I knew what it was all about when I was 14.

Freedom, joy, passion, adventure and owning my own story – the values that I hold dear today – those were what my 14 year old self was all about. She knew she liked wide open spaces, running through the outdoors, walking alone in the early morning light. She knew she loved music, loud happy music, and she knew she loved love. She wanted it all, the big passion, the excitement, all of the adventures. She was so ready for life to sweep her off her feet.

And then…I got my first boyfriend. And from the age of 15 until the age of 37, life took me away from that girl. Not in any dramatic way. Just in the slow drip drip of what other people call “reality”. Disappointments. Not being seen. Needs not being met. Being “too much”. Not being “cool”. Not being “realistic”. Being abandoned. Undiagnosed (completely unknown) neurodivergence leading to massive anxiety and panic. Not belonging. Social anxiety.

I got married to a good man who would keep me safe. By the age of 26 safety was all I wanted. But that 14 year old never went away. She was awakened in 2017 and she has never looked back. Read on to find out more…

This blog was originally a series of 6 Instagram posts and I have kept the six sections distinct as they represent key elements of my story so far. What are the key elements of your life’s journey to date? I’d love you to tell me in the comments.

I have peeled many layers of my onion.

That’s what healing my mental health has been like for me. Peeling an onion. The very first layer was counselling in my mid-twenties, my emotional outbursts having become “out of control”. (I would now of course say that how little my needs were being met was out of control) I talked about my grandmother and the toxic influence she was on my family. That was layer number one.

The second layer was CBT for social anxiety, when attending social events for work became panic inducing. CBT worked well for me because it is structured and has specific exercises you can do to build resilience. I had a second round of it when motherhood knocked me for six.

Motherhood. That first baby. Holy hell in a hand basket. Back then I didn’t even know that I had clinical anxiety let alone probable neuro-divergence. I have been taking Sertraline for anxiety for the last 8 years, but when my darling Edward was born in 2011 I hadn’t got nearly that far. Motherhood makes you face your mental health, because it pushes you off a cliff. No sleep, no familiarity, no routine, little social connection, so much noise…it was hell. I wouldn’t do those first baby days again if you paid me £1 million.

So, much CBT and medication later, I emerged stronger and far more aware of the workings of my own brain. Not nearly as aware as I am now, but it’s all a journey. The next layer was some more counselling, maintenance counselling I called it, just to keep me on track, particularly through the experience of baby number two, who will get his own post tomorrow.

I worked with an NLP master practitioner in 2020 to dig deep into the origins of my fear of abandonment. That was incredibly powerful and left me feeling like I have a much smaller onion to peel. The most recent layer was discovering I am almost certainly autistic (no formal diagnosis sought) which makes everything in my life make so much more sense. Clarity at last.

This girl was never bad, too much, overwhelmed or incapable. Her brain just works in a different way. You are not too much or incapable either. How about we love ourselves for who we are?

He came into the world yelling.

And we were delighted and I said “good boy!” because we had been warned he might come out blue. Not my David. He’s never stopped making a racket ever since he emerged caesarean style and was taken straight to the NICU.

My second baby did not enter this world with a gentle homebirth like his brother. Oh no. David has Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, the left side of his heart didn’t develop, so he emerged in hospital which mucho drama and was taken the next day to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.

Open heart surgery at 5 days old. Open heart surgery at 5 months old. Open heart surgery at 4½ years old. If you haven’t been through the paediatric hospital journey, it is just as dramatic and distressing as you imagine, but you also just get on with day to day life because another choice doesn’t exist. And you laugh along the way. And do normal things. Because that is human nature.

We have been incredibly lucky with David. Outside of his surgeries, he has needed no additional care. He takes aspirin once a day and that is the extent of his day-to-day care. He is paler than most kids. He can’t do quite as much P.E. Other than that? Well I’d say he’s a normal child but there is nothing normal about our family. We are all neuro-divergent, we joke that we don’t trust “normal” people because they are weird.

Having David launched me into campaigning for better breastfeeding support on paediatric wards. For more info on this check out Lyndsey Hookway’s work on Breastfeeding the Brave. Long before I was the No Bullsh*t Coach, I was calling out bullsh*t in maternity care, health visiting, paediatrics and postnatal care, via voluntary work that led to campaigning with Gill Phillips, Florence Wilcock and a host of other incredible people.

From dark mental health crashes to public speaking opportunities, from tears, fears and despair to campaigning victories, being David’s mum has taken me to so many places.

Motherhood changes all of us. It is a woman’s hero journey (check out my blog on the Call to Adventure for more) and we will never be the same.

Wowsers.

That was the title of his first Reddit message to me. My life would never be the same.

What was I doing on Reddit? I had found an audio porn community, recordings of stories, scripts, scenarios and the sounds of people simply enjoying themselves alone. I hadn’t known until then that audio is where it’s at for me but whew did it blow my mind. I was straight in and loving it, listening to all that I could find.

