The problem isn’t aiming too high and missing; it’s not aiming high enough.

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What stops you from pushing through moments of self-doubt?

There’s a fine line between taking on a lot and being motivated by it and taking on too much and being overwhelmed by it. I love what I do at work and I love being a mum, so I’m really passionate about both my work and family, which is my driving force. But of course I get overwhelmed and when I do I just compartmentalise it: I break it down and just take one day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time. No-one trains for a marathon by starting with 40 kilometres. I don’t run marathons (in fact, I don’t run — I’m hopeless at it). But if I did, I would run 1 kilometre and build up every day from there. It’s no different from anything else in your life. And every day is different — that’s what I love.

Self-doubt can make you feel vulnerable, and being vulnerable is hard. I’m an open person and I can easily share my mistakes and be vulnerable, especially with people who are on the same journey as me. (Humour always helps too.) But there’s a limit to who I’ll share my mistakes with: if I feel like I’m being judged, or if people are going to use it against me, I won’t open up. But I can also easily take the piss out of myself!

I will naturally stand up and tell people, ‘We shouldn’t have done this’. Being apologetic isn’t hard for me. In fact, I’ll say, ‘You know what? It was a deliberate decision. I made a mistake’. In life, in business, you fail — but you have to try, you have to innovate. And if you don’t, you kind of go backwards. So that’s the way I do it. Everyone makes mistakes — it’s how you learn from them that matters.

Astro Teller is an outstanding scientist and entrepreneur who works for Google directing its Google X laboratories. He heads a team of engineers and scientists. The hardest thing is getting them to let an idea go when it’s dead or not going anywhere. So, once a year, on the same day every year, they have a ritual where everybody gets together and lets their ideas die. They celebrate having had all of the ideas they’ve been working on that are just not going to go anywhere and they burn them. In other words, they celebrate their failures. Then they start the next day with a fresh page.

Getting over self-doubt

As women, we’re pretty good at admitting our mistakes. I’ve found what holds a lot of women back is that they worry about the mistakes they might make. Fear stops them from making bold moves. We’re less likely to take a risk than men in most cases.

What I think is harder to do — and I believe is a part of living a bold life — is talking about your wins. Talking about your successes. Talking about the things that you are good at. Like putting yourself out there as an expert at something or as someone who has achieved something. Is that something that you’ve naturally been good at or something that you’ve had to work really hard on? I think we are so ingrained as women to not have a big ego or self-promote that it’s easier to let things go unnoticed and just fit in and be part of the crowd. It’s the same as reaching out and asking a question. It’s amazing the times I have done that. Even writing this book and asking women to contribute and be interviewed for it — I was blown away how easy it was and how everyone just said ‘yes’!

Finding your voice and expressing your ideas, especially at a boardroom table, can be hard if you let yourself slip back into that role of the little girl who is meant to sit there, facilitate the conversation, and make sure everyone is okay, no-one feels hurt and everyone is heard instead of stepping forward and putting your opinion on the table.

I’m really conscious of it, and still today, after years of experience, I find myself getting sucked back into that role. Changing your old habits and patterns is really hard to do. If there are areas where I get stuck — mainly self-promotion, and pushing myself out there, which I like to do in a natural way so that it feels good — then I’ll try to collaborate with other people to overcome this. I love the collaborative process. It’s more fun working something out with someone else; you get to talk through ideas and moments of doubt. No-one ever has all the answers.

If I am really passionate about something I will speak my mind and fight for it. Fighting for something is a good thing as it gives you more ‘fire in the belly’ when people say no. I have always been a fighter when I believed in something. My mum used to say to my husband, Michael, ‘You will never win against Pippa; she will keep going and going until she is blue in the face’. When I was a baby I used to hold my breath if I didn’t get my own way, so my mum took me to the doctor and asked for his advice. He said, ‘It’s not your daughter’s problem, it’s actually yours!’ Turns out being determined is in my blood — sorry Mum!

