About Natasha
I've spent more than 12 years coaching people through difficult circumstances, significant changes and questions about who they are and what they're capable of.
I've taken a rather unconventional route to get here.
With a working life that's included television and media, women's representation, charitable leadership and rehabilitation work in prisons and communities.
And I've had my own experience of workplace bullying and harm.
That experience changed my understanding of confidence, fear, identity and what it means to feel at home in yourself.
When the experience follows you out of the workplace
I know what it's like to leave an environment that has harmed you and discover that leaving hasn't settled everything.
In my own case, the consequences were profound. My health, work, finances and sense of who I was had all been affected.
I found myself carrying shame, self-blame and a critical voice that seemed to have absorbed some of what I'd experienced.
I could understand, intellectually, that what had happened was wrong.
Understanding it didn't automatically change the way I felt about myself.
Trying to understand what happened to me
I went looking for answers.
I listened to other people's stories. I read about workplace bullying and its effects. I tried to understand why experiences could continue to affect someone long after the immediate circumstances had changed.
Some of what I discovered helped me make sense of my own responses.
I also began to notice something else.
I was spending a great deal of energy fighting with myself.
Fighting the fear. Fighting the shame. Fighting the part of me that wanted to hide. Criticising myself for not being the capable, confident woman I remembered.
It was exhausting.
And I began to wonder whether that internal battle was something I could approach differently.
A different relationship with myself
Furthering my professional development as a coach led me to explore embodied approaches. I discovered ways of working with my own difficulties that made a real difference.
I began to recognise the thoughts, sensations and protective responses that appeared when I felt exposed, criticised or uncertain. Instead of treating them as something wrong with me, I began to understand what they were trying to protect.
I learned ways to settle myself, make room for difficult feelings and listen before reacting.
Perhaps one of the most important changes was in how I related to my inner critic.
I discovered that I could hear her concerns without allowing her to run the whole show.
I could make a mistake and take the learning without the punishment.
I could feel frightened and still decide what mattered to me.
I didn't need to love every part of myself to stop fighting it.
How it's going
I'm calmer now. I'm more able to have difficult conversations, hold boundaries and put myself forward.
That doesn't mean I never feel frightened, angry or disappointed.
Building my coaching practice has brought me face to face with my own fear of visibility. Being seen again has sometimes felt deeply uncomfortable.
I've learned that I can support myself through those experiences.
I can experiment. I can try things. I can discover that something doesn't work without making it a judgement about me.
And I can enjoy what becomes possible when I'm no longer using so much energy battling myself.
I'm still learning. I expect I always will be.
Why I created Freedom to Flourish
Through The Listening Space, I've heard women speak about workplace experiences they've sometimes carried silently for years.
What stays with me is the distance between their considerable abilities and how uncertain they can feel about using them.
These women haven't stopped being capable. But the cost of using that capability has become far too high.
They've learned to anticipate criticism, protect themselves from being undermined, or work twice as hard to feel safe. Those responses made sense in the environments they've lived through. But what helped them survive and get through it can start getting in the way of the lives they want to build now.
These women don’t need to be made tougher, fixed or taught to perform confidence.
I believe transformation begins with understanding and accepting ourselves as we are. From self-awareness and radical self-acceptance, we can drop into our gravity, anchor into what we are, lean into our backbone and find more freedom in how we choose to respond.
That's why I created Freedom to Flourish. Not to have these capable women reinvent who they are, but to help them feel more like themselves again, stop battling their instincts and wisdom.
What I bring to the coaching partnership
My coaching work has included supporting people through redundancy and career transitions, working with young people facing difficult circumstances, and helping entrepreneurs navigate the emotional demands of building a business. I've coached within organisations and agencies as well as independently, and designed and delivered personal development and practitioner training programmes internationally.
I've held senior leadership roles, including running a charity and overseeing the nationwide delivery of services and programmes. I've been responsible for people, budgets, business development, safeguarding and organisational change.
I've experienced both sides of the coaching relationship. I understand the pressures of professional life, the responsibilities of leadership and the complexities of working with people. I also know, from personal experience, what can happen when toxic workplace cultures begin to undermine your trust in yourself.
I bring that breadth of experience into the coaching space, along with curiosity, compassion and a willingness to challenge you when it matters.
A few other things about me
There's more to me than coaching and workplace experiences.
I love wild and ancient places. I'm the sort of person who comes home from a beach with stones, shells or sea glass in her pockets.
I enjoy making bread, jam and fermented things.
I'd generally choose an art gallery over a retail park. I love vintage clothes and find mending satisfying.
And despite my enthusiasm for the idea of an organised house, I own an unread copy of Marie Kondo.
I also have a foot in the world of the practical and a foot in the world of the spiritual.
Both inform my coaching.
If this speaks to you
You can read more about the Freedom to Flourish coaching experience, or we can have an introductory conversation about the challenges you're facing and whether we're a good fit.