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I ended last week with an invitation to notice the parts of ourselves that were more visible before life became complicated. And how they might be asking to return.

That idea has stayed with me, especially as we approach Mother’s Day this weekend. These moments in the calendar have a way of stirring old memories, old versions of ourselves and the stories we thought we’d neatly packed away.

Before I go any further, a quick note - this week touches on loss, grief and the unique kind of growth that follows in their wake. If that feels too heavy right now, please take care of yourself and skip this one. I’ll be here again next week.

So, let’s begin.

When I was a teenager, my life split into a before and an after. Some of you know that I lost my mum suddenly when I was 17 and that reshaped the entire architecture of my life. I’ve hesitated to share the fuller story but it feels important now - not as an indulgence but because it speaks to something many of us carry into our adult lives and careers without realising it.

My mum was a feminist hippy with a mind that seemed to live a decade or two ahead of everyone else. She would spot trends, challenge the status quo and encourage me to do the same. She wasn’t perfect but she was warm, compassionate and relentlessly guided by her heart, even when the consequences were messy.

My parents divorced when I was 3 and my dad moved away so she was everything to me. We were incredibly close, as you can hopefully see in the last photo I have of her…

Within a few weeks of this photo, my mum was gone. I remember the day she died with a clarity that still startles me. I cycled home from a friend’s house, walked through the front door and saw paramedics inside. I didn’t understand what was happening until I climbed the stairs and found her. I wanted to see her one last time and that image has never left me.

Then came the moment that has shaped so much of my life. I walked into her bedroom and sat on the edge of her bed, swallowed by a kind of pain I didn’t know a body could hold. A man (maybe the coroner) stepped in and handed me a pamphlet about what happens next. It felt rather inadequate given what I was going through.

I looked up at him and asked, “What do I do now? What do I do for the rest of my life?”

He didn’t have an answer. I’m not entirely sure what I was hoping he would say.

I couldn’t comprehend what had just happened. So that’s where a part of me stayed and was left behind. A teenage boy frozen on the edge of a bed, waiting for someone to tell him how to live.

But life didn’t pause for me, it couldn’t as I was on my own. I needed to learn how to survive and run a house and pay bills. Within 4 days I was back at school. Within 10 years I had a degree, a marriage and two children under two. And then not long after that, I was standing at the top of a corporate ladder, earning the kind of salary that should have taken a lifetime to achieve.

I started to realise that I had climbed the wrong mountain and didn’t know how to get back down. I had kept moving because stopping meant feeling and feeling meant facing that boy on the bed. He needed an answer and I didn’t have one yet.

But at the back of my mind, one of my mum’s favourite quotes was ringing in my ears…

I can see now that for most of my working life, I was resisting. I had no choice. But in that constant motion, I never gave myself the space to breathe, to grieve or to understand the depth of what had happened. And in doing so, I lost my intuition and my power to choose.

Many of us do the same. We build our adult lives around the things we’re not ready to face. We become experts at outrunning the parts of ourselves that feel too painful, too messy or too inconvenient. We build businesses, teams and reputations on top of unresolved stories. We call it ambition or resilience but often it’s simply momentum born from avoidance.

We hope we can keep running long enough. But the body keeps the score and eventually it catches up with us. That’s what happened to me. I began to see that real resilience isn’t about surviving, it’s about finding a way to thrive.

So I’ve been learning how to sit beside that teenage boy again. Not to fix him but to welcome him home. To be the adult he needed. To understand how many of my choices were shaped by his fear.

As the original Trim Tab and my inspiration for this newsletter, Bucky Fuller wrote:

“The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.”

That might sound idealistic but Bucky was pointing to something essential - the systems we grow up in reward conformity. And when we conform too tightly and when we override our unfiltered intuition, we silence our authentic voice. That silence creates disconnection, powerlessness and a loss of hope. And that can lead to burnout or breakdown. We are born with clarity but our need to belong often requires us to forget ourselves in the process.

My journey has been about returning to the blueprint I held before life got complicated. And as I write this, I can feel that teenage boy beside me, not lost anymore but finally being listened to and accepted.

I believe this integration of our parts is needed now more than ever. The world feels increasingly heavy, complex and unpredictable. Even when we follow the rules and do everything ‘right’, the systemic cracks are widening - conflicts escalating, nature suffering, jobs disappearing, technology reshaping everything at speed and power being misused in the most awful ways imaginable.

In times like these, we need to reclaim our intuition. We need to act from clarity and innocence, not fear and judgement. Because if we lose that inner compass, then we really are lost.

This is why I do the work I do. Why I coach the way I coach. Why I host the events I host. Turning inward isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity for anyone who wants to lead, create or live with integrity in a world like this. Our power has always come from within. We just need to remember the way back.

Events & gatherings

Everything I’ve shared today is the foundation of the work I do. Our events are designed to help you reconnect with the parts of yourself you may have abandoned in order to fit in or keep going. And with the world shifting so quickly, we need those parts back. With less than two weeks until our next gathering at the farm, here are the spaces where we’ll be doing that work together…

The Natural Network at Four Acre - ‘The Emergence’

20th March: 9.15-13.15 at Four Acre Farm. Tickets here

As day and night come into balance, this gathering invites you to step from reflection into visible action.

If winter was for thinking and February was for tending what is growing beneath the surface, we're now ready for emergence.

This focused half-day experience blends structured business reflection with nature-based insight.

Workshop, delicious lunch, connections and follow up 30 minute coaching conversation with me.

Don’t forget that as an email subscriber, you can use the code Naturalnetwork20 for a £20 discount. We’d love to see you there.

The Natural Network at Patch

26th March: 10am - 12pm at Patch. Tickets here

Our second monthly gathering at Patch continues the rhythm we began last month. It’s a gentle space for conversation, connection and community, shaped by the energy of the season and whatever is emerging for people right now.

This session includes a facilitated discussion, time to meet others on a similar path and a moment to celebrate the community we’re building together. There will be a delicious treat, a hot drink and a chance to slow down long enough to hear yourself think.

It’s simple, warm, human and grounded.

Wrapping up…

I hope this week didn’t feel too heavy. I’m learning to share more of the parts of myself that I used to keep hidden so I’ve never publicly shared that story before.

I share it because I know I’m not the only one who has carried a fear of being misunderstood. For years, I worried that if people saw the darker corners of my story, they might question my professionalism, my capability or my usefulness. But the truth is, we all carry the marks of our past within us. None of us arrive in adulthood untouched. And this is why I try to heal loudly to help others who might also be on this path.

Our power comes from choice. We can learn to integrate, evolve and grow from what has shaped us or we can hide away and hope no one notices the parts we’ve abandoned.

So this week, instead of leaving you with a question about what’s missing, I want to leave you with something more uplifting:

“Which parts of yourself are you most proud of today - the parts a previous version of you would be amazed to see?”

The courage you’ve shown. The boundaries you’ve learned to hold. The clarity you’ve earned the hard way. The softness you’ve reclaimed. The voice you’ve found.

And if you’re not where you want to be yet, don’t worry, there’s still plenty of time. You might just need some help.

We all lose pieces of ourselves along the way. But we also grow into versions of ourselves that our younger selves could barely imagine. And recognising that is just as important as tending to what was lost.

Until next week, with constant curiosity and compassion,

Nick

Well that’s it for another week. But we don’t have to stop there.

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