How caregiving for her mum led Grace Williams from Corporate Law to Coaching

0:04Hello and welcome to The Slowdown. A topic we don't talk about enough is caregiving. It's not glamorous and it's not front page news, but so many people have caregiving responsibilities for family, friends and neighbours and have had to pause their careers and alter their paths entirely in becoming caregivers. When I heard Grace's story via a dear friend, I knew that this was the story the slowdown had been missing. Grace Williams trained as a lawyer, qualified as a solicitor at White & Case, one of the most prestigious US law firms in the city of London, a career she had worked towards her entire life and one that she loved.

0:44A few years in, both her parents were diagnosed with cancer within six months of each other. For three years, Grace was simultaneously a full-time lawyer and a full-time carer for her mum. All the while managing her own diagnosis of MS which she received when she was 21. Her mother eventually passed away and it was in the aftermath of that loss that Grace made the decision to leave law entirely. She retrained as a certified health and nutrition coach and now works with high-performing individuals and global brands from Christian Dior Couture to leading international law firms. She is someone who has lived the mind body connection she now teaches that what we carry emotionally always eventually shows up physically.

1:30We talk about grief, burnout, being a carer and what it really means to slow down when your body starts asking before you do. Recorded at Brazen Studios and sponsored by Greek swim and resort wear brand Kione, I hope you enjoy this conversation with Grace Williams. Hi Grace, welcome to The Slowdown. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me. I like to provide some context as I always think starting with some background on a person is really important to help us show where they came from and where they ended up. So where were you raised, by whom and what your early idea of success was?

2:13Yeah so I was raised just outside of London in Buckinghamshire by my mum and my dad and I then have two younger brothers so I'm the oldest first child which I think always a lot comes with that everyone has different experiences being the first child but I really had to think about this like early vision and early idea of success because I think a lot of it does come down to watching my dad working and it comes down to that hard work element success came from hard work which meant long hours how much effort you were putting in my parents both grew up in Essex and he had this mentality of I want to be in London I want to be in the city and he knew that to do that he had to work hard so for to buy nice things to live in the places I wanted to live it was like okay I need to go make money neither of my parents went to university went straight into work my dad was in the city he started on the stock exchange and then ended up in the world of banking that sort of vision of success came from okay how hard are you working what does that look like you mentioned there that everyone has kind of different ideas of what being the eldest child what would you say defines your experience of being the eldest I got told off for everything my youngest brother got told off for nothing and I think the expectations on me maybe were a little higher as well um not to discredit my brothers but from an academic perspective it was getting a stars top marks that was always the expectation by the time we got to my youngest brother it was sort of a little bit out the window um but yeah I think it was the you've got to trial everything first and get told off everything and the things my parents were quite strict and the things that I got told off for my brother was doing a lot younger and I mean just flew under the radar and why did you decide to study law so I fell into it I will say I left uni so I studied history at uni left uni and didn't really know what I was doing but I had done internships in Washington at a political lobbyist firm and they were all lawyers and it was my dad who went well they're all lawyers but they're not necessarily practicing law why don't you think about law and he he never wanted me to go into finance and banking um but it was sort of that mentality of your you go down medical route lawyer route finance option yeah that's what that's what we do so um it was one of those i can't look at blood still can't never seen what a blood test looks like so it was never going to be the medical route from a doctor perspective um slightly ironic with what i do now but it kind of left me with law as an option and that link with what i'd done internship wise and why did your dad not want you to go into finance and banking um I think it came he was so it's 1980s when he went into banking and he just saw how women were treated at that time and he had said from day dot he never wanted his daughter going into the industry and I know that things have changed a lot but I think he just had it in his mind of don't want you in banking and he wanted something I think law he'd always looked at in a very prestigious way and that's sort of where it came from also I I was a child at school I don't know if anyone else will feel like this but if you asked me what I wanted to do I had no idea I was I was the sheep that followed and that I think had just really continued into those decisions of actually not really it wasn't until I left law that I think I'd really fully stopped and be like what do I want what what is what lights me up what's important to me and that was six years well actually longer than that with all the law school and everything so many many years later of actually getting to ask myself that question I think that's the problem that most people have right where we get into the rat race and the assumptions and what we should be and what we want to be and what feels expected and feels right and then at no point do we actually ask ourselves what it is that we want to be doing yeah and so I want to unpack a lot more of that as we go along but you were also very young when you were diagnosed with MS yeah how did that diagnosis come about and how does it show up for you yeah so I was 21 when I was diagnosed and I was actually just going into my vacation scheme at the law firm that I ended up working with so you do like a two-week internship before law school and I it came about I actually thought I was having a stroke because I woke up and the whole left side of my body was numb and I remember going downstairs and I for some reason I had that sort of image of a stroke in mind and I just went down I was like I'm having a stroke um thankfully that wasn't the case um and so I went into uh that legal vacation scheme completely numb down one side I was on steroids but it was like it actually fueled so much of what I was doing of I was on one hand being told by doctors we at the time they weren't putting me on medication because that was for a lot later stage um diagnoses um and for recurring if people had more than one attack um and so I was being told on one hand there's nothing that we can do we can't give you any certainty and actually like really think about stress in your life really consider what you're doing because you've had this diagnosis and then in the other was looking at a career that I knew was stressful and it almost fueled that journey between the two but to come back to your question of what that then looks like um I it really is an invisible disease because outside of the diagnosis itself and the attacks that I've had the day-to-day is fatigue but you can function and I've been really lucky with recovering from each of my attacks and not being affected physically after the attack has worn off um and so I've been very lucky in that way that I have been able to continue my life but in the background there is this ongoing running fatigue that happens um but it has been a fuel for a lot of things.

