I BELIEVE A RELATIONSHIP CRISIS CAN BECOME THE BEGINNING OF A RELATIONSHIP YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU WARE CAPABLE OF CREATING
A few years ago, I was sitting in couples counselling watching my own marriage fall apart. We’d arrive carrying another week of hurt, spend the session explaining what the other person had done wrong, defend ourselves, leave feeling even less understood, then repeat the same dynamic at home with a different argument sitting on top of it. After four sessions, our therapist told us she couldn’t help us. We should probably get divorced. I’m an ICF credentialed Relationship Coach and NLP Practitioner. I’d spent years working with families through the NHS. I run marathons. I hold a Guinness World Record. When life puts a problem in front of me, my instinct is to find a way through. I’m also stubborn. So I refused to accept that divorce was the only ending available to us. What happened next changed my marriage. And eventually, it changed the way I would work with relationships.
I stopped making my husband my first project.
Until then, I could see everything he was doing wrong with painful clarity. What was much harder to see was the woman I’d become at home. The woman who could handle a crisis at work, then lose herself over one comment from her husband. The woman giving her work the best of her energy and bringing home whatever was left. The defensive version of me. The hurt version. The silence when I felt offended. The resentment I could carry for days. The patterns I’d watched growing up and was now repeating without fully recognising them. I realised I could spend another year waiting for my husband to become the person I needed him to be.
Or
I could get brutally curious about the one person whose behaviour I could actually take responsibility for.
ME
I started looking at what I was bringing into our marriage.
Not just what I said.
The way I reacted.
The things I assumed.
The old hurt I carried into new conversations.
The version of myself that appeared the second I felt rejected, neglected or misunderstood.
And I started changing my part of the pattern.
Something between us began to shift.
My husband started responding differently too.
Not because I’d finally found the magic words to convince him.
Because I had changed what he was meeting in those moments.
And as I changed what I brought into our relationship, the relationship reflected something different back.
Like a mirror.
That experience became the seed of The Mirror Method.
It didn’t come from a theory I thought sounded clever.
I lived it first.
Today, my husband and I can look back at that crisis with gratitude for what it forced us to see.
We transformed our marriage and fell in love again with a very different awareness of what each of us brings into the relationship we’re creating.
And our boys get to grow up watching what came after the crisis.
That means everything to me.
IT’s ALSO WHY
I WORK DIFFERENTLY
When couples come to me, I begin with the individuals.
Because before we put two hurt people opposite each other and ask them to communicate better, I want each person to have the space to see themselves.
What happens in you when you feel rejected?
What have you repeated for so long that you can no longer see what it creates between you?
Taking responsibility for your part doesn’t excuse your partner’s behaviour or make you responsible for their choices.
It brings your attention back to the part you actually have influence over: what you bring into the relationship.
And sometimes, that’s where possibility begins to return.
WHY I RUN MARATHONS
It actually started with something much smaller.
I joined my neighbour on one of her daily runs.
That was it.
I wasn’t trying to become a marathon runner. I certainly wasn’t imagining World Marathon Majors or Guinness World Records.
I started running and discovered what happened when I gave myself space to think, follow my curiosity and find out what else I might be capable of.
One run became another.
Eventually, it became marathons.
Fourteen of them.
I became a Six Star World Marathon Majors finisher.
And somewhere along the way, I earned a Guinness World Record for the fastest woman to run a marathon dressed in a suit.
I learned to ski in my late 30s.
I’m afraid of open water, but inspired by my boys, I learned to swim as an adult.
There’s an Ironman sitting on my bucket list.
Apparently, I have a habit of choosing things that require me to meet a version of myself I haven’t met yet.
Maybe that’s why transformation fascinates me.
Running taught me something I’ve never forgotten:
The version of you who starts the race is not the version who crosses the finish line.
At mile two, you know what you planned to do.
At mile eighteen, you find out who you are when the plan meets reality.
Relationships reveal us in much the same way.
It’s easy to know the wife, husband or partner you want to be when everything feels good.
Then your partner says the thing that gets you every time.
You feel rejected. Misunderstood. Unappreciated.
And there you are.
The version of you who shows up when you’re hurt.
That’s where you get to see what you’re really bringing into your relationship.
And that’s also where something different can begin.
One of my favourite start lines happened in New York
During the opening ceremony of the TCS New York City Marathon, I was chosen to represent my country.
My personal story was read in front of my family and thousands of runners from around the world.
I remember standing there thinking about all the versions of myself who wouldn’t have believed that moment was possible.
The woman sitting in couples counselling being told her marriage was probably over.
The woman who couldn’t swim.
The woman who once simply went running with her neighbour.
Maybe that’s why I’m so interested in possibility.
I know what it feels like to stand at the beginning of something with no evidence yet that you can get to the other side.
And I know something else:
The woman who crosses the finish line isn’t waiting for you at the start.
You become her on the way.
WHAT I BELIVE
Relationships are beautiful and full of possibility.
I don’t believe disconnection, resentment, separate lives and feeling like roommates have to become the inevitable price of being together for a long time.
What we repeatedly bring into our relationships helps shape what they become.
I believe honesty matters.
Especially the kind that asks you to look at yourself when it would be much easier to keep looking at your partner.
I believe wanting things to change and being willing to change are two very different things.
You can read another book. Promise to communicate better. Hope that next time the argument won’t go that far.
But eventually, there is a more uncomfortable question to answer:
Who am I being inside the relationship I say I want?
Because you can want warmth while bringing resentment into the room.
You can want to be understood while barely listening.
You can want affection while protecting yourself so carefully that your partner can no longer reach you.
Seeing those things isn’t about making yourself the problem.
It’s about discovering where your power to create something different still lives.
I believe in angels.
I trust the universe.
I follow the rules that make sense to me and I’m quite happy to question the ones that don’t.
And I believe that with the right support, a relationship buried underneath years of hurt, habits and old patterns can still hold possibilities you cannot see while you’re standing in the middle of the crisis.
I’ve lived that possibility.
I’ve watched my clients discover it too.
AWAY FROM THE COACHING ROOM
I’m a happy wife, mum to two wonderful boys and owner of one very energetic dog.
Family means everything to me.
So do friendships, long dinners and the kind of conversations where you suddenly realise three hours have disappeared.
I’m endlessly curious about people, personal development and the psychology of happiness and success.
I love travelling, adventure, being outdoors and finding out what happens when I say yes to something before I’m completely sure how I’m going to do it.
I once missed a flight and somehow ended up being upgraded to a private jet.
I still think that’s exactly the kind of ridiculous, brilliant thing the universe occasionally does to remind you that the day doesn’t always have to unfold the way you thought it would.
I’ve never been particularly interested in accepting the current version of something as the only version available.
And if you’re here because some part of you still looks at your partner and thinks,
There has to be more available to us than this…
I understand why you haven’t given up either.
You may be standing at the beginning of something you don’t yet know how to do.
I’ve stood there too.
And I believe your relationship crisis can become the moment you stop repeating the relationship you’ve had and start consciously creating the one you want.
The laughter.
The closeness.
The ordinary mornings when nobody is measuring the mood.
The feeling of looking at your partner and knowing you’re on the same side again.
The masterpiece you’ve both created.
Certifications & Rewards
Certified Coach
The Coaching Academy
DISC Accredited
The Coaching Academy
ICF Credentialed
International Coaching Federation
NLP Practitioner
The Coaching Academy
Professional Member
The Association for NLP
Guinness World Record Holder
Guinness Book Records