If you’ve been following my blog since 2017, you’ll know I love doing these year-end reviews – they’re like a public reflective diary, helping me process and share my journey. For about five years now, I’ve also chosen a word for the upcoming year, using an intuitive process that helps me connect with what support I need and how I want to feel. (I’ll share a guided drum journey below so you can find yours too!)
My word for 2024 was “Guidance” – and boy did the universe deliver! They say be careful what you wish for, and this year brought guidance in ways I never expected, consuming most of my energy and focus throughout the entire year.
Building a support system: My access to work journey
One of the biggest changes this year came through successfully applying for an Access to Work grant. Since ADHD is classified as a disability in the UK, I was eligible – but this journey wasn’t one I could navigate alone. For someone with ADHD, where admin and paperwork are my nemesis, the process felt particularly challenging, especially since government systems seem designed to be hardest for those they’re meant to help.
I was fortunate to have amazing support: my neurodivergent coach Kanan helped draft the initial application and body-doubled with me for the submission. Then came the team at This is Me agency. They were instrumental in helping me map out my support worker needs, advocating during DWP calls (which significantly reduced my anxiety), and tackling the mountain of paperwork – including gathering 24 different quotes from potential support workers!
The grant approval was both exciting and overwhelming. I received funding for 14 hours of weekly support worker time, ADHD coaching sessions, and equipment like noise-cancelling headphones and a Remarkable tablet. But then came the challenge: how to recruit and manage all these people? Classic ADHD paralysis hit me hard, and it took weeks to actually implement the support. Looking back, I wish I’d reached out to the agency about feeling overwhelmed and prioritised finding the right VA first to help coordinate everything/everyone else.
Building my support team
My first hire was a professional declutterer, who visits weekly. Working with her has been revelatory – finally helping me understand why I could never tackle the chaos alone (and helping me kick out both the shame and the delusion around not being able do it alone). She doesn’t just help organise; she measures spaces and tells exactly what storage solutions to use to prevent clutter from returning. A year on, my desk no longer holds its infamous “pile of doom,” and for the first time in years, I’m not frantically clearing space before my family visits for the holidays. The fact that we’re only halfway through the process after a year shows just how much support I needed.
Finding Rosslyn, my VA who specialises in supporting people with ADHD, was another game-changer. Instead of overwhelming me with procedure documents and systems, she worked with me gradually to build processes that actually work for my brain. She’s helped identify other crucial support needs, like a website manager and bookkeeper, making my business more streamlined and automated. I was lucky to have had my grant renewed for the coming year too (albeit at a lower rate), which means that I’ll be able to complete the many projects I started.
Professional evolution: learning, growing, teaching
- The Business Side
Working with conscious marketing mentors has been a key part of my journey since 2021. I’ve found that being held in a container of like-minded, heart-based entrepreneurs helps keep me accountable. After three enriching years with George Kao, I sought someone who better matched my needs: Europe-based (for more compatible time zones – I’m a morning person), a woman balancing motherhood with business, and offering affordable mentoring with the same conscious/authentic values. Through George’s community, I found Caroline Leon, whose smaller group size and understanding of work-life balance was exactly what I needed.
Under Caroline’s guidance, I created my first proper business plan in over 11 years of self-employment. While I set some overly ambitious financial goals without accounting for the time needed for Access to Work implementation and personal development, I see this not as a failure but as valuable learning.
Looking at what I did accomplish this year:
- Teaching: 6 in-person courses spanning intuitive drumming, closing the bones, postnatal recovery massage, and rebozo techniques for NHS midwives
- Community work: I led 13 drum circles and co-facilitated 8 wheel of the year ceremonies
- One-to-one support: I did 16 closing the bones massages/healing sessions and about as many mentoring sessions.
- Online courses: I welcomed 142 new students to my courses and ran 3 online masterclasses
- Workshop: I ran a new online one about overcoming impostor syndrome.
- Plant medicine: I ran an evening of connection with the spirit of Mugwort
- Content creation: I wrote and published 32 blog posts, sent 20 newsletters, shared over 180 social media posts, and recorded 6 podcast interview
- Major milestones
The highlight of my year was completing my book about drumming as a tool for women’s empowerment – twice the size of my first book, Why Postnatal Recovery Matters. True to my ADHD style, I wrote most of it in an intense six-week sprint before the publisher’s deadline! The book will be published by Womancraft in September 2025, with US distribution through Red Wheel.
I also finalised the French translation of Why Postnatal Recovery Matters (Mères nouvelles, traditions ancestrales, restaurer les rituels de soin du postpartum), due for release in January.
- Breaking new ground
This year saw me stepping into new and bigger spaces, delivering drumming demonstrations at two midwifery conferences and speaking about women’s life transitions at the convention of women drummers. I taught my first intuitive drumming course, incorporating rites of passage work around menarche and motherhood – a profound and powerful experience.
- Beautiful “failures” and their gifts
My attempt to launch a group program for creating calm and overcoming overwhelm didn’t attract participants despite thorough preparation: market research interviews, content creation, and technical setup. Yet instead of disappointment, I felt relief. This “failure” revealed that I was meant to offer something deeper – focusing on helping sensitive, holistic, heart-centered women reclaim their power in more profound ways.
