My Journey
The story behind Creative Pause
“People rarely struggle because they lack strength. They struggle because no one reached them in time.”
Creative Pause did not begin with a business plan. It began with a pattern I kept seeing across thirty years of work with people under pressure: that the gap between struggling and getting support is almost always too wide, and that most people do not fall through it because they lack strength. They fall through it because no one reached them in time.
I grew up in a fostering household. Hundreds of children passed through our family home over the years, each with their own story. That environment shaped an early understanding of what genuine support looks like, and what happens when it is absent.
I spent my adult life working in adult and children's services, therapeutic foster care, care home management, and suicide prevention. I have sat with people navigating some of the most difficult moments of their lives. I have also navigated my own.
In 2019 I lost a close friend to suicide. He had reached out for help and been failed by a system that could not catch him. That loss became HIS — Help Information Support, a charity I founded to bridge the gap in mental health services for men.
It also sharpened a question I had been carrying for years. Pressure builds everywhere, not just in crisis. In boardrooms, in management teams, in people who appear to be coping until they are not. If the tools exist to help people recognise and manage that pressure earlier, why are they not reaching the people who need them most?
I am trained in life coaching, suicide prevention, breathwork, and meditation. I have supported veterans and their families, survivors of domestic abuse, and people emerging from the care system. I have also experienced my own periods of significant mental health difficulty. I do not speak about pressure and recovery from the outside. I speak from it.
Creative Pause exists because of everything that came before it. It is not a wellness brand. It is a body of experience, translated into practical tools that work in real environments under real pressure.
