Conversations with the Founder

Where did Beyond Today really begin?

I don't think there was one moment where I suddenly had the idea for Beyond Today. For a long time, my mind was just constantly trying to fix everything. I'd go over things again and again, thinking, if I can do this, maybe that won't be as bad. If I can change this, maybe I can somehow rewrite what has happened.

Looking back, it was almost like the bargaining stage of grief. I was grieving the life I thought I was going to have while desperately trying to find a way back to it. There was something devastating about having spent years growing into a completely different person, only to feel like none of it mattered. I knew I wasn't the person I had been five years earlier, but suddenly it felt like that was the only version of me anyone could see.

I had just become a mother. My baby was two days old. At a time when I should have been finding my feet in this completely new part of my life, everything I thought I knew about my future was being ripped apart. I wasn't just trying to deal with what was happening. I was fighting to hold onto Kiera.

I think for a long time I just wanted somebody to tell me how to feel whole again. Nobody could. That's probably where Beyond Today really began, even though I didn't know it yet.

You received support during that time. What did you feel was missing?

I did, and I don't think I would have got through that period in the same way without some of the people who supported me. At a time when I'd really lost myself, having people who listened, showed up and helped me navigate what was happening was incredibly valuable. Some of those relationships meant a lot to me, and they still do.

What I eventually realised wasn't that the support was wrong or that people weren't doing enough. It was that there were parts of what I was struggling with that weren't really something another person or service could fix for me. People could help me with what was happening around me, but I was still trying to work out who I was within all of it.

I also became very good at saying I was fine. I'd give the same recycled answers: I'm up and down. I'm getting there. I'll be okay. I've always masked. I've never wanted to feel like a burden, so I'd put on this facade that I was coping, that I hadn't really been affected, that I'd get through it. Inside, I felt incredibly alone.

I think for a long time I was desperately looking for the person or service that could give me the answer to how I was supposed to put myself back together. Eventually I realised there wasn't one, because nobody else could do that part for me.

What I needed alongside the support I already had was connection, things I enjoyed, opportunities to contribute and reasons to start seeing myself as more than everything that was happening. I needed space to work out who I was now and what I wanted my life to look like next.

What was the hardest part of rebuilding?

I think it was losing the version of myself I thought I was supposed to be. I've always been academic and achievement-focused. I measured success in quite a binary way: career, qualifications, achievements. I was proud of those things, but I hadn't realised how much of my worth I'd attached to them until they were gone.

Comparison made that harder. You look around and it feels like everyone else is moving forward while you've somehow gone backwards. People are progressing in their careers, buying homes, travelling, getting married, building the lives they imagined for themselves, and social media gives you a front-row seat to all of it. I knew logically that people's lives aren't as perfect as they look online, but that didn't stop me comparing.

There are so many unspoken ideas about where you're supposed to be by a certain age, and I felt like I'd fallen behind all of them. It wasn't only that my circumstances had changed. I felt like my timeline had changed. When you've spent years measuring yourself through achievement, that can make you feel like you're somehow less than the people around you.

Suddenly I had to work out who I was without all the things I used to point to as proof that I was doing well. I had to almost rewire how I saw myself. Being a good mother mattered. Learning something because I enjoyed it mattered. Helping somebody mattered. Getting through something I once thought I couldn't mattered.

At the same time, I knew how much I'd changed while still feeling judged by a version of myself from years earlier. I'd already rebuilt my life once. Having to do it again felt cruel. There were times when it felt like everything I'd fought to become was being stripped away, and somehow I had to find Kiera underneath all of that.

So what actually helped?

Helping other people. That was the thing that gave me enough purpose to start rebuilding again.

For years I think I believed I needed to become the most perfect, healed version of myself before I could be useful to anyone else. People tell you, one day you'll look back at this and it will feel like a distant memory. But when you're actually inside it, that can feel impossible. I genuinely couldn't see beyond today.

My world had become that moment. When something is consuming your life, imagining yourself ten years from now doesn't necessarily help. Sometimes you need something that gives you a reason to get through where you are now.

For me, that became the possibility of helping somebody else. Being the voice I wished I'd had. Being the hand I had been looking for. Not because I've worked everything out, because I haven't, and not because my experience is a blueprint for somebody else's. It isn't. But I know what it is like to need somebody to see the person underneath everything that has happened. That gave what I'd been through a purpose I hadn't been able to find anywhere else.

Is that why Beyond Today isn't built around particular labels or circumstances?

Completely. When you've been through difficult circumstances, so much of the world starts interacting with you through what has happened. You qualify for one service because of one thing. You're referred somewhere else because of another. You explain your story again. Another form, another assessment, another professional relationship.

Some of that is necessary, and specialist support can be incredibly important. But people don't experience their lives in categories. And the things I was struggling with weren't unique to the circumstances I'd been through either.

Feeling behind. Comparing my life to other people's. Losing confidence in who I was. Not knowing what direction I was going in. Feeling like everyone else had somehow got further ahead. Wondering whether the life I'd imagined for myself was still possible. You don't need to have been through a crisis to know what those things feel like.

There are people whose lives change overnight, and there are people who couldn't point to a single moment when anything went wrong. Maybe life just hasn't turned out how they expected. Maybe they're approaching 30, 40 or 50 and wondering why they don't feel how they thought they would by now. Those aren't the same experiences, and I don't think we need to pretend they are. But people don't need to have the same past to have something in common now.

That's a big part of why Beyond Today isn't somewhere you have to qualify for by having the right story. I needed connection, confidence, things I enjoyed and opportunities to contribute rather than always being the person receiving support. Most of all, I needed to believe there could still be a version of my life ahead of me that I actually wanted.

I don't think someone should have to reach crisis point before those things become valuable. That's what I want Beyond Today to create space for. Not somewhere that asks people to forget what has happened to them, but somewhere it doesn't have to be the most important thing about them.

What do you hope someone finds when they come to Beyond Today?

Honestly, I hope they find some of what I couldn't find in one place. People, possibility, something to look forward to.

I want somebody to be able to arrive without feeling like they need to present the polished version of themselves. You shouldn't have to say you're fine when you're not. Equally, you shouldn't have to tell us everything that's happened to you to justify being here. And you don't need to have a story of crisis at all. Maybe nothing fell apart. Maybe you just know you're not where you want to be yet.

I don't want people to come simply to receive help either. I want them to bring things too: their ideas, their humour, their skills, their experiences. Maybe one day they become the person welcoming somebody else through the door.

Because I don't think rebuilding, or even just finding a different direction, is about somebody fixing you. For me, it was slowly finding reasons to believe in myself and my life again.

I couldn't see beyond today. Now I'm building Beyond Today because I know I won't be the only person who has ever felt that way.