It’s one thing to be bold when you’ve got all the energy in the world, you’ve had the sleep you need and you’re feeling 100 per cent. It’s another thing to conquer self-doubt or make bold moves when you haven’t. There’s always something going on: you’re sick, someone else is sick, you have young children … Some days the energy just isn’t there. We’re only human. We can’t live our best, boldest game-face self every day. On the days when I have no choice but to step out and do things boldly, I do what I need to do and no more. Sometimes that means limiting myself to an hour of being on, with two coffees down.

Following your dreams

It was 2009, and I had just stepped into the role of CEO at Ella Baché when I met Jessica Watson for the first time. She was looking for sponsors to support her in her vision of sailing solo around the world. It struck me that Jess was no ordinary 16-year-old girl. She was gutsy, pioneering, focused and extraordinary. She had done her homework and pulled the right team of experts around her, so we decided she deserved to be backed in pursuing her dream. The number of phone calls I took from the media around the decision to support Jess was hard core. On more than one occasion I quietly questioned the decision and then quickly shrugged off my doubts because intuitively I knew she was amazing and about to do great things. I really had no choice: she is what we’re about as a family, a brand and a nation. Jess was a great fit and I had no problem defending her.

Jess left Sydney Harbour in October 2009. I was there with a handful of people, including her parents, to wave Jess good-bye — and off she went in her boat Ella’s Pink Lady. It was the size of a toenail but had become a safe and reliable friend to Jess. For the next seven months, Jess would call intermittently to check in and update us on how she was going. She was unassuming, respectful and brave, and I had enormous respect for her, even at that age.

The next time I saw Jess was when she sailed back into Sydney Harbour. I still get goosebumps thinking about that day. It was May 2010; we were on a boat in Sydney Harbour waiting anxiously for Jess to appear on Ella’s Pink Lady. The swell was big, and just sitting out there waiting for her to sail through the heads was enough for me — how she did it for seven months I have no idea. The whole nation stopped to welcome Jess back in — you couldn’t move in the harbour with all the boats, sirens, television crews and cameras. Where was everyone before she left? Why had everyone forgotten about the firestorm of controversy? Why did everyone support her now and not a year ago? There had been much criticism, especially from the politicians and media. How would Jess be feeling? An introvert who had spent the past seven months on her own, only 16 years old, now stepping off the boat to face all these people, including Kevin Rudd, the then prime minister of Australia? Sailing into a storm of publicity and sponsorship deals, Jess took it all in her stride — respectful, intelligent, older and wise beyond her years — and from that day, she became a hero. For my part, I was proud to have backed her as she rightly deserved. It was extraordinary. In business and in life you need to be brave, take risks and follow your heart; otherwise you’ll never get anywhere. It takes a certain passion and desire to do something that’s great enough that it becomes all-consuming. You need to follow your dreams and not your fears. How big are your dreams? Are they as big as they can be? I had an opportunity to talk to Jess and discover what the real driving force behind her amazing feat was. You’ll find her story on page 95.

Embracing change

So many women around me suffer from that all-too-familiar feeling of self-doubt and lack of confidence and I find myself questioning how more women could own their power, their potential. It’s certainly normal — I would even say common — to feel self-doubt. I liken it to self-sabotage: in love, health and when going for opportunities and dreams. Self-doubt can haunt you for years until you get to the ‘enough’ stage — until that day when you wake up and you’ve had enough of feeling that way. Reaching the ‘enough’ stage becomes a crucial part in your development. It forces change, and it forces you to change. One of my all-time heroes, Sir Richard Branson, once said, ‘We can all create our own luck by taking the necessary risks to open the door to change’. As I said earlier, I’ve found the best way to overcome a lack of confidence is to collaborate on a project with someone else.

It really is about the journey. I didn’t always perceive myself as the world did. I felt like I didn’t own the title of CEO (titles don’t mean much to me). I was Ella’s niece and a third-generation CEO in the family business. I had to prove myself not only in everyone else’s mind but especially in my own. I didn’t have a job description and I certainly didn’t have a rule book. I remember sitting at my desk in the first few weeks of becoming CEO and thinking, ‘What now? What am I supposed to be doing? What does success look like? And how do I get there?’ The thing about being a CEO is that you’re supposed to know everything, right? I decided to just work hard. I learned every aspect of the business. I learned it at 30 000 feet and at 3 feet. I believe that set me up to succeed today. I got in the detail, I got my hands dirty and I would never ask someone to do something that I wasn’t willing to do myself. Today, I don’t need to be in the office all the time. Technology allows you to work from anywhere at any time, which is fantastic for mums. I work at all hours from all places around the kids. As long as the outcomes are achieved, I’m not attached to how people, including myself, achieve them.

