The Next Chapter.
And Why I Am Done
Putting Myself Last.

There is a moment when you realise you have been running so hard, for so long, that you forgot to check whether you were actually going somewhere worth going.

Mine came at the end of last year. I had found a commercial kitchen. I had done the research. I had mapped out what a dessert catering business could look like, and on paper it made complete sense for someone with my background. I am a Le Cordon Bleu trained pastry chef. Rob and I ran a patisserie together in Chester for just over three years. The knowledge, the training, the experience were all there. And I stood in that kitchen and said no.

Not because the idea was wrong. Because I was exhausted in a way I had never quite allowed myself to admit before. Not sleepy. Not overworked in the ordinary sense. Exhausted at a deeper level. The kind that comes from years of pouring everything outward and very little back in.

It had been building for a long time without me seeing it. The last twelve months had been particularly hard, though I did not know the full picture until the blood tests came back. Severe Vitamin D deficiency. Low cortisol. A body signalling, through fatigue and weight gain and disrupted sleep, that something needed to change. I had been so focused on building, working, delivering, that I had completely neglected the one thing without which none of it is possible. Myself.

I had applied professional standards to everything I touched. Everything except my own health.

I know what good looks like. That has never been the problem. I know the difference between an ingredient grown with care and one produced to a margin. I know what is in the products people trust and what those labels do not tell you. Since Neve was six months old and I began reading more deeply about food quality and sourcing, Rob and I have not shopped like most people. We do not do a supermarket sweep and call it done. We think about where things come from, who grew them, what was used in the process. That knowledge runs deep.

And yet I was ignoring signals my body had been sending for months. I was glued to my desk, barely moving, not sleeping properly, and telling myself I would sort it out when things quietened down. They did not quieten down. They got louder.

When I finally stopped and looked honestly at the last several years, I understood what had happened. I had moved to Chester from London, a city where I had lived for twelve years. Rob and I had opened our patisserie, then closed it. I had become a mother for the first time, which rearranged everything I thought I understood about time and priorities. Rob and I had poured ourselves into building an online business, and through that process I learned more than I expected about websites, content, digital strategy, and what it actually takes to build something from scratch. None of that was wasted. All of it taught me something. But the cost of running on empty for that long showed up, and my body was done being ignored.

The moment I walked away from that kitchen was the moment this chapter began.

Not because I gave up. Because I decided, for perhaps the first time, to apply the same standards I have always held professionally to the way I actually live. The ingredient matters. The provenance matters. The process matters. That is as true of what I put in my body every day as it is of anything I have ever made in a professional kitchen. It is as true of the supplements I choose, the way I move, the quality of my sleep, and how I spend my time as it is of any business decision I have ever made.

Standards are not something I reserve for work. They are how I live. Or rather, they are how I am choosing to live now.

I am interested in longevity. Not as a trend. As a genuine personal priority. I want to be strong, healthy, and present for Neve and for Rob for as long as possible. I want to understand what my body actually needs, not what a label claims or what a ten-minute GP appointment has time to address, but what the evidence actually shows. I am learning about cortisol, gut health, strength training, and the role of food quality in long-term wellbeing. I am doing blood tests and following up on them. I am training. I am paying attention.

And I am sharing all of it here, because I am certain I am not the only one who needed to hear that it is allowed. That you can stop. That you can choose yourself without it meaning you have failed. That the experience and knowledge accumulated in the hard years is not wasted. It is the foundation. The next chapter, built on everything you have already lived through, is not a consolation prize. It is the point.

I have a lot to say. About food, where it comes from, and why so much of what we are told about it is incomplete at best. About the noise we are expected to navigate around health and wellbeing, and how to find what is actually evidenced and true. About what it looks like to build something with intention, on your own terms, after doing it the hard way first.

I am done putting myself last. This is where it starts.

I am going to be taking you with me. Into the fields, to meet the producers, into the kitchen and into the research. If you want to know what comes next, leave your email below.

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