The Longer Version…

My relationship with voice began long before I had the words for it.

I was raised in the wilds of the Welsh countryside, by a mother rooted in natural health and a stepfather who, by his own definition, was a rock and roll star.

Sound, rhythm, and expression were woven into the fabric of everyday life.

I fell asleep to band rehearsals rumbling through the floorboards.
I watched my mum get ready for gigs and danced beside her, always first on the dance floor.

Voice wasn’t something separate or performative and it wasn’t always soft or easy.
But it was alive and expressive and it was everywhere.

As an only child, I spent hours wandering between worlds, outside in the woods and inside my imagination. Creating little rituals for the creatures the cats brought home, drawing, singing along to Madonna, daydreaming my way through long stretches of quiet.

Those early years, held by trees, music, and a kind of wild freedom, planted something deep in me.
A curiosity about life, about spirit, about the unseen.

And yet, alongside that openness, there was also absence.

My father had moved to California when I was young, and visiting him brought a completely different world (neon lights, theme parks, giant cinemas). I loved it. And I missed him.

And that missing shaped something in me.

By my teens, anxiety had taken hold. At a time when issues around mental health were tabboo and support was scarce, I turned inward, and to my mum’s new age book shelf. Stories and teachings that spoke of something greater. Something beyond the noise of my mind.

They became a lifeline.

Looking back, I can see that this was another layer of my voice forming, not just as outward expression, but a deep inward listening.

My ‘alternative’ roots run deep - before I was even born, my parents had already stepped outside the expectations of the worlds they were raised in, leaving behind conventional paths to follow a more spiritual, alternative way of living.

I was born into that.

Into land-based living, community, and a questioning of the status quo.

It wasn’t always easy, but it gave me a relationship to truth that I now recognise as foundational to my work.

Music continued to call me.

At 18, I began singing in a band with my (now) husband, and not long after, met my dear friend and long-term collaborator, musician and producer Piers Partridge.

Music became a language I could speak when words weren’t enough.

We recorded albums, performed widely, and were offered a record deal. Later, back in Wales, I continued singing in harmony-rich bands and still, there were parts of me that remained hidden beneath the performance.

It wasn’t until the stillness of the pandemic that everything began to shift.

Like so many women, I was suddenly face to face with myself. Without distraction.

When I became ill with Covid, something broke open.

A realisation moved through me with undeniable clarity:

The life I was living no longer fitted me.

Whilst reading If Women Rose Rooted during that time, I came across the myth of the Selkie, the seal woman who loses her skin and is trapped living a life that isn’t truly hers.

I felt it in my bones. I had abandoned myself. I’d lost my skin. I no longer recognised myself.

I was silencing my voice.
Keeping myself small.
Making choices based on expectation rather than truth.
Outsourcing my wisdom. Giving my power away.

That moment became a threshold and what followed was a deep and ongoing return to wholeness.

Through therapy, coaching, menstrual cycle awareness, and a willingness to meet myself honestly, I began reclaiming the parts I’d left behind.

And at the centre of that return… was my voice.

Not just the voice that sings, but the voice that knows. The voice that speaks truth. The voice that expresses what has been held, hidden, or silenced.

This is why voice is at the heart of my work now. Because I know, intimately, what it is to lose it. And what it takes to reclaim it.

Today, I support women, particularly in midlife, to reconnect with their own voice in all its forms.

To move beyond silence, self-doubt, and conditioning.

To listen inwardly.
To express outwardly.
To live in a way that feels true.

This work isn’t about becoming louder. It’s about becoming more of who we are as women.

I believe that when women reclaim their voices, something powerful happens. Not just individually, but collectively.

We soften the patterns of comparison and competition.
We remember how to stand beside one another.
We begin to create a different kind of world. For ourselves, and for those who come after us.

If you’re here, something in you may already be stirring.

A quiet voice… What’s it telling you?