A long journey back to myself
My work today is rooted in a lifetime of sensing — and eventually reclaiming — the parts of myself I shut down to survive.
As a child, creativity was my language.
It was how I connected with the world, with other people, and with something deeper — the intelligence of the soul, the wisdom beneath the mind, the quiet creative force that lives in all of us.
But like so many Gen X kids, I learned early that being emotionally expressive or deeply intuitive wasn’t practical.
So I built strength instead.
On the outside, I looked capable, charismatic, and in control.
On the inside, something essential was going quiet.
Losing connection — and becoming “the strong one”
I pushed through — and pushed down — the inner disharmony.
People saw someone competent and strong, but not the cost of holding everything together.
I coped by staying in motion.
It looked like ambition, but really it was a way to avoid meeting the parts of myself I didn’t yet understand.
I put down alcohol… and unknowingly picked up work in its place.
I moved countries.
Changed roles.
Tried to outrun an inner disruption I didn’t yet have language for.
I knew I wasn’t living as my fullest self — I could feel the potential, but something inside kept getting in the way.
2010 — Kenya:
the first crack in the armour
In 2010, while teaching microfinance in Kibera, I witnessed a moment where someone’s bravado fell away and something deeply human emerged.
It stayed with me — even if I couldn’t name it yet.
It didn’t transform me overnight.
But it revealed something honest:
a glimpse beneath the armour I didn’t yet know I was wearing.
It was the first hint that real change doesn’t happen through performing harder — it begins when we turn toward the discomfort we’ve been avoiding.
This moment echoed what I would later learn in my own inner work:
your armour protects you until it obscures you.
The missing piece:
and the beginning of real clarity
What came next finally made sense of the patterns that had followed me for decades.
I uncovered a significant childhood trauma my brain had protected me from — and suddenly the self-reliance, the burnout cycles, the emotional self-protection, and the pressure to hold everything together finally made sense.
It didn’t break me.
It completed the picture.
With skilled support, my story made sense in a way it never had before.
My nervous system settled.
My identity came back online.
Creativity returned as a source of truth, not performance.
And I began living — and leading — from a place I had long disconnected from:
my True Self.
What my journey revealed:
and why I do this work
I came to understand that most leaders aren’t struggling because they’re unfocused or undisciplined. They’re struggling because of what shaped them long before they ever stepped into a leadership role.
- Early patterns shaped their identity.
- Their nervous system still reacts to old environments.
- Their self-reliance became armour.
- They’ve outgrown the story they were raised to survive.
It’s an identity issue — one rooted in survival patterns that once protected us. Until we work at the level of identity, nervous system, and story, no amount of mindset or strategy will create the sustainable, authentic leadership we’re capable of.
This is the INS Thesis that underpins everything I do.
Why Gen X leaders
Because no generation was taught self-reliance earlier — or at a higher cost.
We grew up during high divorce rates, emotional distance, early independence, and cultural pressure to “get on with it.”
We became strong by necessity, not choice.
But strength without support becomes armour.
And over time, the armour stops protecting you — it starts limiting you.
Gen X isn’t broken.
We are simply outgrowing the strategies that helped us survive.
And many of us are sensing the same shift:
what once worked is no longer true.
My coaching integrates multiple evidence-based modalities to work at the level of identity, nervous system, and story.
- Identity evolution and leadership identity coaching.
- Nervous-system capacity and awareness.
- Energy Leadership™ (ELI).
- The Enneagram for identity patterns.
- Arts-Based Experiential Learning (creative, image-based exploration that bypasses overthinking).
- Biographical analysis and seven-year life phases.
- Brainspotting principles.
- Leadership development grounded in trauma-aware principles.
- Integration practices that make change real in day-to-day life.
This work is informed not just by training — but by lived, embodied experience.
You don’t need to have “big trauma” to work with me. Most of my clients don’t identify with that word at all.
What they do recognise are the patterns:
- Self-reliance.
- Emotional shutdown.
- Over-responsibility.
- Burnout.
- Doing instead of being.
- Holding everything together.
Those patterns have roots. And that’s where our work begins.
My role is to help you understand how these patterns were formed, how they show up in your leadership today, and how to transform them into sustainable, authentic ways of leading.
My training, tools, and approach
What leadership means to me now
Leadership today isn’t about performance.
It’s about self-leadership.
who you are under pressure
the story you’re living from
how your nervous system responds
how congruent your inner and outer worlds are
the safety you create through presence
the clarity you bring into uncertainty
the creativity you unlock by being fully yourself
When you lead from your True Self, rather than your armour, everything changes:
In you.In your relationships.
In your influence.
And in the legacy you create every day.
If you’re ready for your next chapter
My work is for leaders who can feel the old story loosening — and sense that something deeper is calling them forward, even if they can’t yet name it.
If that’s you, you don’t have to walk that transition alone.
This work is an invitation to come home to yourself — the part of you that existed before the armour, before the self-reliance, before the roles.
Explore my 12-month coaching journey — with a shorter 6-month Reset option if that’s what you need right now.