ve been on a real journey with my health, and my nourishment.

That so-called rock bottom while I was running my business was one of many burnouts that I have experienced because it’s not a surface level problem.

The café wasn’t the problem that was causing my burnout.

My patterns and tendencies which – stemmed from childhood situations and influences – are what caused me to put myself again and again in that situation.

This realisation and all of this work that I’ve done on myself (and with the women that I support) is why I am so fucking passionate about helping women to create a life of nourishment for themselves so that they don’t find themselves repeating these patterns re-creating the same situations, and finding themselves in the same place years and years and years over and over again.