I remember, in my early days of being a CEO, being invited to charity events in Sydney. I was surrounded by CEOs from many well-known Australian companies. The difference between me and them was that I was, on average, 20 years younger than everyone else, and that I was female. I viewed it as a social experiment after a while and had fun with it. I saw the humour in it. I certainly became okay with being the odd one out. But I rocked up time and time again, and like everything, once you’re comfortable with who you are, others become comfortable with you too. You have to fake it until you make it. You don’t earn the right to do something until you’ve done it — and it takes confidence to do it.

Having kids changed my view on work and business. It didn’t dampen my desire or motivation, it just changed things. I had arranged a company event on the same day as my older son’s first birthday. Without even thinking about the date I locked it in six months prior to the event. A month out it dawned on me: how could I double book my own son’s first birthday? What sort of mother does that! I couldn’t change it as it would have meant changing the plans of more than 100 people, as well as guest speakers, venues and so on. I felt so torn — like the worst mum in the world — for not being there for Lachie’s birthday. Then one of my best friends said to me, ‘Don’t worry — just celebrate it the next day. At that age kids don’t know what date it is, so just pretend it’s the next day. He will never know’. She was right! We had a great first birthday for him, and celebrated the following day without having to move the company conference! Luckily kids give you about three years’ grace before they are old enough to realise your slippages and hold you to account. Your definition of success changes when you become a mum. Life gets much better and much broader. But there are also trade-offs and sacrifices. Working only four days in the office has allowed me the flexibility to spend quality time with the kids, and be part of their kindy and schooling. But I’m certainly not the mum who volunteers for everything. I try and do my part and it’s wonderful to learn what I’m meant to be doing as a kindy or school mum and to play a role in their ever-changing life.

I try to be and am supportive of and sensitive to other mums. It’s the hardest job in the world and they need support, not criticism. I remember when I first had Lachie, my dad said to me, ‘If you find mums are telling you that their baby is easy and doing everything right, they are lying!’ It was such good advice, especially on those days when I felt I was walking around in circles and hadn’t achieved anything, or everything I tried to do didn’t work!

Getting digital

Over the past few years, we have had to redesign the business, leverage new opportunities and let go of some of the old ways of doing things. This is because our customers have changed: the way they communicate, the way they buy, the way they want to interact with us and what influences them has all changed. It’s not easy when you believe in something and everyone tells you it can’t be done — but you have to hold strong and back yourself. I try and look past the ‘noise’ for real signals and trends. That’s why data is invaluable — it takes the emotion out of the situation.

In 2017 we completely changed the way we operated our business. I strongly believed we had to. Our customers had changed and our competition had changed so we too needed to change. I could see this as a consumer myself — what I wanted and what I didn’t want any more — when doing business with different companies and brands. So we went to the drawing board and re-designed the way we communicated, and how we treated the skin and other parts of the business. It created a lot of fear, a lot of change, but I had to hold strong as I could see the bigger picture and where things were going. I become obsessive about finding better ways of doing things. I was focused and motivated because I wanted to prove that it could be done, despite some opposition to the ideas. Sometimes I sit on the couch at night for hours and look at the different ways people book services online in our industry and others. I need to understand the detail to then build and re-design the bigger picture around putting myself in our customers’ shoes.

