Inspiring People

If so you’re not alone and there are a great many women who feel just like you. In fact some even think of themselves as plankton, almost invisible and at the very bottom of the food chain. Now I know I’m not in permanent Pollyanna mode, and on occasion have called myself a few choice names, but this really pulled me up short – plankton!?!

You see I am well past that dreaded “Wrong side of 40” brick wall, in fact I’m 51, and do you know what – life couldn’t be better.

Life is not all a bed of roses

Now before you all start jumping to conclusions and putting me in the smug-married- loads- of- money- perfect-kids- and- house- in-the- country bracket, let me just mention here that I am divorced with a 13 year old daughter, 2 cats and a ferret. And no I don’t live in a big house in the country either, I live in a little cottage on top of a hill somewhere in Scotland, I forget where, must be that age thing….

But my life is good

Anyway I’m happy and fulfilled, my life is good. But it wasn’t always this way.
I used to think that happiness was only possible when you were part of that magical item, “The Couple”. Life would be perfect, paths would smooth and the wheels of happiness would turn in a never ending cycle. I was married, I was part of a couple and it didn’t happen. So why did I imagine when I got divorced that by getting another partner my life would suddenly be complete.

There is life after divorce

As women we have been conditioned since kindergarten to think that it’s ‘right’ to be married and settled down with a family. In fact for most of our generation it’s considered a failing to be single. God forbid that you should hit middle age and be a singleton – boy oh boy, that’s a double whammy if ever there was one. You see where there is a ‘right’ there is by definition a ‘wrong’ and that my dears is in being single.

Picking myself up

A few years ago I struggled with this issue, okay I wallowed in it for a while. I took on the mantle of separated singleton that nobody wants and I fairly waved the flag. I felt I couldn’t cope without a man by my side and I didn’t know what to do. This is a perfectly normal place to be after a big breakup, but it’s not somewhere you want to be for long. As one American life coach puts it “It’s okay to visit sad valley and hang out for a while, but darling don’t buy real estate there, move on!”

Moving on

I moved on by taking little teensy tiny steps in a direction I wasn’t quite sure of, but hey, it had to be better than where I actually was. Sometimes it didn’t feel as if I was getting anywhere, it could be really frustrating to say the least. Yes there were times I wanted to give up and throw in the towel, hurl myself on to a four poster bed and have a real Scarlet O’Hara tantrum. And yes I did give way to the tantrums now and then but they were never quite as satisfying as I imagined they would be, maybe I wasn’t wearing the right gown and hadn’t got the Southern accent right, who knows… The thing is, I kept going, there was no way back for me and this was the only thing I could think of doing, just keep taking those little baby steps and hope for the best.

Grasping the future with both hands

I don’t feel like plankton at all, in fact if you want a seaside analogy at all I’d have to say I feel like a dolphin. Happy, playful, fit, smart and ageless. I am dancing and diving in the sea of life and enjoying myself more now than I have in decades.

It all comes down to taking steps forward

You see as you are taking the baby steps I mentioned you are moving forward, the frustrating thing is that the steps can sometimes feel like they are so small they are getting you nowhere. This my friends is so untrue. Those steps are movement, and movement creates movement in many different ways. It is only when you take a step back and survey your life from a different viewpoint that you will see just how far those seemingly pointless little baby steps have taken you.

A sense of achievement

I’ve turned my life around completely. In the past year I have written two books (So Easy Herbal and So Easy Christmas) and had them published, become a TV expert and been seen by millions of people every two weeks, produced my own e-Book and created a Video Companion Series, have a highly popular daily blog, done a 10k run for charity and even got into a pair of size ten jeans. Not bad for an over fifty singleton eh!

Good comes from bad

I honestly believe I couldn’t have done all this if I had stayed in my marriage or even been in another relationship. I did all this because I had to, I had to find a way of coping and in doing so I found myself, I found the me inside of me that could do things on her own, and be the person she really wanted to be.

Where there's a will there's a way

What I found inside of me was Passion, my passion for what I really wanted to do. And that passion is in writing, it is in the show and tell of life, and I write about what lights me up. My first book So Easy Herbal was born of my love of herbs and crafting with them. In this book I took the ten most popular herbs and showed people how to really get the most out of them in making everything from infused cooking oils to herbal sleep sacks, and I showed that you didn’t even need to have a garden to do this. In So Easy Christmas I took the festive season that I adore, but realize the stresses and strains of, and simplified it for people, gave hints and tips, recipes and craft ideas to make the whole thing easier and more enjoyable.

Following a dream of a "Easy Life"

But what I am doing right now is my deepest passion, it is my new book So Easy Life. This is the book that has been bubbling up inside of me for years but I didn’t have the knowledge or life experience to write. Now I do thanks to my fifty one darling dolphin status.

So Easy Life is a self help book for women that ticks all the boxes and more. It explores all the baby steps that I have taken and adds in some amazing insight and lessons from some of the top names in the field of self help today, including Bob Doyle bestselling author and star of the film The Secret, Carol Look one of the top EFT practitioners in the USA today, Michael Neill super coach to the stars, Suzy Greaves founder of The Big Leap and my own fabulous coach, Marci Shimoff bestselling author of Happy For No Reason and Sandy Newbigging author of Peace For Life, to name but a few.

The mission

But I didn’t just want this book to be a ‘telling’ experience; I wanted real women to be part of it to. So I started The Easy Life Mission on my blog at www.soeasylife.com. This is where real women from all walks of life can leave their one tip for living an easier life. It can be anything from walking the dog, baking banana bread or meditating to music, to skydiving, samba dancing or looking at the stars on a frosty night. It can be anything at all that makes your heart sing, your shoulders drop and your mind just sigh with pleasure.

A future goal

My goal is to get 1000 tips and then hold an online poll to find The Top 101 Tips For An Easy Life, these tips will then become part of this new and truly amazing book, with every tip being named and credited to its provider.

There will also be some amazing artwork in this book, pictures that inspire, images from the heart and there will be competitions to find those perfect pages.

So Easy Life

A self help book that doesn’t lurk dustily on a shelf, embarrassed to be there in the first place. This is a mini coffee table book that begs to be looked at, browsed over and used well and often – aint no-one putting So Easy Life in the corner!

The answer to the opening question

My answer to that question I posed so many words ago – a resounding No! Life is great, it is brilliant and it is so easy – after-all, I am a dolphin not plankton.

To Purchase So Easy Herbal

To Purchase So Easy Christmas