I used to tell women to come home to themselves.
I’ve stopped. Here’s what changed, and what I do instead.
For a long time I said what most of this industry says. That somewhere underneath the roles and the competence and the being-good-at-things there’s a truer you, and the work is to find her and come home.
It’s a lovely sentence. I don’t think it’s true.
I don’t think there’s a self buried in there waiting to be dug up. I think there’s a character you were handed; assembled out of what pleased people, what kept the peace, what got you praised… and you’ve run her so long she feels like your personality. Nothing in there to find. Something to set down, and something to build.
Changing my mind about that changed everything else: what I say, what I sell, how the work is shaped, what this all looks like. I’d rather say so plainly than quietly rewrite my website and hope nobody noticed.
The women I’m for.
Capable women who built something good and can’t feel it from the inside. Who’ve been the one who copes for so long that coping became a personality. Who are carrying one specific thing they’d do if they let themselves, and have been calling it a silly idea since roughly the time they got good at their job.
They’re not in crisis and they’re not looking to be rescued. They’re reaching. That distinction matters more than any demographic; I’ve worked with women of very different ages and lives on exactly the same pattern.
If you’re in the middle of something destabilising, I’ll say so and point you somewhere steadier. That’s not me turning you away. Starting this work from unstable ground is how people get hurt.
What I’m like in the room.
I challenge. That’s the point of me. I’ll say the thing you half-know and haven’t said out loud, and I’ll ask for an act at the end of every session rather than letting a good insight stand in for a decision.
And I don’t push before you can hold it. Challenge without a floor under it isn’t bold, it’s careless, and it produces a woman who performs a breakthrough and quietly goes back. The edge only works because of what’s underneath it.
I don’t hand you labels. You name your own character, in your own words. Anything I hand you, you’d wear, and a worn label is just a prettier version of the thing we’re taking off.
And I build every container to end with you holding the pen. The work ends with something you do without me. That's not modesty; it's the whole design. A coach you keep needing has sold you a new room to earn your place in.
The particulars.
I’m Brazilian. I’ve lived in the UK for eleven years, which is long enough to have built a whole self out of fitting in, and long enough to have noticed.
I work online, with women in the UK and beyond. Sessions are private, paced, and held; nothing gets opened that can’t be closed inside the hour.
I write essays most fortnights, mostly about small domestic things, because that’s where all of this actually shows up.