I was very good at a life I didn’t want.

Eleven years in employment law at a Bristol firm — the last four as a senior associate with a practice I’d worked very hard for, advising HR directors on other people’s redundancies while quietly rehearsing my own exit speech in the shower. The year I billed 1,900 hours I also missed my dad’s 70th, my best friend’s wedding morning, and — for whole weeks at a time — the feeling of wanting anything at all.

Tuesday, March 2018: I cried in a supermarket car park because the bread aisle had moved and it felt like one decision too many. That ridiculous, ordinary moment did what the big deadlines never had. I handed in my notice with no plan beyond “not this”.

What followed wasn’t a montage. It was eighteen messy months — savings spreadsheets, a part-time tribunal contract to keep the lights on, therapy (recommended), and the slow discovery that the skills I’d used to take careers apart worked just as well for building one. The structured questions. The evidence over feelings-of-the-week. The deadlines that get kept because someone is watching.

I retrained properly — an ICF-accredited diploma, then CBT foundations, because I wanted tools with research behind them rather than vibes with a price tag. Bloom opened in 2019 from a sunroom in Totterdown with two clients and a plant I have somehow kept alive since.

Six years on, I coach around 300 hours a year — mostly people in their 30s and 40s standing where I stood: capable, exhausted, and quietly certain something has to change. We work out what, and then — this is the part that matters — we actually do it.

What I’m not: a cheerleader, a guru, or someone who will tell you to trust the universe. The universe is busy. You, however, have a Tuesday evening free.