19/05/2026
I never planned to leave teaching. That’s the bit people find hardest to believe.
I loved my classroom. I was good in it. Even on the days when everything else felt like wading through wet sand.
What I didn’t know was that the wading-through-wet-sand bit wasn’t normal. I thought I just needed to try harder, sleep more, drink less coffee, drink more coffee. The usual menu.
It was the commute that finally broke it. Kent to London and back, pulling into motorway services to sleep in the car because I physically couldn’t keep my eyes open. For months.
The burnout diagnosis came first. The ADHD one came after - and that was the one that rearranged the furniture. The masking. The exhaustion. The needing to be excellent or invisible, with nothing in between.
So I started doing something I’d never really done before - I made myself uncomfortable on purpose. I’d just moved to Kent and didn’t know anyone, but I started turning up to things on my own. A sound bath first - I left properly perplexed, because something had physically shifted and I couldn’t explain how. A women’s circle next, where I made myself speak to a room of strangers and left feeling heard in a way I hadn’t in years. Then a January charity cold dip I was massively underprepared for - and finally understood the thing about community that everyone bangs on about.
My inner introvert recoiled at every single one. But that was the point. Pushing through the discomfort was what showed me there was another way to live.
So I left. Properly. Gave myself six months to figure out what a life built with my ADHD might actually look like.
I walked every day the kids were at school. Started my sound practitioner training. And slowly, Be Wild & Well took shape - wellness walks, sound baths, women’s circles, cold dips, retreat days. The things that put me back together, offered to other women who might need them too.
If you’ve been white-knuckling it through your own life, you’re not the only one.
Based around Kent and the South East. Everything’s in the link in bio. 🤍
