My Journey So Far

For a long time, I thought I knew what my life was.

I had known my husband for 30 years. We had been married for almost 28 of them.

I was naive at 17 when we met and I was married by age 20. We had built a family, a home, businesses, routines, memories and an entire identity around being “us”.

And then that life changed.

Separation and divorce are difficult under any circumstances, but mine arrived alongside a number of other huge changes. I had made a major life move to Dubai. I was navigating perimenopause, with all the emotional and hormonal intensity that can bring. I was also learning more about my neurodivergent brain and beginning to understand how deeply that shapes the way I process stress, uncertainty, rejection, relationships and change.

At the same time, I was having to face experiences within my marriage that I had spent a long time trying to make sense of, including betrayal and moments where my boundaries were crossed in ways that forced me to rethink what consent, security and trust had looked like within the relationship.

There is something profoundly destabilising about having to reconsider parts of a relationship that has formed the backdrop to most of your adult life.

It can make you question your memories, your judgement, your identity and even your understanding of who you are.

Divorce has not simply been the ending of a marriage for me.

It has been the dismantling of a life I thought I understood.

There have been legal battles, financial uncertainty, moments of fear, anger, grief and complete emotional exhaustion. There have been days where I have felt incredibly strong and capable, and others where something as small as a message, a silence or an unexpected reminder has knocked me sideways.

And then there is dating.

After spending almost all of my adult life in one relationship, suddenly finding myself back in the dating world has been both exciting and incredibly exposing.

I am learning what it means to meet people without automatically imagining a future with them. I am learning how to recognise attraction without abandoning myself. I am learning that chemistry is not the same as safety, attention is not the same as intention, and somebody pulling away does not automatically mean there is something wrong with me.

But knowing those things intellectually and feeling them emotionally are very different.

Rejection still stings.

Being left on read can still activate something in me.

Someone changing their tone can still make my brain search for an explanation.

And being neurodivergent means that ambiguity can sometimes feel particularly loud.

Add fluctuating hormones, grief, loneliness and the vulnerability of rebuilding a life in a different country, and dating can sometimes feel less like a gentle re-entry into the world and more like being strapped into a rollercoaster without quite knowing where the next drop is.

But this chapter of my life is not only about what I have lost.

It is also about what I am learning.

I am learning to trust myself again.

I am learning to recognise when something does not feel right rather than explaining it away.

I am learning that having boundaries does not make me difficult.

I am learning that desire, sensuality and sexuality can belong to me rather than being something shaped entirely by somebody else.

I am learning how much strength there is in being able to say no.

And perhaps most importantly, I am learning that starting again does not mean starting from nothing.

I bring everything with me.

Thirty years of life experience.

Motherhood.

Marriage.

Heartbreak.

Love.

Mistakes.

Resilience.

Neurodivergence.

Perimenopause.

Sexuality.

Grief.

Reinvention.

And a much clearer understanding of the woman I want to become.

I do not have a neat ending to this story yet.

I am still in it.

There are still legal issues to navigate. There are still difficult days. There are still moments when I question myself, feel rejected, feel lonely or wonder whether I am handling any of this particularly well.

But I am also creating a new home, a new business, new relationships, new friendships and a new relationship with myself.

That is one of the reasons the work I do now feels so personal to me.

I am not coaching women from a place of having figured everything out.

I am walking through reinvention too.

I know what it feels like when the life you carefully constructed suddenly no longer fits.

I know what it feels like to lose your sense of certainty.

And I know what it feels like to begin asking a different question.

Not, “How do I get my old life back?”

But,

“Who am I now, and what do I want my life to become?”

That is the question I am living into now.

And perhaps you are too.