This is not only the case in the beauty industry. When was the last time you did your banking at a bank or booked a flight in a travel agent’s office? Technology has changed the way we do things and it’s a great reminder that nothing stays the same in life or in business. And really, why would you want it to? So we explore, trial new things — sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t — and we keep moving forward. Could there be a better way, a smarter way? Sometimes breaking old ways of doing things is the only way to invent, reinvent and change the way we do things. Business has changed and people in business need to change too. In the United States they call this ‘pivoting’. It’s an exciting time for the brand and customers. Technology has not only enabled us to communicate and spread knowledge about the skin more easily — both to customers and to the students who learn with us, predominantly online — it has also enabled us to get more targeted and personalise what we give each customer, hopefully enriching their experience with the brand. We are able to treat the skin with different active ingredients, machinery and techniques that might have existed 10 years ago, but have become a lot more refined, results-driven and good for the skin since then. The opportunities are endless, but equally important is the human touch we bring to our clients. This will never be replaced by technology, DIY YouTube clips or Instagram. Making the skin feel good is about high tech and the digital world, but it is equally about high touch. There are so many people burning for a greater sense of community, deeper relationships, more specialised expertise and quality ingredients. Quality, value and the experience we create speak for themselves but we live in a world of extremes and we are well placed to offer these to people, whether it’s instore or online. It’s up to personal choice.

Today, with globalisation, running a business means competing in a global marketplace. Once upon a time what was happening in the UK didn’t matter when you were running an Australian business. Today it does. For businesses to be successful today, they need good data, speed and the ability to build new ways of doing things. Sometimes you need to break things to rebuild them. It requires a lot of letting go, being able to back yourself and steering the change, especially when it’s what everyone has known for decades. You need to follow your intuition, and with the support of data — it won’t fail you. The biggest mistakes I have made are when I haven’t followed my intuition or taken too long to act on something. It just festers and the issue gets bigger.

There’s a theory that you are the sum total of the five people you spend the most time with. So if you change the people you spend time with, you can hugely influence your thinking. I had the opportunity to go and do an executive course at one of the best universities in the United States, and, being surrounded by leaders who run global businesses, even after a week my mindset shifted completely from Australia to the globe — my whole mindset expanded to much bigger horizons and it enabled me to see bigger opportunities. So if you want to play at a higher level in your personal or professional life choose people to spend time with who will change your perspective.

Building resilience

How do you get yourself back up off the floor when you’re down? No-one has a perfect career, or a perfect life. Building resilience, I believe, is one of the most important qualities and capacities to have in this world if you want to survive. It’s about toughness and the ability to keep going. I have had to build resilience, but I never set out to do it. I hated many of the experiences that taught me to be resilient, but in hindsight they were the best gifts. I have had to be tough, otherwise I would have fallen over a long time ago. I believe it’s the best thing you can teach your children and I know there is a lot of focus on resilience today.

We are all going to experience hard times and getting back up is the most important thing to do. I am fortunate that I have always had a good mindset though I certainly don’t always wake up in the morning thinking ‘I’ve got this; I’m going to nail this’. There are so many times when I have thought ‘okay, I am actually in over my head and don’t know how to get through this’. But I also have the belief that I will get through it eventually. My glass is always half full and I believe that there are plenty of opportunities around the corner while reminding myself that the painful, dark and hard moments do pass.

You just have to hang in there as energy and life do shift for the better. It’s not always easy to prevent stressful or challenging situations but life does strengthen your ability to cope and deal with the challenges along the way. It’s one of the key capabilities that I want my children to have — in fact, they have no choice! I am not an advocate for kids being wrapped up in cotton wool and protected from losing or from knowing about the tough things that can happen. This used to be called ‘helicopter parenting’ — now it’s called ‘drone parenting’. They need to be exposed (to a point) to things and experiences that will help them build a capacity to deal with the big challenges when they do come in life, while simultaneously creating a safe environment where they feel unconditional love.

While I am certainly no expert, and my kids teach me new things every day, I do believe they need the space and ability to push boundaries and take risks, with nature being the best environment to do this in; otherwise they will take risks in much more harmful places than nature. I watch my three-year-old, Darcy, jump off rocks, stand at the surf’s edge, climb trees and fall over time and time again. I hope taking risks in nature will mean he doesn’t need to take as many risks in the car when he learns to drive or in other destructive ways when he is older. I also try to have a sense of humour with things that happen in their life. My kids are so different. One is like a lamb: sensitive, creative, intuitive and a deep thinker. The other is more of a lion: blind courage, a risk taker, confident. They need different things and one isn’t better than the other. Just different.

