Welcome to the maiden post from the Peppermint Wellness blog.

This blog – and, in fact, my whole career as a health coach – has been a long, long time in the making. Thirty years to be exact. You see, the first time I decided I’d like to work in nutrition was back in 1985. I was 14 and had done a school project on healthy eating – one of the few projects that I really engaged with.

But nutrition got forgotten as I chose my A-Levels and pigeon-holed myself firmly in the “arty-farty” camp, deciding I was rubbish at anything science-related. I graduated in modern languages and fell into a successful career in PR.

And yet it never went away – that little pull towards holistic health. Over the years, it pushed me to become a reiki master; to study the links between emotional and physical health; to train in and practise EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique); to learn how to make herbal remedies; and to understand the healing power of foods.

And finally, 30 years on from that school project, I’m now come full circle and have qualified as a holistic health coach.

I don’t take for granted what a huge privilege it is to be embarking on a career “Act Two” and, more importantly, to be following my heart.

I couldn’t have pulled off this career reinvention without the wholehearted support of: my mum, who sponsored my studies; my husband who not only cheered me on but didn’t object to me leaving the running of our marketing consultancy to him; and my kids who cheerfully put up with having an “alternative” mum and also for being guinea pigs for recipes and therapies. A huge thank you to all of you.

Now over to you. And a couple of questions to chew over during the Christmas break…

What, in your heart of hearts, would you like to be devoting your time and energy to?

What would you dare to achieve if you knew you couldn’t fail?

If you’ve got a comment you’d like to share below, I’d love to hear from you.