8:33And what sense has it been a fuel? Prove to myself that I can still do what I want to do and be really live the life that I to live despite being diagnosed with something that is said there's no certainty over what it looks like and every time I've had an attack it's we don't know if you will recover we don't know what things will look like and I'm not someone that's very good with unknowns I like certainty and so for me it's that fuel to a look after myself to really make sure I am supporting myself as much as I can to prevent it from happening again um but also to not be limited by it to not be defined by it to see it as okay yes I have this as long as I am extremely conscious of what I am doing um and looking at supporting myself in that way that doesn't stop me from going after what I want as well and in that kind of desire to prove yourself and you became a lawyer what did success look like in the legal profession success was measured by the number of hours i built by so coming back to that hard work equals success definition um i think my dad probably gave me two percent my school and my career gave me the rest of that of really taking a very small probably a very positive image of hard work meaning success um and me amplifying it to an unhealthy level and so yeah in law it looks like hitting your target hours which were extremely high it was how long you were sat at your desk how this particularly pre-covid when working from home wasn't a thing um who was leaving the latest who'd been in the office the longest it's a badge of honor to have not gone home and have had an all-nighter and all of those different things and so that is what success looks like it was the classic how are you i'm exhausted how are you i'm just so busy conversations and that was that meant you were successful and I think then on that personal level for me I then bought in the I loved getting dressed for the office so if I could have had no sleep but I still got dressed and I put on an outfit that I loved like then it was a successful day how did I feel under that very very different question well because no one really asked how you felt under that no right no um and you weren't really telling friends how you were feeling I don't think I knew how I felt right because it was so normal it was just how we were it's how the industry was it was I knew that it was a extreme level because other friends were able to do plans after work and all those types of things and I would be Saturday night not quite sure if I can make it so I knew it was extreme but I until my mum got sick I had never stopped to ask myself was this normal how did I feel so even if friends had asked I probably would have just been like I'm good tired but I'm good yeah it's as you say this kind of badge of honor thing where people say like how are you I'm exhausted and rather than being like oh no it's like well yeah me too or Or there's almost a competitiveness in how little you slept or how tired you were.

11:50And it's, I always, I see it as an armour. So that answers that question of I'm exhausted. It's protecting you from anyone asking anything else and actually asking that next question and being like, no, no, but are you okay? And so it's the easy response because actually when you stop and ask yourself a deeper level, so much more will come out, but that's scarier. And when did your mum get sick? And how did you make the decision or take on the role of caring for her? And were you like, OK, I'll have to work less or not work at all or continue working? How did you balance? So my mum was diagnosed in the summer of 2019 and completely out of the blue, diagnosed with a brain tumour.