Being a CEO you become the one who hoses down the stressful situations and pulls people together, out of a disaster frame of mind and into a positive, action-focused mindset (such as when the GFC hit on the day I became CEO). As my dad says, ‘when the going gets tough, the tough get going’ (or maybe that’s a song, but it’s a good one). You need to believe you have the ability to get through things and a positive attitude that things will be okay, even during those unexpected crises that you just don’t see coming. I make mistakes all the time. I need to recover quickly. I don’t have the time to sit around and worry about what’s failed — what hasn’t worked. To recover, sometimes I just need to put one foot in front of the other and keep going! I can always find an opportunity in every situation. I am conscious that I am very fortunate I was born a positive person. My friends remind me that this is not the case for many people: there are so many people suffering from anxiety and depression. I realise it’s not always easier said than done, so I can only speak for myself. I always try and look for opportunities and to be on the bright side. During the tough times, I think about what Ella and my grandparents went through and how much resilience was required to leave their families and move to a new country with nothing and no-one.

I believe there are two emotions: fear and love. It’s fear that wakes you up at 3 am. What is the phone call you are most worried about receiving? Sometimes it’s the things you worry most about that turn out fine and it’s the things that were totally unexpected and you haven’t spent an effort fearing that really blindside you.

Do you face it, sit in it, shine a light on it and move through it? I have learned that you need to sit in and do the things that you don’t want to do first. Otherwise you get stuck in the energy of it, and you simply can’t move forward. Some things can be solved in a conversation; some things take years to work through. When you face the dark stuff, the tough stuff, you come out the other side, but if you resist, what you resist persists. We all know someone who has become stuck and not able to work through a situation or a tough time in their life and they are left being defined by it. I find it helps to talk to someone about situations — usually you’ll feel worse afterwards if you hold it inside than if you talk it out.

Nurturing your senses

Despite so many amazing advancements in technology and the speed at which we live our lives today, the human touch versus high tech, rituals, ceremonies and community are as important in today’s world as they ever have been.

The Japanese are so great at thinking through the five senses of touch, smell, sound, taste and sight. The experience we offer a customer when they visit an Ella Baché salon has to be filled with ritual and ceremony. It goes without saying that their skin will be much healthier afterwards, they will learn something about their skin that they didn’t know before, and they will also experience a beautiful hour of ritual as it’s also about the connection between the therapist and the client and the experience they have. The beautiful trait that most skin therapists have in common is that they want to help people.

Layne Beachley shared a powerful story about her weekly ritual of visiting her beauty therapist when she was going through one of the darkest moments in her life. Layne’s therapist was one of the only two people in her life at the time she confided in and spoke to on a deeply personal level and in some ways this saved her at that point in her life. (Her story is after chapter 2, if you haven’t already read it.)

I remember receiving a letter from a lovely older lady who had been given a gift voucher from a friend for Christmas. This lady had grown up on a farm and had never had a facial before. She wrote to me sharing her happiness and the impact this experience had on her. She had not been touched or hugged for decades because she had lived on her own for so long. Having young children I sometimes crave for some personal space, but this story touched me and I always remind our therapists to never underestimate the positive impact they have on people’s lives, the connection and rituals they provide and the power they have to make someone’s day, above and beyond great skin.

Grounding yourself

When everything around you falls apart, you need to have a place where you can go and reboot. I have always needed the ocean to recharge myself. The moment I see it when driving home from the office is the moment I switch off. That feeling of jumping into the ocean, when everything washes off you, centres me again. I am fortunate enough that I can walk to the beach, so on warmer nights I spend an hour down there, re-centring myself, kids in tow, no phones and completely disconnected. Yoga works to re-anchor the body too and it’s something I have practised since I was a teenager. I love the gentleness and flow it gives you, both mentally and physically. If I have had a tough day, I will go to a class on my way home and I’m almost guaranteed to walk out a new person!

