HEY FRIEND:You didn’t stumble into this by accident.
If you’re here, chances are something in this feels familiar.
You notice it in everyday moments - saying things you don’t fully mean, holding things back, and trying to keep the peace.
Then wondering afterwards why you feel so resentful.
AS SEEN IN:
THAT WAS ME TOO:When I stopped drinking in 2011, I thought I knew exactly who I was.
Extrovert. Pinot Grigio party queen. Ballsy - or at least that’s what I believed, shaped by the ladette culture I’d grown up in.
That identity had carried me for years.
A few months into sobriety, it started to unravel.
I realised I deferred to people in authority without even questioning it. I didn’t know what I actually liked, and I had no real way of expressing what I needed - even in simple situations like saying no to something I didn’t want to do.
I felt like a blank canvas.
I had no clear sense of who I was, no real understanding of what mattered to me, & no internal compass to guide me.
LOOKING BACK...I can see what was happening.
I was overriding myself constantly. Adjusting, smoothing things over, keeping everything running, and calling that strength.
That pattern stayed with me for years.
Then something shifted
When I reached my mid-forties and moved into perimenopause, the way I had always lived became impossible to ignore. The people-pleasing, the constant adjusting, the way I would override my own thoughts and needs - none of it was new, but my ability to tolerate it disappeared.
The things I had always done were no longer something I could live with.
At times it felt like I was going against myself. The closest way I can describe it is a kind of moral injury: not trusting my own instincts, saying yes when I meant no, letting things pass that mattered to me.
That tension built, and I could no longer push it aside or carry on as if it didn’t matter.
That was the point where I had to look at things properly.
To understand who I was, what I wanted, and how I had been living.
Over time things started to change…
By noticing those moments where I would automatically defer, soften, or backtrack, and choosing to respond differently, I learned how to say what I meant, how to recognise what worked for me and what didn’t, and how to take myself seriously in my own life.
THEN THIS HAPPENED:That experience shaped everything that came next.
In 2012, I founded Soberistas, one of the first communities for women questioning their relationship with alcohol, long before the “sober curious” movement was widely recognised.
Since then, I’ve worked with thousands of women, written five books, and spoken widely in the media and on television about women, alcohol, and identity.
Across all of that, I started to see the same pattern clearly in the women I was working with - not just around drinking, but in how they related to themselves.
SOUND FAMILIAR?A common refrain I heard was:
“I have no idea who I am.”
“I don’t even know what I like to do in my spare time.”
These were women who had spent decades putting others first.
Women who had been conditioned, often from a young age, to see self-compassion as selfishness.
Women who had reached midlife and found themselves somewhere they didn’t recognise, where nothing quite felt like them anymore.
The people-pleasing.
The second-guessing.
The staying in things longer than they should.
That’s what sits behind The Permission Circle and everything else I do.
IF THIS RESONATES: