Hello, I’m Leonora

Identity wasn’t something I thought about when I became a mother.

I was too busy becoming one. It was only years later that I realised I couldn’t describe myself without listing the people I looked after.

I’d always told myself I would invest in me later: when they started school, when they were older, when they left for university. By the time COVID arrived, two of my children were about to leave home and the third was growing more independent by the week. Later finally seemed to be here. Then the world shut, everyone came home, the kitchen table disappeared under laptops and cereal bowls, and the door I’d been watching swung firmly closed again.

What I noticed

I’d love to say I handled it gracefully. What I did was notice, with some surprise, how small I had let myself become. Somewhere in becoming a mother, and loving it, I had folded myself into my roles: wife, mother, keeper of the house and everyone’s calendar. I don’t regret those years. I had simply stopped asking the questions that belonged to me. What do I want now? What do I need in order to keep growing? Who am I when nobody needs anything from me? Without them, my confidence had thinned, a small imposter voice had moved in, and part of me was convinced I’d missed my boat.

How coaching found me

That was when I found coaching, first as a client. It shifted how I saw myself so much that I went back to study and trained as a coach, building on my degree in communications and industrial psychology (organisational psychology, as it’s known now) from the University of South Africa. I lived most of my life in Cape Town, and these days I’m in South East London, still answering to “Mom” from three adult children who seem to need me in new and creative ways.

Where writing fits in

Writing has run alongside all of it. During the busiest mom years I wrote freelance pieces about motherhood, saying the things that happen behind closed doors and that most of us feel but rarely admit out loud, for fear of being judged. If a mother could read about my worst moment, laugh, and feel a little less alone in hers, the piece had done its job. That same instinct sits behind my book, I’m Fine, which you can read more about on my Books page.

What working with me is like

Our sessions are conversations, with room to think out loud and say the thing you haven’t said to anyone else. I listen for what sits underneath the first answer, I’ll probably make you laugh at least once, and each session ends with one realistic next step, so things keep moving between our conversations.

Why this matters to me

You’re allowed to keep growing, whether your children are in nappies or have just left home, and you don’t have to wait for the right moment, because COVID taught me how easily that moment moves. When you understand how you tick and what you want, life becomes easier to steer. Your children also get to watch a woman who takes herself seriously, and I’ve come to think that’s one of the most useful things they ever see.

Whatever brought you here, I’m glad you stayed to the end. If something in my story sounded a little like yours, I’d love to hear where you are now and what you’d like next.

Leonora

“With Leonora’s help, I now realise that I have options and I have reduced the guilt I felt in exploring them.”

Christine Simmons