The moment it made sense

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I’m a mum of two girls. An Essex girl, born and bred.

I spent a good chunk of my adult life living and working in London. My husband and I met there, around Dalston Junction. At the time, I was living alone in a one-bed flat and feeling pretty lost, if I’m honest. We were neighbours (another story for another time).

Jay was fun and easy to be with. No games. No guessing. No need to perform. I felt seen and safe enough to just be myself, which, looking back, was everything, and something I’d never really had before.

After we were married, and when I was pregnant with my first daughter, we moved back to Saffron Walden. Close to family, familiar streets, a slower pace for early motherhood. I still commuted to London for a while, trying to hold onto the life we’d built and the one that was beginning.

Like most people, my life has moved in seasons. Career. Children. Home. Identity. Sometimes all shifting at once, sometimes ticking away in the background. From the outside, things have often looked fairly steady. Inside, I’ve always felt things deeply, thought a lot, and carried more than most people realised.

This space is where I’m starting to write honestly about that.

Diagnosis. Relationships, Life in general. Motherhood. Work. Identity. Change and what it’s taken to get me to where I am today, starting Leopard Within.

It won’t be polished. It definitely won’t be perfect. But it will be real. I owe that to myself.

I’ve worked as an Executive Assistant for over twenty years. On paper, my life looked capable and functional. Inside, it often felt much harder than it should have been.

When I was diagnosed with ADHD in May 2024, it didn’t arrive with fireworks. It arrived with relief. With understanding. With a kind of quiet validation I didn’t realise I’d been missing. ADHD hadn’t even been on my radar.

At the start of 2024, I started having ACT (a type of therapy) with one simple goal: to feel more grounded. More present. Life had unravelled at the end of 2023 in ways that left me exhausted, hurt, and pretty floored.

There was only one option really: get back up. However, this time, stronger. Things had to change.

During therapy, my psychologist gently mentioned highly sensitive person theories and we then discussed ADHD. I genuinely thought it was most likely in my head. I started reading, especially about how ADHD shows up in women, something clicked. It was like someone had been following me around for years taking notes. I wouldn’t have been able to describe it myself, but there it was!

Audiobooks became my thing. I started with A Radical Guide for Women with ADHD and then… many, many more. Every chapter brought recognition. Words for things I’d felt my whole life but never had language for.

I went on to get a private diagnosis: combined-type ADHD, dyscalculia, and autistic traits. The day I got the diagnosis was the start of a camping weekend with friends and family.

From the outside, nothing changed. Inside, everything did. It wasn’t about labels. It was about understanding myself and forgiving myself.

A reason to stop blaming. A reason to soften. A reason to build a life that works with my brain, not against it.

Looking back, life hadn’t been awful but it had often been intense. I always felt a bit different, a bit self-aware. Rejection hit hard, even when I knew something needed to end. Emotions landed in my body with real force. I now know this as rejection sensitivity, but back then it just felt like something was wrong with me. Like my life was over.

School was… fine. But I struggled to retain information, failed exams, and lived in last-minute panic. University was the same story, all-night essays, missing the point, looking around thinking how have they finished already and I’m only just starting? I didn’t know how to do things in stages. I could only start when it became urgent.

Emotionally, hormonally, physically, I lived at the extremes. Days where I was on fire, followed by days where I could barely function. Shopping became a coping mechanism. A dopamine hit. Temporary relief, followed by shame. I didn’t have words for it, just a pull towards something that made me feel better.... for a bit.

I was always trying to feel settled. Always busy. Always planning the next thing. Weight control became another way to feel in charge, not about looks, more about control when everything else felt wobbly.

From the outside, I probably looked high-functioning (to many). Capable. Inside, I was constantly managing an internal storm and edging closer to burnout.

What I understand now is that I was “masking”. Holding it together all day. Absorbing sensory overload. Pushing through. Then crashing at home. Snapping at the people I loved most. Feeling like a rubbish mum, a rubbish wife. Exhausted, but unable to stop.

What I didn’t realise at the time was that I wasn’t just overwhelmed, I was dysregulated, living almost entirely in my head.

Hormones piled it on too. In 2022 and 2023, perimenopause hit hard. Combined with undiagnosed ADHD, it was chaos. Anger. Dysregulation. Exhaustion. I barely recognised myself.

Diagnosis didn’t fix everything.

But it changed everything.

It gave me context. Compassion. A place to start. A new beginning.

Yoga was one of the first things that helped me come back into my body. I’m not a yogi who can do amazing postures, far from it, but the connection between mind and body has been everything for me. Learning how to slow down, tune in, and actually listen has changed the way I live. 

It’s also why yoga and my coaching feel so closely linked. Both are about awareness and regulation. About learning to work with yourself instead of constantly pushing against who you are.

This blog exists because of that shift. It’s a place to write about ADHD, motherhood, work, identity, regulation and trying to live in a way that actually fits who I am. I’m still figuring it all out myself.

And right now, that’s asking me to do something brave.

This weekend, I’m travelling alone to Devon to start my 200-hour yoga teacher training, the next step in a story that’s finally starting to make sense, even if it feels pretty scary.

Before I finish this first post, I want to say a quiet thank you to my current clients. Thank you for trusting me and letting me walk alongside you in your own journeys.

This work and this space is shaped by everything I’m still learning, personally and professionally. I hope to work with many more of you as this next chapter unfolds.

If you’d like to know more about what I do, you can find it over on my website.