12:34and it was to say you go into or um what is the saying around ignorance is bliss the when she had her diagnosis we went through biopsy went through every stage and then you get the treatment plan and it was six weeks of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and I just remember thinking okay we've got to get through the six weeks and when you see my mum lived with it for three years those six weeks were a drop in the ocean and so there wasn't really this long-term vision it was like right I've just got to get through we've got to get through the six weeks I'm a big family person and I knew that I didn't want to miss anything and I wanted to be there for as much as possible um so there was no conversation around it it was an expectation I put on myself of like I'm going to be there for as much as possible as much as work will allow and I was extremely lucky with the team that I was in who were incredibly supportive that I was able to balance both as time progressed um and I always say this with so much caution COVID then hits and everyone's working from home and it went from I had been commuting sort of first train back into London on a Monday morning last train out on a Friday evening cooking five meals over the weekend for my parents to eat during the week while I was then in the office and it was just this constant backwards and forwards that was exhausting and my mind I didn't really know where I was and it was all a bit crazy so when COVID hit and it gave that opportunity to be at home that actually allowed me to do both I wouldn't have been able to do both had we not had that because it just wouldn't have been sustainable so there was never really a clear decision it was sort of this combination of circumstances that made it possible which I say with a bit of hesitation because ultimately I did burn out from trying to do both as well but it was the circumstances made it okay we I was allowed to be able to do that both and be there more because even my mum's appointments other than when we went to hospital her doctor's appointments were all virtual so I'd be on a call with work and then be coming off that and going on to a call with my mum's doctors and it was sort of backs and forwards in that way did you find that your mind was elsewhere and you weren't able to you know do your work to the highest quality I were you falling behind no I got very good at compartmentalizing of being extremely like hyper focused on one thing and actually I think it meant it took me a long time to process and I don't think I ever really did process what we were going through until afterwards because I was so just we are in this bubble and we get through it and my mum didn't really well she never spoke about the fact that she was sick um even when she wasn't able to move herself do anything herself was hardly speaking suddenly if I was cooking dinner she would suddenly say can I help you chop the vegetables she hadn't stood up in six months she couldn't use her hands and it was like she just never wanted to admit that she was sick and my dad had cancer at the same time and we just always had this mentality of like we just get through we just do and we continue and we continue life as normal as much as possible um that can come with complications because obviously that's not always the case so you push your emotions aside and they catch up with you yeah so at the time work never slipped because i wasn't going to let it we were continuing as normal the tension underneath that I didn't realize how strong and how much of a toll that that was taking um because you then get those moments where you absolutely crumble of course because you're like this is the weight that I'm under but day to day it was just keep on operating keep on going and you mentioned there your dad's diagnosis when in the process of your mum's diagnosis did that happen and when you guys got that news were you what was the kind of feeling in the family uh so it was six months after my mom was diagnosed so december 2019 and i think it was like what's next it was sort of this okay we've had because my mom's diagnosis was terminal and she had actually at the start been told six months and that's how long she could live with it it was incredible all that it ended up being three years but it was sort of this feeling of like we've already been we're already on the floor we're already in the trenches okay this is just the next thing that we cope with and my dad's mentality around it I think helped with that because he was positive he was like right this is what I'm fighting this is what I'm doing it's came with a lot of heaviness alongside that as well but it was this we just we're strong we can do this and your dad's fine now he is yeah yeah you mentioned obviously all of that happening during covid but i support which and the many benefits of that was there any downside to effectively being like with your siblings and your parents who are both diagnosed with cancer all under one roof at the same time where you kind of weren't seeing other people and you're having three meals a day together uh we ran out of conversation very quickly um but i'm sure everyone had that as well um we were in such a bubble.

18:07I think when I look back, the hardest part was actually more what we weren't able to do with my mum. So when she was strongest, when she could have still gone on trips, could have still travelled and travelled with ease, not in a wheelchair and with carers. And when actually we could have done so many things, it was when lockdown was at its strictest. So we couldn't and we were terrified to go anywhere anyway so that's I think is the thing that I find the hardest of just like what we missed out on in terms of living life because a year later my mum was chair bound and stuck in the same room pretty much all day same chair watching the tv being like we were around her but her life was so small and it had just shrunk and so we almost missed that early stage before because of covid um but i think we had just it's probably the same as everyone's experiences it was you have lovely moments of a delivery arriving and it being the most exciting thing and cooking and all of those types of things birthdays turned into okay what can we order to make it the most exciting thing possible i was baking cakes that would take me four days because i was like right we need something to bring lightness into this situation but and then you run out of conversation you're probably arguing over the same things um but i think we also needed the bubble as well it's the the contrast is when my mum passed away we went through grief very separately my brothers my dad and I and so we always had this time of doing everything together of caring um but then grief we went through very separately so there's pluses and negatives all in one so then what happened next after she passed away with like your work journey yeah so my mom passed away summer of 2022 and I had this weird mindset of like right I can now be a proper lawyer which is slightly strange because it was like I'd been doing law the whole time but because as you asked earlier around like that split focus I did have this feeling of like okay right now you are just in law you can now be the lawyer that you thought you were going to be um but well I think that was the case but with that came also navigating grief not having a lot to process having not processed much whilst we were going through it and trying to build a sense of a normal life but actually not knowing what normal life looks like because actually normal life was trying to go back to summer of 2019 which was pre-covid like everything had changed for everyone in so many different ways and then it was like what does this even look like anymore so work took over it filled up everything um I had gone from not seeing anyone because I was at home didn't want to miss anything with my mom so it was very much there and working to actually just still being in my flat working because then the hours ramped up and I really filled the void with that and the armor again as you say because I imagine you know seeing your friends and socializing you have to have conversations that you might not want to have and work is just a way to like really take your mind as you say off of things that you don't want to process completely and actually I would find grief hit the hardest when I was on the way to a plan so I remember going to a concert with some friends and I could not stop crying on the way there and it was like I knew I was going something that I was really going to enjoy but it just made me so sad to be going booking holidays before I went and I would just be I couldn't stop crying before going on holiday because it was you knew that something good was coming and suddenly all of the emotions were coming up so yeah work was definitely that it's also it sounds like a sense of sort of like self-flagellation like I don't want to give myself good things yeah because then I'm enjoying myself yeah and I've lost my mum so I shouldn't be yeah So there's this guilt and actually work is a safe place because no one's going to say anything about the fact that I'm working.

