Some things in life change you profoundly. For me it was the loss of my younger sister, at just 34 years old. We’d always been extraordinarily close, so her death was an almost unbearable loss. A few years earlier I’d also lost my mother, so these two events so close together had an even bigger impact on me. They had me reevaluate my life and all my relationships. The reality that those you love can disappear at any minute hit home hard.

Relationships and how we deal with the challenges they bring are a vitally important part of our lives. How we deal with our feelings of hurt, anger and resentment is key to maintaining our connection with those we love and unfortunately this is a skill many of us lack. Instead of facing and resolving our hurt and anger we often bury them or project them in an attempt to deal with the pain we feel.

I was no different then, and nor was my sister. She had spent much of her adult life fighting a heartbreaking battle with drug and alcohol addiction, doing everything she could to overcome this but losing the battle in the end. She didn’t know any other way to help herself and I myself didn’t know how to help her or handle what was was happening.

I wish I knew then what I know now, how to communicate better, how to listen better, how to manage my emotions more positively and how to help her more effectively. Her death left me with a passion to learn how to do this and apply it to my own life and my other relationships.

For some years my husband and I had been doing a simple communication practice that we created when we first met in 1986. We put 60 minutes aside at the start of each day to share our thoughts and feelings, our fears and needs. For me this was of enormous benefit to connect with and express my feelings to someone close. After the loss of my sister and mother the need to do this was much greater. I was ready for a major life change.

We were living in Los Angeles at this time where my husband, a writer, was working in the film industry. Los Angeles, as we discovered, is a perfect place not only for making movies but is also at the cutting edge of self-development and personal growth courses and workshops.

I threw myself into that world, attending countless seminars and workshops on personal growth, communication skills and relationship development. I trained as a life and relationship coach and began my own professional practice after returning to the UK in 2012. Since then I’ve also trained in NVC (a form of conscious, non-judgmental communication), anger management, trauma awareness and cognitive behavioural therapy (‘CBT’).

Today I like to use a combination of all these these modalities so that healing is addressed at the the physical, mental and emotional levels. I describe what I do as a coach and therapist as both a talking and doing therapy. Talking and understanding may be a good start but I believe this must be followed through with real behavioural change.

When people come to me, my goal for them is not just to help them fix a problem or heal a relationship but to share with them the skills needed so they can eventually do this on their own without my help.

It’s my privilege to be able to do this for a living and I feel blessed to do what I love, which is helping others. I hope if you’re still reading this that one of those people is you.