A woman with curly brown hair and blue eyes smiling outdoors with green foliage in the background. She is wearing a brown, blue, and white argyle sweater. 
HEY FRIEND:
A black and white line drawing of an open book with a pair of reading glasses resting on top.

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.

JOIN THE MEMBERSHIP

AS SEEN IN:

A woman sitting on grass in front of a large bush with pink and white flowers. 
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 years 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.

LET'S WORK TOGETHER
Drawing of a person writing in a notebook or journal with a pen, viewed from above. 
LOOKING BACK...

I can see now that I spent years adapting:

Adjusting myself to fit situations.
Softening my reactions.
Minimising instinct.
Trying to keep things smooth.
Calling it “resilience.”
Calling it “coping.”
Calling it being “easy-going.”

A woman with short curly brown hair standing outdoors among green plants, wearing a black sleeveless top and a gray open-weave cardigan, smiling at the camera. 
IN 2012, AT THE AGE OF THIRTY-FIVE:

I founded Soberistas - one of the first online communities for women questioning their relationship with alcohol.

(Long before the “sober curious” movement existed in the mainstream.)

Over the years that followed, I worked with thousands of women, wrote five books, and spoke widely in the media and on television about women, alcohol and identity.

And gradually, I started noticing the same deeper patterns appearing again and again - not just around drinking, but in the way women related to themselves.

The emotional masking.
The self-silencing.

The endless smoothing over of discomfort in order to keep life functioning.

LET'S WORK TOGETHER
A woman walking barefoot on a garden path surrounded by blooming bushes with pink, white, and yellow flowers. 
THEN SOMETHING SHIFTED:

When I reached my mid-forties and entered perimenopause, my tolerance for living that way disappeared.

The gap between how I actually felt and how I was living became impossible to ignore.

And slowly, things started to change.

By paying attention to the moments where I would automatically soften, minimise or backtrack - and consciously responding differently - I began rebuilding trust in myself.

I learned how to say what I meant.
How to recognise what worked for me and what didn’t.
How to stop abandoning myself in order to keep other people comfortable.

LET'S WORK TOGETHER
A woman with curly brown hair wearing a patterned cardigan and black shirt standing outdoors near white flowering bushes, with green trees and houses in the background. 
SOUND FAMILIAR?

Over the years, I started hearing the same things again and again from women:

“I don’t know who I am anymore.”
“I’ve spent so long looking after everyone else that I’ve completely lost myself.”
“I don’t even know what I actually like.”

These weren’t weak women.

They were capable, intelligent, high-functioning women who had spent decades adapting, accommodating and putting themselves last.

And eventually, many of them reached a point where the life they had carefully constructed no longer felt like it belonged to them.

That’s the space the Permission Principle was born from - and the work that now sits underneath everything I do.

LET'S WORK TOGETHER
Open notebook with botanical sketches of flowers and leaves 
IF THIS RESONATES:

You don’t need to have it all figured out.

You just need to start noticing.

START HERE