22:21It's an easier, why can you not make dinner? Oh, I've got work. It's a much easier sentence to say than I'm actually really not feeling great today. and it the journey I had to go on personally of actually the growth was huge because of all these barriers of all these arms I had no idea that this was all there and it's now when I look back and you see that it makes me sad of like wow it was so much to hold and I just wouldn't let myself notice it at the time feel it at the time and then what happened next so I'd been back working for about just over a year um and the my aunt and uncle on my dad's side of the family they were our rocks throughout my parents being sick so my dad would have stints of eight weeks in hospital and so it's just my brothers and I with my mum at home and they would be over every week as much as possible helping and they actually moved into our family home because they were in between houses and so for a couple of months my aunt was seeing what she knew was a stressful job in real time because I was going home some weekends if I was working from home from there whatever it was and so she was seeing the toll it was taking and it went from like oh yeah grace works really hard to oh my goodness something is like grace is not good right now um and so I it was sort of this flash forward of yeah my aunt seeing the reality of as you say the armor being up I mean not really living my life and deciding that from there I was going to quit law and go on a completely different trajectory because my aunt just shone this very bright light on me and it was it was a Friday night I will never forget it Friday night they had all been out for dinner whole family and had come back and it was I think after midnight I was still working I was reviewing documents on trains that were sending me to sleep but I had thousands thousands thousands to go through um at some point AI I'm sure will be replacing that whole process but she came back and she sat me down she was like right what's going on and I was like I'm reviewing documents on trains what do you mean she was like no no bigger picture you it's been over a year and there's just no life in you like it's not that and she wasn't saying it from a place of like you should be better because I think that's something that I definitely worry I know friends that have been through grief feel similar of like this am I supposed to feel better am I is there supposed to be a point where like I'm not supposed to grieve anymore but it was actually from the side of like you're just not living um and off the back of that conversation i completely agreed and it was did it take you some time to like think about what she said or was it quite quick quick literally i woke up the next morning went into my dance room was like i'm quitting my job on monday it was within that hour conversation because i think i knew it deep down that something needed to change but I needed that person to be to actually tell me it was possible show me that what more was out there and actually shine that light and say actually this isn't working for you and I was very fortunate that I had retrained whilst I was in law again trying to just distract myself and I was like I need to fill that carrying void with something else so I sort of added to my plate but it gave me that vision of what the next step would be what had you trained for so I had done my health coach training with CNM whilst um yeah whilst in law so I'd done it all virtually over weekends and it had been I think also my aunt like saw I'd done that from a passion project side of things there were a lot of modules on cancer it was obviously just after losing my mom and I was like this I just need to throw myself into this and I had learned so much over those three years in terms of trying to help my mum um especially when there was so much physical that came with the caring side of my mum that I wasn't strong enough to do but what I could do was the cooking the caring the health side of things and so from a I'd had those sort of years of personal experience and I just wanted to just keep on researching and learning and learning more and So I'd done that alongside and I'd then been having conversations with my aunt, I guess, as naturally they'd been coming up and she'd seen how much that was lighting me up and how much I was enjoying that versus when she'd asked about the career that was kind of taking over two very different conversations.

27:07but I guess the fear of leaving such a job is like the total void of payment like this idea of I could do this other thing but how will I get paid to do it and will I be good at it and I'm turning a thing that was a passion project and maybe a hobby and an interest thing into like a job that then becomes a totally different thing so were you just more thinking like I need a sabbatical let me take some time off or were you immediately like I can turn this into a job and this is how I'm going to do it. I look back now and I don't know how I had this mindset. None of those fears came to mind. I was in full, this is what I'm doing.