Not being able to do anything from the sidelines, I quickly made an account and started submitting audios of my own. I had a tonne of fun and made a lot of online friends.

Wowsers! was in response to the very first audio I submitted. All I knew was this guy’s username, and tbh I didn’t even have any proof that he was a guy. Yet the connection was instant. It was like he had just opened the door, walked into my life and boom. That was it.

Our online affair became an in person affair, even though he lived in America. We first met in person in June 2017 when I flew out to spend a week with him in North Carolina and Georgia. My then husband knew all about the affair but his side of the experience is not my story to tell. Suffice to say nothing I do is standard.

My boy was 10 years younger than me, and I can’t tell you his name because some in his life never knew about us. But this was the romance. This was the passion. This was the adventure. This was everything I had ever wanted and I flew.

We knew it couldn’t last, he wanted a wife and family of his own. It was always going to have to be brief.

14 months, 5 trips and countless hours on Skype later, it ended.

I have never experienced grief and pain like it. It was the hardest thing I have ever gone through, and it took me 3 ½ years to complete that heartbreak journey. Not once did I regret it. You get an opportunity like that, you take it. It made me the woman I was always supposed to be. Parting was brutal but I’m so proud of us for taking the opportunity to be together, because it has led us both to the lives that we wanted.

Do I tell you to squeeze every last drop of enjoyment out of life? You bet I bloody do.

I did it all wrong.

This glorious relationship that I have been in for the last 4 ½ years? Yeah I did it all wrong.

In the depths of my heartbreak I went straight back to Reddit and made lots of new online friends. One of these was Alex, a then 27 year old American (oh yes, I have a type) from Buffalo, New York state. We met when I was 5 months into a 3 ½ year journey through heartbreak and that’s not right is it? You can’t start a relationship with someone when you are still hung up on somebody else, when you are still texting the ex?

B*llocks. You can do whatever you like.

Yeah but you can’t have a fulfilling intimate relationship with a man who lives 4,000 miles away and whom you only see every 2 months. Can you?

Sure you can. You can do whatever you like.

Okay, but then obviously you can’t bring your whole self, your neuro-divergent perimenopausal hugely emotional self to a guy 10 years your junior who doesn’t have kids and lives on his own. Surely he’s not going to welcome that?

Wrong. No one has ever accepted the whole of me more.

So…I get to have daily emotional support and all of my needs met, without having to live with another adult or have someone else interfering in daily life and parenting?

Yep. Oh, and he’s really freaking hot.

What I get told next tends to be…”you are so lucky”. Fortunate maybe. Lucky? No. This relationship didn’t just fall from the sky. We have both had to put in the work, every day. Learning more and more about how to meet each others needs with words when we are miles and miles apart. Learning how to manage each others emotional baggage, fears and wounds. Chipping away at the walls of safety that he built from childhood hurts, whilst navigating me through grief and loss and the rebuilding of my life.

We’ve done it all wrong. Which is why I never asked for advice. No one could tell me how to navigate this, it doesn’t fall within the textbooks. Which is why I’ll never give you textbook advice.

What do you want? How shall we get it? Those are my questions to you, and to hell with what everyone thinks is “right”.

Being employed was not going to happen.

In October 2018 I was nearly divorced, I was deep in heartbreak, my mental health was a mess, and there was no way I could face going back to employment after 8 years out of the workplace. I needed an income but I needed my freedom.

So I set up HC Business Support and started out as a VA. A friend found me my very first client, and more clients followed suit. So much so that at the end of 2019 I took on Sam and Jo as my first associates, and rebranded to Clear Day.

Working closely with business owners and sole traders, I found that as well as tackling their admin, I was also providing a listening ear, a shoulder to cry on and a sounding board for advice. I was working mainly with women, and I had already spent a good deal of time working voluntarily with women for whom the parenting journey was a struggle. I had received some coaching myself and it just all came together: I knew I wanted to coach.

At the beginning of 2020 I did my training with MOE Foundation. Whilst we were all stuck in lockdown, I started to offer online coaching sessions alongside the VA work and social media support I was already providing, and my coaching practice grew from there. In 2021 the podcast was born, and in 2022 my first book was published.

I may work with business owners but I’m not a business coach. I’m a life coach. Because let’s face it, it’s impossible to separate out work from the rest of your life, and I like to work with you on it all.

Everything I have learned, everything that has helped, everything that has hindered, I pour all of this knowledge into the work that I do with my clients. No bullsh*t, no nonsense, just lots of self-kindness and honesty and an encouragement of joy.

As a self-employed woman you have the freedom of being your own boss, but you have forgotten your passion, forgotten adventure, cannot remember what brings you joy. I help you to use your freedom, own your story and rediscover who you are.

Ready for adventure? Contact me so we can get started.

Helen Calvert
The No Bullsh*t Coach
April 2023