From snake to horse my review of 2025

Moving from limbo to fast powerful action 

My word for the year 2025 was power, and it didn’t quite work out how I thought it would! When I look back at 2025 I see a year of two halves.The first half of the year I experienced a lack of direction and a lot of shedding, the second half was fast and full of fast action, power and direction.

During the first half of 2025, I felt lost, directionless, it felt like the extreme culmination of a sense of the void that started 3 years ago when I left doula work behind. I had no idea where I was going professionally, and struggled at deciding what to call myself. When people asked what I do, I would often say “I used to work as a scientist, then as a doula….” and I didn’t know what to say I was doing now, giving some wafty description of supporting women through transitions. With my ADHD mind always focusing on what I’m not doing, I forgot that I was completing the work of birthing my second book into the world. All I could think about was that I didn’t know what I was meant to be doing. For someone who normally has had a clear sense of direction for most of my life, this felt extremely uncomfortable.

At the end of  2024, I had tried to launch a new program that fell flat on its face (you can read about this in my review of 2024), so instead, I decided to try a few small workshops to test what would land for me and my audience. I ran a number of new online workshops which were well received. I also ran the first of 2 month long drum microdosing circles online. This was actually amazing because over the course of 4 weeks, my students saw a 50 to 80% improvement in their wellbeing intention, which was way beyond what I had imagined it would do. It also meant that I felt a sense of direction during this time. In human design, I’m a generator, and I’m meant to respond, rather than initiate, and this felt really good. As I held the space for the women drumming during that month, I also felt held myself.

By June, the sense of being directionless reached its peak. I literally felt like I was being stripped of all everything, erased like a blank slate. I could see what was happening but it felt very challenging, and I struggled to trust what was to come. It was made more difficult by the fact that during these two months, my income dropped spectacularly, below anything it had ever done. I noticed that part of me was still equating my worth to my income. I’m so grateful for my husband’s support because when I shared my fears with him, he reassured me that, even if I earned nothing, we would still get by (I’m so grateful that my husband has a steady job and I can’t imagine how stressful it would have been if I’d been a single mum in this scenario). 

Whilst this was happening, I was also busy building foundations for new things: not only the launch of my book, but the launch of a new website, so there was a lot of important behind the scenes stuff happening (many of which meant that I had to pause doing other things like my podcast, and my blog writing also slowed down this year to about half of what it was). But it felt like I had nothing to show for it yet. My book, The beat of your own drum, prelaunched in June and as well as all the other launch tasks, I also needed to make sure I had created the three preorder freebies before I went on holiday in August. I felt a lot of time pressure.

When I look back (hindsight is such a wonderful thing isn’t it?), I can see so clearly that the decks were being cleared to make room for new things. One thing that illustrates this beautifully, was in July, when I had a photoshoot with my wonderful photographer friend Ali Dover. Ali has been taking the pictures for all 3 major iterations of my website through the years. First in 2013, when my first website was about doulaing, antenatal education, and babywearing instructor work. Then the second iteration in 2018, when the focus was still very much doula work, and the ritual, spiritual and drum side was starting to show more (but, and I think it shows in the picture below, when I still had some level of impostor syndrome as I didn’t feel I could quite call myself a drum woman yet). Then there is the 2025 picture of me holding my drum in the air, where the wildness is clear and the drum feels like it’s part of my body.

Evolution of work persona from babywearing to doula to wild woman. Can you see the wildness growth?

In June, on my way back from a small local festival, I listened to Lucy Pearce’s podcast episode where she interviewed author Coco Oya Cienna-Rey about her new book, Digging for mother’s bones. Coco’s book process was about 3 months ahead of mine, hers just having been published when mine was in preorder. In the podcast episode, she explained that, now she had birthed her book, she was going to take the summer off. I remember thinking: I need to do this too, except in my case it’s more of a “I need to rest before birthing” situation. This is something I wrote about in my previous book, Why postnatal recovery matters, and I wrote a blog post called Entering the Sacred Pause, about the wisdom of resting before birthing my book. You can listen to Lucy’s podcast episode with me about my book in her podcast too.

The energy moves

From August onwards, for no clear reason on my part that I could see (except that I’d done a lot of healing work, more about this in the section on self growth), things started to move a-pace. Knowing that I was going to go on holiday for nearly 3 weeks in August, I decided to run a free workshop on closing the bones for life transitions, where I also promoted my existing online courses and upcoming in person closing the bones training. Not only did 115 women register for the workshop, but, despite being on holidays for most of the month, I earned more money that month than any other months during 2025 (a first for August which is usually very quiet).