27:43It was like this light bulb of like, absolutely, this makes complete sense. And I'm an overthinker. I will question everything. It is so unlike me to have made that decision within a night and to have done it on that Monday. It just felt so right. And I can't really put that into words of like, this is the path you're going down and none of those fears came up none of the questions came up they obviously hit as I started but it was this real sense of bringing purpose to the pain bringing an outlet for what I had gone through not from a um not directly from a caring perspective but actually navigating that from the stress side of things what that had meant for my body what that meant for my work what it meant or how I was showing up for people and taking those learnings into something else but still staying connected because I will always sort of caveat I it might have I might have been absolutely drained by being in law but I always loved it so even though it wasn't necessarily the career that I was like from 10 years old I'm going to be a lawyer once I was in it like I really found my home like I loved being in that industry yes it is relentless but it was something that I did love it just came with long hours at the same time the sponsor of this season is Greek swim and resort wear brand Keone and I wanted to tell you what Keone is making right now their spring summer 2026 collection is called Earthworks inspired by nature's sculpted forms the hues of stone soil and sea it's a tribute to the natural world and it's made to honor it too so i'm honored to have kyone as the partner of this whole season and there is a very special discount exclusively for you just put the slowdown one word at checkout for 20 off your first order on kyone.com it would make the perfect summer gift for you a friend a family member or anyone you care about.

29:54I'm wearing it right now, both the swimsuit and the earrings, and I just couldn't recommend this brand more. You've spoken before about the mind-body connection, physical and mental, and you described that the bigger battle with your mother's diagnosis was a mental one at first. Could you explain what you experienced and how you find mental belief and symptoms, physical symptoms correlate and where else you've seen that show up outside of your experience with your mother? yeah so I I think I had probably read about it in the abstract but had never experienced it at all and actually it is again only when I look back and I see those connections because when the stress of her diagnosis yes it was starting to show up physically but I was ignoring every single one of those symptoms like there was no tomorrow like I was not listening to what my body was telling me at all and as the body does it will keep on screaming louder and louder and louder until you actually listen which meant I got to the stage of burning out um and that was coupled with another MS attack so it was no no you cannot function like you have to stop and so when I it's almost looking back that I then see that connection of okay all of these emotions no matter it should be showing up physically um and I think at the time looking back to okay thinking about where else it showed up for me my MS was the first start was the starting point of that um I was navigating grief at that time as well and then MS shows up and I think it's those almost having or allowing that armor to come down because the armor meant I was not making that connection between the mental and the physical and it's what I see because I'm talking about quite extreme and I don't know if extreme is the right word there but to talk about your mum being diagnosed with cancer not everyone can relate to that situation but we can all relate to an armour that we put up and we say that we're okay and I think it's having that side of actually what's underneath that that allows you to make that connection back between the mental and the physical but we have to break through that arm and we have to break through the statement of what does I'm okay mean for you before we can make that connection and I can catch myself still doing it now and that's with everything that I've learned and how I help other people but it's like we still get stuck in those cycles of like the arm has come back up and now I'm not making that connection between the two and when we disconnect from our bodies the that's when symptoms pain things actually go so much or go on for so much longer become so much more serious because we can just override and we've normalized a lot of what the little symptoms are so we then just get to a place where we're like now we have to take action because of that are there what part of your body now tells you that you're overworking and is like the first initial flag of you need to slow down um for me it's i just well i will feel exhausted but it's actually that I have no creativity I can't think clearly and if you then ask me to write a new post write a blog article write a LinkedIn post I would go completely blank and that's when I know that I've pushed too far because it's the sort of expansive positive side of your brain that has just completely switched off the creativity isn't there and that's I operated from that for years I never would have said that I was a creative person but that came under that I just was stressed all the time so there was no creativity there and that's a that's always yeah that is my first marker but it's coming with that exhaustion um I will also say it's the constant need for distraction so if I cannot just sit in silence and I love silence like I love going for a walk with no headphones nothing but I will catch myself so quickly now of when I'm like oh I need to have put what song was that again I want to listen to that podcast and when it's that constant stream of something I know that I've tipped back into okay you're you're pushing you're overworking what do we need to strip back a little bit that's like a small sign and what are your kind of like three top ways that you slow down in the in the micro in the kind of day-to-day or weekly um always getting outside as early as possible when I wake up not that I wake up very early but getting outside going on a walk that is a huge one for me that just my brothers will always say they know whether I've been on a walk yet or not because I'm just so much calmer after I've done that um church on a Sunday is also like a real anchor for me um and then but the micro it's it can be hearing the birds it can be sitting in between a call and just being like sure i'm not going to pick up my phone i just need to look outside the window and see what can i see outside the window what can i hear it's coming back to those tiny points in the day and anyone can do that wherever they are but those are what reset me because i think it's so easy to be like right what's next what's next what's next but bringing in the gaps between what you're doing is when i then notice actually how fast are my thoughts how fast am I thinking I always talk with clients about like let's take your emotional temperature do you feel like you're running on too hot do you feel like you're running on too cold and you then start to learn how fast everything is running or actually if you've gone quite apathetic and start learning those tiny signals so the body's not screaming as a health and nutrition coach now what do you like about the work that you do but more specifically how you do the work because I think as you said like you love the law you love the industry but it was you don't need to be staying up past midnight looking through all these contracts and I think what one of the benefits of working for yourself is that you do get to decide how you work how many projects you want to take on how many clients you want to take on what hours of the day that you want to work which kind of has a shadow side in the sense that like you know you kind of work for yourself but you also like no work happens unless you make it happen so so you do have to work a lot to make it go but I'm wondering if in starting your business you set some kind of ground rules for yourself around how many clients you would take on how many hours you would work in order to be the best coach I'm going to be fully transparent here and say I didn't So I was actually a mentor of mine who stopped me probably a year and a half into my business and was like, you're operating this as though you were back in law.

