About Your Coach
Hello, I'm Rachael.
Dog mum, journaller, and sourdough baker. Twenty years ago I was proud to call myself a barrister. This is the story of what happened when that stopped being enough, and why I now do this work.
My Story
I built a career I was proud of, then had to grieve it to find out who I was underneath.
I trained as a barrister, starting out in criminal prosecution before moving into corporate and commercial work, and spent twenty years with the same global company along the way. It was intellectually demanding, genuinely rewarding, and for a long time it was also the answer to who I was, whenever anyone asked. I believed that if something required a degree, and not everyone could do it, that gave it value, and I built my sense of worth on top of that belief.
In August 2023 I lost my grandad, and it stopped me properly for the first time in years. It brought into sharp focus how often I had prioritised work over time with my family, particularly my grandparents, time I could now never get back. I stayed in the discomfort of that realisation for a couple more years, until the same company I had sacrificed that time for made me redundant.
That was when I understood what I'd actually done: I had handed this company control over my entire life, my purpose, my identity, my finances, my time.
What followed wasn't a clean pivot. There was a role that felt like a step back, a second redundancy, and a stretch of anxiety I hadn't expected, which eventually led me to an ADHD and autism diagnosis that explained far more than I expected it to. Slowly, I started prioritising myself properly, testing what I actually liked rather than assuming, and looking after myself physically as well as mentally. What I eventually understood was that I didn't need a new five-year plan. I needed permission to grieve who I'd been, and enough quiet to hear what had actually been there all along, underneath the title.
That's the work I now do with other women, in whatever shape their version of it takes. Some weeks that means a park bench. Some weeks it means a phone call while one of us is walking the dog. The work does not need to follow a neat or predetermined sequence. We begin with what is present for you.
How This All Started
Her Midlife Empowerment began as an Instagram page, before it was anything else
I started the Her Midlife Empowerment Instagram page in June 2024, a couple of weeks after I lost my grandma, less than a year after losing my grandad and still very much grieving him. I was also approaching my fortieth birthday at the time, which was its own kind of unsettling, and the two things together are genuinely why this became about midlife and not just about grief. I needed somewhere to put what was circling in my head, and I needed to find some motivation of my own as much as give it to anyone else.
My Instagram profile image and logo since the beginning. I created it myself on day one of my account, and I still love it.
It grew far faster than I expected, and resonated with more women than I ever imagined it would. I haven't always been consistent with it, there have been stretches, redundancy among them, where I disappeared for weeks or months at a time. But every time I've come back, the same women have still been there, some I've never met in person and still feel like I know properly, after years of messages and real support going both ways. What that space actually showed me was that I wasn't the only one feeling lost, plenty of women were there for their own different reasons, but recognisably going through some version of the same thing. Once I'd found my own way through it, I wanted to help other women find their way through theirs too, and that's what turned into this website.
None of that changes what the Instagram page is for. It will always be a space where you can find one thing that helps you get through that particular day, a quote, a caption, something honest in a story, and walk away without owing anything. If you want more than that, this website is where you come, for a free resource, an article, or to book a conversation. And if you want to get to know me more, to see how I'm actually navigating this stage of life day to day, good days and not-so-good days included, that's what the weekly letter is for.
What I Believe
What I believe, based on what I have lived through
I.
You are not behind
You're between two versions of yourself, and that's an uncomfortable place to stand, not a failure to be standing there.
II.
You're allowed to miss it
The job, a role in life, or the routine held a version of you that was real, whether you've left it behind or you've simply outgrown it while still holding onto it. It isn't foolish to miss what it gave you, either way.
III.
You don't need to become someone new
You're not building a stranger. You're rebuilding the woman who got buried under a job title, a role, or what everyone else needed from you.
IV.
Permission is most of the work
Once you actually let yourself grieve who you were, you stop needing someone to tell you who to become next.
Outside the Coaching Room
The rest of my life, in case it's useful to know
I love walking my dogs, Scarlett and Amber, and some of my clearest thinking happens out there with them, moving, in the fresh air, away from a screen, with the kind of quiet that only comes from being outside. It's also when my husband and I end up talking about our actual plans and dreams, in a way that doesn't happen as easily sitting across a table from each other. Something about walking seems to make it easier to be honest, which is a large part of why walking sessions exist here as a real option, not an afterthought.
I journal daily, badly and honestly, and more recently I've given myself permission to be a beginner again at making sourdough and gardening. I get real joy from giving people what I've made or grown, and I've noticed how much calmer I feel when my hands are busy and my brain isn't. It's part of why the Grounded Conversation exists as an option too, not just walking.
I believe in taking the work seriously and myself rather less so. Sessions with me are warm, direct, and occasionally funny, because grieving who you were is hard enough without adding solemnity to it.
Training & Accreditation
The professional side of things
I'm trained through Optimus Coaching Academy's Professional Coaching Diploma, working within the ICF Code of Ethics, and currently building toward formal ICF and EMCC accreditation. I also hold professional indemnity insurance. Badges will appear here as each is awarded.
Accreditation
Pending
Accreditation
Pending
Coaching
Diploma
Indemnity
Insurance
A Note on How I Work
I'm not here to hand you a five-step plan or tell you who to become. Coaching is a collaborative process in which you do the thinking. I ask questions that help you examine what may be difficult to see clearly while you are living through it. My role is to listen, notice patterns, offer challenge without judgement and work at your pace.
If you're the woman who's grieving a version of yourself nobody else can quite see, I'd love to hear from you.
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