Before I started writing, I was lost in an abyss.

I had no clue what was wrong, but I felt that my life was missing something, I just couldn’t put my finger on what it was.

Prior to starting my writing journey, in the previous four years; I had been made redundant from a job I had been in for the past ten years, moved half way across the world leaving my family and friends behind and given birth to twin boys. I became a wife and mother and the management level job I had worked my way up through the ranks to get, was only a distant memory.

The boys had kept me busy, but once they started going to preschool, I felt something was missing.
I had everything I ever wanted; a husband I am madly in love with, two wonderful children and financial freedom after years of hard work. I should be enjoying the benefits, not feeling that something was missing, but it was.

I had everything I ever wanted, but I couldn’t accept this was it and I didn’t understand why.

Once I had hours away from my children every day, not having to be everything for them, for every second of every day, I found there was a gapping hole. A hole, I worked out, had once been filled by my job. The job I had poured my heart and soul into, giving up time with my family and friends to climb the corporate ladder because (once I had done some honest soul searching) it had made me feel important, it gave me self-worth, I was good enough and I was working hard to achieve my goals. Still, somehow, on the way, I had bought into their vision, made it my own and lost myself in the process.

When I understood that, that I had lost the essence of who I was after years of single minded focus on work that wasn’t mine, it wasn’t me, I was still unsure what I should do next.

How was I, in my thirties going to work out who I am, shouldn’t I have sussed that out years ago?

Still, I had to do something about it. I didn’t feel fulfilled anymore, being a mother wasn’t enough and I started drinking more to deflect the empty feelings I had. I talked to my new friends about it over breakfast meet ups, but they felt the same and all they could do was sympathise with me. I had to do something. I started courses that I had always wanted to do, I got qualifications, but nothing felt right.

Then I had a light bulb moment. I asked myself when the last time I was actually happy, truly happy and when I really sat down and thought about it, it was when I was a child, when I had the time and freedom to try new things. I thought about what had made me happy at that time, what I had enjoyed doing and was actually good at. The answer: drawing, writing and reading.

I knew writing had been something I enjoyed; I had written short stories, plays, poetry and songs but still, I wasn’t sure writing was what I was looking for. I procrastinated. I had been in the top set of English, in my final two years of school, but somehow in that time mainstream education didn’t nurture that enthusiasm, it destroyed it. I found Shakespeare hard to read and a hatred for a teacher who made me rewrite essays with a frequency that turned my passion into a pain. I still finished with double B in English literature and language but I no longer had the motivation to write anything down.

I began journaling, trying to get all of the thoughts that were eating me alive down on a page, so I didn’t have to keep them in my head and it helped. Some of the things I wrote, I found beautifully lyrical, but I had no clue if, what I was writing could be turned into anything more. I didn’t have the toolkit for that.

They say things come into your life at the perfect moment and as I was contemplating how I could write, an email came thorough from an online company called Centre of Excellence offering a writing course at a discounted price. At the same time, someone I actually knew of, published a book and I thought if they could do it, why couldn’t I? I had nothing to lose and the rest is history.