36:50Like, where are the boundaries? Where are, where is the difference? Because I, and I was a classic case of not taking my own advice because I was just, I was still at my laptop at midnight. I was still operating in the same way and so I had to go through that relearning of actually what does running a business look like and again what are the beliefs that I've taken on around that you join the founder space and it's like oh to have a successful business you're never going to sleep again and all the same rhetoric is there no matter what industry you're in so it was catching myself as well um with that I think the where it had become easier is yes I was in control of it so I was loving it enjoying it so I wasn't getting the same bio feedback so body feedback of like you're exhausted you're tired because I wasn't like I was really thriving off it and actually was able to support myself around that being able to go on a walk whenever I wanted to being able to bring in those resets so it wasn't a you're going to burn out from it but it was are you running the business in the way that you want to because do you want the business that you're still at your laptop at 12 p.m because actually you haven't bought in those boundaries so it was a learning curve I will say how did at what point in the business did you say actually I need to lay some of these ground rules and what were they and do you still implement them now or do you find yourself slipping back into I know I do I am a lot stricter with myself now like for example I've just gone through a move and probably two years ago I would have done that and also try to run the business at the same level and it was like I need to know scale back on some things because otherwise I will like burn myself into the ground trying to navigate both so it actually was more not so much on the structure of the business itself but actually on what my timetable looked like breaking away from the thought that work was me sitting at my laptop and actually realizing that for me being outside being in nature going on for a walk going for a walk is where my creativity will come so it's actually how then I can serve my business better because something that I could try set up my laptop and do for two hours could take me half an hour if I actually just all had it like had it all in my mind in there so it was changing my approach on a very personal level to how I work realizing the freedom that I do have um and being okay and actually getting really comfortable with that freedom because I think it's you almost get used to being institutionalized well you it's also that like if you have freedom in the sense of some free time there's a sense that we need to fill it yes always yeah yeah and I think the filling free time is something that actually is coming up so much at the moment particularly with when we've got bank holiday weekends I know this is such a niche example but a bank holiday weekend we're like extra day perfect but it's when everyone wants to do something so if you've had a crazy work season then you go into a really busy three-day weekend you go into that tuesday feeling worse than you did on the friday and so it's that feeling of we actually can just sit and do nothing and are we okay doing that not being able to do that is such a sign of where our nervous system is and i yeah had to learn that personally because it was really hard to do that because it's okay if i'm not coming back to that success equals working hard actually if it's if I had that free time I wanted to fill it with what's that next to do could I take that one off now have I sent enough emails have I done enough here there's always something else we can do and I think that's no matter again no matter what industry you're in there is always something else you can do there's always something another to do whether that's work related life admin related personal personally related there's always something else so we just have to be honest of like actually you can't do any of those things if you don't have that space because if you really ask yourself okay how am I really happy with how I've been with my partner am I really happy with how present I've been um with my friends when you stop and ask yourself that question be like no I think I was too tired I think I was too distracted I think I was actually really annoyed at life and that then changes what you then want to do I had my friend Katri on this podcast um a couple of episodes ago and she just has a wonderful kind of philosophy towards this which is she's like the to-do list never ends yeah it never ends and then you die so it's really up to you to be like I'm not yeah I'm just not doing like you have to call it and be like today I'm just not going to do the to-do list yeah or you have to really stick to what the to-do list for today is yeah and not bring in tomorrow's to-dos into today because it it never ends basically i actually get um and i do this myself and i get clients to do it of write a to-done list so we're so good at writing what i need to do but if you get to the end of your day and you write everything that you've done that day from i unloaded the dishwasher i washed my hair to what you did at work you will shock yourself with how much you've done because the problem with the to-do list is when there are things left over you end up berating yourself for what you didn't do so it's like oh i've now got so much to do tomorrow because I didn't get x y and z done even if it's a tiny thing you write it to done list and you see how much you did do it brings that sense of like I really fitted that all in when I'm about about to tell myself that I was a failure today that I didn't do enough and it just changes that visual of wow okay I fitted in so much and actually it makes sense why I'm so tired but it's having again that strictness of stopping what's your current working definition of success feeling at peace and that can be no matter what I am doing I could have the craziest day that is non-stop and you're like oh my goodness it's taking me to incredible places but I have to feel at peace underneath that and then it can be letting go of it all and doing nothing and not filling that space and still feeling at peace because actually we're quite good at feeling happy and calm and like things are great when we are doing but if I can feel at peace doing nothing that's when I know that I have reached that sort of level of success of feeling like okay we've we've got that because that peace underneath it all I you see how quickly that can be taken away and when you have it it completely changes just the way you see what you're doing the way you see yourself the way you'll celebrate yourself the way you'll be proud of yourself so yeah it's the piece what was your mom's name amanda let's honor amanda what were your three favorite things about her that you still remember and think like those are really important traits that i hope i emulate or okay i'm gonna start with one that is probably not something that should be out there but she loved if there was like something cute on a table or in a restaurant it would be in her handbag she loved we would have trinkets from little places i mean actually i say little it got to the level of cocktail glasses from hotels and she once came home because she had bought a log basket and she came home with a watermelon that had been on the bar in that basket so that was one trait that we still laugh at um do not copy or emulate but laugh at from the perspective of there'd always be something that we'd leave we'd have no idea she'd done it and she's taken something um her love for food she absolutely loved food and if there was a buffet she would try every single thing of it and she just had so much joy around that and with that was then hosting so our kitchen was everyone's kitchen and I think that was such a we have so many special memories of that and I think it's something that I hopefully have picked up as well of just bringing people together around food around the table I love that and you know I think what the reason one of the reasons why I really wanted to speak to you was carers isn't really something that is talked about it's not a glamorous subject it's not something that people get Instagram followers because of and it's one of those worlds cancer in general and and sickness as you say it's like you suddenly are launched into this thing where you become an expert on this topic that previously you didn't know existed and so for people that haven't had much exposure to the experience or world of carers what were some of the things that you learn either yourself or from carers that you were also working with I think one of the hardest things particularly if you are caring upwards so if you are the child and you're caring for your mother for example you really the roles are completely reversed you vary you go overnight from being the child to the adult and I think the biggest thing that I wish I'd noticed more and been more aware of is it is just as hard for you as it is for the other person my mum hated the fact that she was then having to be looked after by her children that is not the way around it's supposed to be and so I think there's sometimes that real conversation of like it's really hard for both parties and being open with that that actually because it's something that we didn't really speak about between my mum and I and it was just this sort of unspoken like we both hated it but we just sort of did it um the there is such a it's unglamorous it's tough you see um you see them at their lowest you see them at their most vulnerable but I will say that there is also a beauty in that like I said to you at the start like I knew from day dot I wanted to be there for as much as possible and I know my aunt said to me very early on just have no regrets and that was my sort of guiding thing and I think that caring role whilst it is so difficult and it as said it's not glamorous you do see them at their worst it is also extremely rewarding because you get to be that help you get to be there for someone And actually, the one thing I wish I had done was, this is going to sound strange, but enjoy it more and really take it in.