Personal growth and healing: a journey to wholeness
- Finding deep support
After supporting my child through mental health challenges and experiencing my own struggles, I knew I needed something different from traditional support systems. The NHS counselling I received in Autumn 2023 provided zero relief, leading me to seek alternatives that aligned with my holistic understanding of healing.
My experience with the NHS’s approach to mental health – both for my child and myself – highlighted a fundamental flaw in modern healthcare. As Josh Schrei beautifully puts it in his podcast The Emerald, “if a plant was sick we wouldn’t say it has ‘wilting syndrome’, we would ask if it’s getting enough food, water, sunshine.”
Another quote that really exemplifies the narrow, mechanistic view of the modern mental health approach, which ignores our need for community, belonging, and connection, is this one (from an article about Western talking therapists who were sent to support people in Rwanda after the genocide).
“Their practice did not involve being outside in the sun where you begin to feel better. There was no music or drumming to get your blood flowing again. There was no sense that everyone had taken the day off so that the entire community could come together to try to lift you up and bring you back to joy. Instead, they would take people one at a time into these dingy little rooms and have them sit around for an hour or so and talk about bad things that had happened to them. We had to ask them to leave”
I found my answer in a therapist who bridges psychotherapy and shamanic practice. His two-hour sessions (so much more effective than the standard 50-minute format) provided more healing in a few weeks than months of conventional therapy. By May, I was experiencing a level of peace and spaciousness I hadn’t felt in years – a feeling that continues to deepen.
The medication journey
This year brought interesting experiments with different forms of support. As I wrote my book, I discovered the power of “microdosing drumming” – just 5 minutes daily – which created similar positive thought pattern changes to my previous experiences with microdosing mushrooms. This practice, along with pre-recorded therapeutic drum tracks, became crucial tools in my wellbeing toolkit.
- The HRT chapter
My journey with HRT, which began in 2023 to soothe my nervous system, took an unexpected turn. I started experiencing concerning side effects that echoed my previous experiences with hormonal contraception in the past. After being fast-tracked to the cancer clinic due to constant bleeding, I made the conscious choice to stop.
Whilst HRT supported my nervous system back towards balance at a time of desperation, feels like it somehow paused my menopause process. However, now that I’ve stopped, I feel like I wasn’t my true self during the 18 months I took it. It feels a bit like an epidural during labour: yes you no longer feel the pain, but you can also no longer feel the power.
Stopping HRT led to increased energy and a stronger connection to my power. As Jane Hardwicke Collings explains, oestrogen is the “hormone of accommodation” – it can make us more pleasant and accommodating but might also dampen our true power. Without it, I’ve rediscovered my authentic voice and strength.
- The ADHD medication experience
My experience with ADHD medication was equally enlightening. While the medicine I was prescribed, Elvanse, helped tremendously with focus and motivation, particularly in finishing my book, I could sense that I wasn’t being entirely myself, and something told me that the increased productivity wasn’t sustainable long-term. When serious digestive issues arose, and I meditated on it, my body’s message was clear: “slow down.”
Listening to this wisdom, I chose to stop the medication after 5 months, and embrace a slower pace, particularly during the winter months when nature itself calls for rest. This decision feels deeply aligned with my body’s needs and the natural rhythms of nature.
Embracing winter’s wisdom and looking forward
- Winter solstice reflections
Last week, co-creating our winter solstice ceremony with friends brought a profound realisation: for the first time, I’m not just enduring the dark season but discovering its beauty. I can appreciate the starkness of winter while quietly celebrating that the light will soon return. Our ceremony will honour both the necessary stillness of darkness and the promise of returning light – a perfect metaphor for my own journey this year.
- The power of slowing down
My decision to work quietly through December and take an extended break (December 19th to January 6th) feels aligned with winter’s energy. This slower pace, matching the season when nature herself rests, brings a deep sense of rightness. It’s a conscious choice to honour natural rhythms rather than pushing against them.
Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible. Katherine May, from the book Wintering
Vision for 2025
- Stepping into power
Having recorded a drum journey for reviewing 2024 and connecting with 2025’s energy (which I’m sharing with you below), I feel a clear shift emerging. 2025 calls me to fully step into my power as a menopausal woman and mentor. This power has been rising steadily since stopping HRT, and it feels like perfect timing with my new book about drumming and women’s wisdom being published next year.
I feel called to support other women in accessing their own power and wisdom, contributing to raising humanity’s consciousness. We can no longer thrive while disconnected from nature, community, and what makes our hearts sing. There’s an urgent need to create new frameworks beyond our current constraints.
My 2024 word was Guidance, and it served its purpose beautifully, bringing me exactly the support and direction I needed. For 2025, my word is Power. It’s about embracing my authentic strength and using it to support others to do the same and create positive change in the world.
Closing invitation
As we stand at this threshold between years, I invite you to join me in this reflective practice. Below you’ll find the recorded drum journey to help you review 2024 and connect with the energy of 2025. Now isn’t the time for rational goal-setting, but rather for dreaming and listening to your inner wisdom. Whether you’re seeking to reflect on the past year, find a word for the coming year or simply wanting to connect more deeply with your own truth, the drum is here to guide you.
Remember, this turning of the year is not about forcing change or setting rigid resolutions. It’s about listening deeply, honouring your journey, and allowing your authentic power to emerge naturally – just as nature knows exactly when to rest and when to bloom.
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