Kids have taught me the importance of rituals and routine. They need them to feel safe and also to be able to go out and explore and take on the world. Although I work, I try hard to have a routine with them: to get home at a certain time, read them a book and do the same things every night when I can. They need certainty and predictability. The first thing Lachie asks me every morning is ‘What are you doing today?’ He needs to know, to predict and to feel safe.

Having kids has challenged one of my biggest anchors and that’s my sleep. Busy days have always meant that I use up a lot of energy, but I got by because I was always a great sleeper. I can sleep anywhere. When I first met my now husband and we had been going out a lot, I feel asleep in the shower standing up! Lachie was a shocking sleeper; he didn’t sleep through the night until he was about two years old. It totally turned me upside down because all of a sudden I had lost the ability to recharge and go again. I had never dealt with sleep deprivation before so I had been able to take on anything because I was focused, positive and had clarity. Becoming a mum quickly changed that! My first few years as a mum were the hardest. I felt like I was permanently jet lagged. With this came numerous cups of coffee each day even before 8 am — exercise dropped and carbs increased. Looking back I don’t know how I survived some days at work. I learned to write a lot more down, even before having conversations, so I could structure my thoughts and retain things; otherwise I would have lost a few years of my life to sleep deprivation.

When my second son came along, everyone told us, ‘don’t worry you won’t have another bad sleeper. You will be fine this time’. That wasn’t the case. Darcy was just as bad. Our nights were spent up and down every few hours and our days started at 4 am. We even had a sleep consultant who spent three nights at our house and couldn’t get Darcy to sleep through the night. Thankfully at three years old Darcy had his tonsils out and our sleep patterns changed overnight! But I approached sleep deprivation differently with Darcy. Every time I was so exhausted I could hardly walk I would jump on the treadmill at the local gym for 20 minutes and it would energise me. I kept up my yoga and didn’t make myself feel guilty for taking time away from work or the kids to recharge myself — you live and you learn, right? I made sure I didn’t reach for the carbs and sugar and filled myself with the good, natural, raw food that I would normally eat. Living with sleep deprivation wasn’t any easier, but I learned to manage everything around it a little better. I think I would have gone on to have more kids if they had been better sleepers, but five years of sleep deprivation was enough for me and certainly for my husband.

Getting out on the trampoline or playing a game of soccer with my kids in the back yard brings me back down to earth and anchors me; there is nothing like being beaten at soccer by your five-year-old to anchor your thoughts and get back to the moment.

Rituals, routines and anchors

Rituals, routine and anchors enrich our lives. They make for a better day, a better week. I try to start my week on a Sunday night with a yoga class; it helps me re-set mentally and physically for the week ahead. If I don’t have time to do this, it really affects how I feel on Monday morning. When life gets overwhelming I compartmentalise my thoughts and only focus on what I can control and what I need to deal with in that moment. There are times when you absolutely have to put your game face on and delay the thoughts that you really should be dealing with. Writing also helps me a lot. When things get overwhelming, I find getting my thoughts down on paper and expressing how I feel enables me to clear my mind and put things into perspective. I’m also a list maker. I don’t always look back at my lists, but once I have a list on paper, it structures and compartmentalises my thinking. When life’s busy and there is a lot going on, those lists can be broken down hourly to get moving and get stuff done. I have learned that if something needs to be dealt with or there is a problem to solve, you should deal with it as quickly as possible because it never goes away by itself.

I also try to eat healthy food and live by the 80/20 rule. If I tried 100 per cent of the time, I would set myself up to fail! I haven’t eaten meat since I was 16 years old. It’s a personal thing and I don’t mind others eating it — I cook it for my sons and husband. But I grew up surrounded by animals: we always had dogs, I rode a horse from an early age and I fell in love with animals. I was in the Girl Guides for a year, and one of the excursions was to an abattoir — that was the end of eating meat for me. But whether you eat meat or not, healthy eating 80 per cent of the time really helps to give you the energy to live a bold and big life. Being hydrated is also important — it has a big impact on your skin. The skin, being your largest organ, is made up of mostly water, like our bodies, so we should try to drink as much water as possible. At Ella Baché we try to educate people to take care of themselves inside and out.

