Lived and Living Experience

Alongside my professional work, I've written openly about our family's own experience of a system not working the way it should (#MedicateTheMother). It's that experience, watching a system built around targets and process, fail to acknowledge, validate and bend for what our son actually needed, that also helped shape the Systems Picture Framework. Here's a little of that story.

1 February 2025

As a new year began, I wanted to feel hope. What I felt instead was numb, kept going by medication that treats the mother, not the cause.

In these posts I want to share some of what we've lived through, being thrown into emotionally based school avoidance, and some of what's helped us cope.

My career is about preventing harm. I don't believe medicating the mother is the right answer for any family.

19 February 2025

When you're at rock bottom, it's hard to see a way out. I've learned to take the small wins and accept that the road ahead is long.

Today, our son went on a boat trip with the local youth service, knowing only one youth worker. For a child who needs trusted relationships before he can leave our side, that's huge.

He came home talking about dancing on the boat, spotting a seal, getting soaked by the waves. He was laughing, properly laughing. I couldn't stop grinning.

I'll take the win. We've always known what he needs. It's the system around him that's taken this long to catch up.

18 September 2025

This blog has always been about sharing our story, and about learning through reflection.

The news: ten school days in, our son stayed in his classroom for 55 minutes today. Twenty-five of those minutes were without me, just him, his class and his teacher. He says he'll try again tomorrow.

We are so proud of his determination. We have a way to go, but for tonight, we smile.

29 January 2026

Moving to a specialist school means we're still riding the rollercoaster. Steps forward, steps back, but steady. We've built relationships with staff, got comfortable with the classroom, and slowly started meeting the other children.

We're told significant progress has to be made by Easter, or we'll likely be moved on again. So I keep asking: what does success need to look like to be acceptable?

Our son is building up at his own safe pace. He's encouraged, not forced. For us, these small wins are huge successes.

Success is whatever it needs to be for the child. It's organic, and it's iterative. A hard deadline, set against progress that's real but small, only adds to the pressure families like ours are already carrying.

29 April 2026

Sometimes I wonder if I'm oversharing, if I should stick to the "professional" version of myself that LinkedIn seems built for.

But I believe in showing up as my authentic self, in work and in life. I think that authenticity builds real connection, especially when we're talking about hard things.

I'm an advocate for the voices of lived and living experience informing development, delivery and decision making. That doesn't stop being true just because my own lived experience and my professional work sit in different parts of my life.

So I've talked myself into continuing.

My daughter - his sister

It hasn't just been about him. His sister has felt the impact too, of a family that couldn't function the way it used to, of attention pulled somewhere else for a long time. That's part of this story as much as anything else.