From then on, with the launch of the book in September, running events around it, sharing the conversations I’d recorded about women making noise, I surfed on a wave of new, and things felt like they finally moved, fast. In October, I decided to run a second month long drum microdosing course called Drumming as Medicine. 23 women joined me. The transformation was remarkable: participants’ confidence in their practice jumped from 2-4 out of 10 to 8-9. Women who couldn’t pick up their drums at the start were playing daily by week four. The combination of neuroscience, drumming practice, and community created something powerful. Every participant said they would recommend it enthusiastically. This validated what I know: when women are given permission to drum, a simple structure, and witness from other women, something transformative happens.

After the course ended, the message was unanimous: we want more. Women  said they wanted longer sessions, ongoing circles, continued connection. Many ticked “year-long collective” when asked about future offerings. Four weeks had given them permission and structure, but that was just the beginning. Real transformation, real mastery, real drum keeping – that takes time. Time to explore different ways of working with the drum, to work with seasonal energies, to tend the practice through resistance and return, to move from student to keeper of the beat. 

So I created a new program called the Women Drum Keepers Collective. It was what they were already asking for : a year-long journey of becoming women who remember the power of the drum. The Women Drum Keepers Collective is an 11-month journey beginning  in February 2026, guiding women from tentative beginners to confident drum keepers through fortnightly live calls. Moving through the wheel of the year from Imbolc to Winter Solstice, the collective explores drumming as medicine through four seasonal phases: Foundations (winter into spring), Expression (spring into summer), Harvest & Release (summer into autumn), and Integration (autumn into winter). Each fortnight alternates between teaching sessions (with technique, neuroscience, and guided drumming) and integration calls (with sharing circles and depth work). This bridges structured curriculum with fortnightly accountability, evidence-based nervous system science with ceremonial practice, progressive skill-building with seasonal wisdom, and women’s empowerment with reclamation. It’s designed for women who refuse to choose between their analytical mind and ancestral knowing, who want a practice that deepens over time, and who are ready to move to embodying medicine. 

In November, I also led the biggest ever in person workshop of my life: I volunteered to run a closing the bones wrapping and drumming workshop at the women drumming convention in Colchester, and I wanted to limit it to 30 women, but Mel asked me if I to take half of the women coming to the convention whilst as the other half were doing another workshop. Feeling a big worried about holding space for so many with a ritual that I know can lead to deep emotional release, I roped in my friend Malwina to co-host with me. In the end we had 55 women in the workshop and I shouldn’t have worried, because not only did it go extremely well, felt deep and beautiful, and we even had time to show all the women to wrap their hips and finished singing the “let it go” song whilst swaying in a circle, but over the rest of that day and the next I’ve lost count of how many women came to tell me that this was life changing. I’ve decided to offer this workshop again on the afternoon of the 1st of February and also teach it on the week end of the 28th of February and 1st of March.

At the end of 2025, I ran an online workshop, attended by nearly 100 women, with two drum journeys to walk a time spiral to review 2025, and connect with your future self a year from now in 2026. What fascinated me was that people reported a lot of grief and loss and difficult feelings for 2025 whereas 2026 had a much lighter energy.  The themes were processing loss and finding resilience in 2025 and moving towards grounded expansion in 2026.

2025 Journey

2025 emerged as a year of transformation through loss and shedding. Many participants experienced brutal challenges : grief, burnout, depression, and significant life changes that forced them to let go of old identities. Yet within this difficulty came some gifts: the courage to step into full authenticity, to no longer make themselves small for others’ comfort, and to move from head-centered living into heart-led wisdom. Resilience was a central theme, with participants discovering their own strength like diamonds formed under pressure. For some, the year brought rebirth, tender new beginnings, where entire life concepts were reimagined and life began feeling truly their own. 

2026 Journey

The energy of 2026 called participants toward grounded expansion and joyful expression. The primary invitation was to grow deep roots, to feel held and trust without worrying about every detail. Freedom emerged as a strong theme: permission to move without fear or compromise, to move forward with one’s mission, and to express fully without holding back. Boundaries and self-care took center stage, with the understanding that personal fire needs careful tending to stay warm without burning out. Creativity and nourishment flows from within, with many called to write, create, and share their gifts. Joy itself becomes the key to manifesting the future, bringing clarity, peace, and spaciousness. The horse energy of 2026 promises heart-healing, movement, and momentum.