Some people may find routines are too repetitive, but I consider them simple daily acts that create positive habits. They are easy to put into practice and remain one thing that I can control within my day. Creating routines and anchors in your life compels you to get started, whether that’s getting up and making a coffee at the same time each morning, a workout or a simple two minutes of meditation. This is the time you are able to free your mind and let it be in the present moment.

I was raised in a family where a skincare routine was drummed into me from a young age; it’s now something I live and breathe and will hopefully pass on to my children. I like to think of it as a ‘skin health’ ritual. No matter what happens in my day, I will not miss my skin routine. I hear people say it’s time consuming but my response is simple: ‘your skin is your largest organ and your protective barrier — you need to look after it properly’. Especially as mums we often put ourselves last. I remember going on a trip to Japan with a girlfriend several years ago around the time they just introduced the millilitre restriction for liquids on planes. I was made to empty my hand luggage at customs and hand over my professional-sized cleanser, moisturiser and eye creams. I don’t think they had ever seen anything like it!

Something as simple as creating a skin health routine or having your morning coffee at the same time each day will anchor you. What are your daily anchors? Do they bring you back to the moment?

Last year, I lost my biggest life anchor, my mum. Sadly, she became sick nine months before she passed away. I still find it very hard to write about it now — I think it takes a long time to process grief. I still remember getting the call from my brother that Mum had been taken to hospital and the specialist wanted to see us right away. I knew it wasn’t good, and driving to the hospital I knew our life was about to change forever. There are no rules for when this happens and nothing can prepare you for it. But I knew Mum would be scared and I had to stay positive, calm and full of hope. The doctors wasted no time and Mum started treatment right away. I knew that Mum was very sick and had no choice but to follow the doctor’s treatment plans, but I also knew enough about nutrition and alternative therapies to know you need to put as much goodness into you as well when your body is being pumped with so many intense drugs. Mum really pushed back on this, and as hard as it was I had to learn that my role now was to support her decisions and not fight against them for the first time in my life. Mum went through six months of intensive treatment and it was so painful to sit back and not be able to solve the problem. My nature is to move forward, solve problems. I am a doer. I take action, but in this situation I couldn’t. Of course I could run around the edges of it, pick things up and clean things, but I wasn’t going to solve this, so I had to leave it to others. I realise looking back I survived on adrenalin, often waking up and realising that it wasn’t a bad dream we were in; it was my new reality and there was no escaping it. My brother and I were with Mum every day for eight months and we were there when she passed away late last year.

My biggest anchor was no longer there and it turned my life upside down. Now I belong to a new ‘club’ of women and men who have lost their mums. A club that I wasn’t ready for, a club that is not a voluntary one. I have connected with so many amazing people during this time and sharing our stories and being open has made the journey easier. My mum was a rock and an anchor in our lives. I believe I have lived an adventurous life: not sweating the small things; not worrying too much because she did all the worrying for us and was always there, always predictable, always reliable and always thinking about her family, so it allowed me to be brave and live outside my comfort zone because she created such as safe and reliable comfort zone. Mum would call each night at 7 pm on the dot, even if I had seen her an hour before. The phone doesn’t ring at 7 pm any more and I have had to learn to process the grief. I have had to learn about this new emotion that hits you out of nowhere. I have had to learn to lean on new anchors, to step out into nature when my feet need to be on the ground. Kids certainly give you the anchors you need and especially when you have to reinvent your anchors at one of the hardest times in life, but it did teach me how much you can get through. It taught me how precious life is and that you have to live life every day because you really don’t know how long you have on this planet.

Life can throw you curve balls and it can also throw you amazing opportunities. Once you determine what you want to achieve, you need to surround yourself with like-minded people who have your back and are up for the ride, which I talk about in the next chapter. There will be times for celebration, there will be times when you need to dig deep and discover the resilience you never knew you had. But at the end of the day they are all experiences that teach you so much. Don’t forget to challenge yourself along the way, take the time to reflect and make sure you are playing at the highest possible level.