47:23I was too stressed and on empty to be able to do that. So I was snapping at everything. My mom and I would cry between us because I'd probably snap at her asking for something because I was just too tired. whereas what I love is that my brothers got the balance so right of like they were still they'd be laughing with my mom but then they'd physically be helping her do something so I think really know that you can enjoy it too it doesn't have to be it will feel heavy but as much as possible bring that lightness in whereas I I took it on like another job as a role of like I've got to ace this as opposed to just bumbling through it if that makes sense the family aspect of it is interesting because i think people there's sort of this like kind of idea of um martyrdom of you will sacrifice your life for your mother and you'll kind of wash her and it'll be this perfect experience but the reality is that because it's such a close family member your likelihood to like snap or be upset or be frustrated is actually much higher it's you I think with cancer generally you think the diagnosis is this like beautiful the family comes together and we're going to fight this what that misses are the days are really normal so in between treatment you just like a day is a day and it's what do we fill and do in that day and so normal life comes into that but it does feel you have this picture from the outside of yeah we're going to band together and it's going to be this like we're fighting this but actually 90 % of the time you're at home all together on the sofa watching tv or you're sitting having dinner and yeah we're on their phones and I'm arguing with my brothers they're arguing with me like it's normal life continues I am so grateful that I was able to go to therapy at the time to have an outlet because you need an outlet that is outside of the bubble um but it's yeah there's normality that you're navigating and actually yeah it's the everyday that gets just as annoying as the cancer yeah um i was actually just just finished a book where the kind of last page of the book he goes to see you know his partner who's dying and he he finds his mind after the kind of first 20 seconds where he's like you know I thought about our relationship and all these beautiful moments and what you think happens in the movies and then my mind wandered because it's real life yeah and I thought as my parking meter run out yeah you know do I need to use the bathroom like yeah you can't help but have real life kind of come in in these moments and I think as I'd said my mom didn't want to talk about the fact she was sick so there are times particularly um soon enough she died when I wish we'd had a conversation around that she'd given me some parting wisdom or something that was like this sort of word that I could hang on of like this is what mommy told me to do I didn't have that but actually as you said like that's also bringing the normality into it and it's not how my mom wanted to navigate it at all and really respecting that I've actually we just lived what was as close to normal as we could make it um my mom loved going shopping and that she she was 60 when she passed away so we had how we I still look back and I'm like I don't know how we did this but my mom and my brother's birthdays uh one day after the other so we had a joint so my brother was turning 21 my mom was turning 60 big party at the house that I look at the photos and I do not know I think there must have been 200 people that we did this for my mom is in a wheelchair didn't really know what was going on but she knew for all of previous parties whatever it was she would always go shopping and she would buy specifically an L.I.