You can watch the recording of this workshop here

Personal growth in 2025

Aside from the discomfort and stripping of the first half of the year, I did some serious work on myself last year, and also went through some major milestones.

To support the discomfort and stripping, and lack of presence to challenges, I carried on working with the psychotherapist and shaman I’d been working with for 18 months. In May I had 4 sessions of extracellular matrix integration technique (a form of fascia release). In June I attended a weekend training called Radical Wholeness (after the book of the same name by Philipp Shepherd), and I found this truly transformative, and by the end of the weekend I could feel the movements in the nature around me in my body. In July I attended well over 10 different workshops, a few of which I found incredibly powerful (in particular, working with the energy of the blue lotus, Biodanza, a group family constellations workshop, and a 2h long Lituanian Sauna ceremony).

In the Autumn, as well as my weekly 5 rhythms dance session, I also started attending Biodanza classes every fortnight.

Since October I’ve been working with a functional medicine practitioner, as well as an acupuncturist to rebalance my hormones and energy. 

In 2025 I also went to two funerals, and accompanied the last few weeks of a dying friend with some drumming and singing.

A big milestone in 2025 was that my son moved to university in September. I anticipated that I would feel bittersweet, leaving him there at his new uni lodgings, but I never expected how much grief I would feel. Given the date of his moving there was a weekday, I had to drive him alone instead of going with my husband. As I walked away from his new building, I was overtaken by deep sobs, the kind that make your throat close up. I walked to my car and I had to sit there for a while to recover. Over the next few days, I was overcome by grief several times a day every time something in the house or the daily routine reminded me that he wasn’t there. 

And I also felt proud of my son, especially as he had struggled so much at college before we understood that he too was neurodivergent, and I never thought he’d get where he now was at the time. But my, I never knew the grief would feel so strong, it felt like someone had died. You spend nearly 20 yearsraising a child, and it’s good and healthy that they open their wings and leave the nest, but it also feels so very hard to lose them. At the time a friend reminded me that I was lucky that I had a life for myself outside of being a mother, and I knew this to the true, having met women who entire lives revolved around their children, and who did not know what to do with themselves when they left.

And luckily for me, I was busy with the launch of my book the week after he left for Uni, and that carried me forward and out of grief pretty fast.

Since then, he’s been back home twice, and when he’s left I never felt that level of grief again thankfully.

Interestingly, I was due to hit the menopause milestone (12 months without a period) at the end of September, having been in perimenopause since I was 42 (I’m now 55- that’s a loooong perimenopause), but I had a small bleed on the day I moved him to uni (how’s that for symbolic?), so the clock is reset and I will not be officially menopaused until I’m 56.

All the things I did in 2025 work wise

• I ran 5 free workshops online, attended by 436 women
• I created and delivery 3 new trainings: 2 month long drum microdosing and drumming as medicine courses, and the collective, and my new wrapped in rhythm workshop
• I delivered 5 in person workshops (Closing the bones and postnatal recovery massage, and wrapped in rhythm)
• I ran 22 drum circles circles (a mix of in person and online) and 8 wheel of the year ceremonies, as well as attended weekly private drum circles with my drum sisters
• I launched 3 books (the French translation of my book about postpartum recovery, The Beat of Your Own Drum, and 2 pieces in the Woman Craft Compendium about women circles.
• I wrote 22 blog posts and 24 newsletters, and recorded 12 podcast episodes.
• I published an article about postpartum recovery in the international journal of birth and parent education and wrote a massive blog post review all the scientific evidence behind rebozo techniques
• And I submitted 3 pieces for the next Womancraft compendium about the too much woman (which means that I’ll be published in a 4th book this year)

And learning wise (CPD): I took part in a year long business mentoring group, I attended 2 drum conventions and one drum flash, a retreat, my first ever festival  (Buddhafield), a radical wholeness workshop, and I took an insight timer course, an instagram course, and a money course.

and I kind of still feel that I haven’t done much….my ADHD brain always focuses on what I’m NOT doing….but I’m working on that.

Word of the year

My word for 2025 was power. My word for 2026 is source. For me this means connecting with the source of power that connects us all, and to trust what the universe has in store for me. I have started expressing desires and letting it to the universe to make it happen for me, without controlling or knowing exactly how it will happen.