51:32address so when we said we're going to have a party she was just like well we need to go get an alire and it was like i don't know how we're going to do that but we found a way we didn't manage to get a liar but we found a way to take her shopping to bring her into london to give her that experience so that she still felt good when she was at that party and it might have been so different to what she thought it was i hope there was a part of the tumor that almost blocked uh realizing how different it was um but we still managed to celebrate that birthday in a normal way that was as close to normal that we could get in those moments so I think you have these crazy times where you look back and you think how did we do that why did we do that but there was such a reason behind it at the time and actually it could have been difficult but you can now look back and be like that's we needed that we needed that joy um and I think it is finding caring for me I can just wake up and see that it's sunny outside put me anywhere in the world and put me with some green I'm happy straight away because those little moments become everything and so I think just it's why I'm so hot on daily anchors like what is your daily anchor the thing that just brings you back to yourself and I think that is what caring really taught me of the importance of those small moments you obviously kept working throughout that process but you know for people that or maybe even your brothers that took some time off or worked less like there's also this dichotomy of you're watching your peers your age climbing the ranks getting promoted doing these things while you've made a decision that is not going to allow you to do that for the period of time and in this case maybe three years how does that feel and how do you not kind of compare yourself to other people in in while you're going through that i will say it's one of the hardest things i so i was 24 when my mom was diagnosed 27 when she passed away and i so young those are like the crucial years of like career growth yeah hustling thinking only about yourself being selfish yeah relationships like right it's I I look like I'm like I didn't I didn't have my 20s I was so excited to turn 30 because I was like right 20s did not go to plan so 30s felt that like fresh start okay we've got this decade type thing but I when I exactly that feeling of like everyone's lives really continued and you I came out at 27 and it was okay what is normal life what do I do at 27 what do I want like all of these things because you've been so on pause for such a long time so it's really hard to do it in the moment but I think as much as possible almost surrendering that expectation on yourself of like progressing at all and sometimes accepting that that's the reality takes off the heaviness that comes with it so I think there is an acceptance side because and something things might change but actually when you don't put that pressure on yourself you're gonna make it a lot easier to go through it but then when you come out it's like see that it's like okay what is it that I do want the last question that I ask all of my guests is if I had to watch one film or read one book that would help me understand you better what would it be and why the way I don't know if you've seen it with martin sheen around so he his son passed away walking the um camino de santiago and for me it's really a film about walking with grief and in a few ways i a walking i love walking and it is truly what got me through as i said being a carer and if my brothers knew if i had not been out in the morning if i if someone hadn't come to look after my mom in time and i hadn't been out they knew it because I was not in a good mood so I walked my way through caring just for my sanity and it's still something that is so important to me but there's also that level in the movie of looking for that greater purpose and actually being thrown like unexpected situations and curveballs that you never thought would happen you'd never thought you would come into lives I was on such a path with my life of school uni law school being a lawyer and that curveball took me out of the bubble of life just happening and actually realizing that I could do something about the life that I was living and you sort of see that in the movie if the dad's changed because I think even at the start he's sort of his son's about to go off and he's tripping he's like why are you not just getting a job like why are you going to Spain to do this walk what's happening and he saw it as a failure whereas and I think I probably would have had that mindset whereas it's now seeing all the different curveballs is actually it opens up so much more when you do that and that grief aspect and just he takes the ashes with him so he does the walk with his son so his son might not have been able to finish the walk but he's still got to be with him throughout it and it's kind of how I see now what I'm doing is taking my mum with me a piece of her with me wherever I'm going whatever I'm doing she's the reason why I do what I do now she's the reason why I have the confidence that I do now because of just how much I've had to grow and learn and I just take her with me and do the things that she can't do but hopefully I can do some of those for her well thank you so much for being so open and honest in telling your story and um i'm gonna watch that film it's great thank you so much thank you for tuning in this episode was hosted and created by me tiana tambridge produced by lulu goad sound and video production and recorded at Brazen Studios, cover art designed by Natalia Ruhe.

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