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.

And 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 had some really good relationships with people supporting me, and some of that support was genuinely important. I don't want to take away from that. But I always knew they were professional relationships.

I was a file.

That's not by any means a criticism of the people. But there's a difference between somebody supporting you because their job is to address a particular part of your circumstances and having somewhere you can simply exist as a whole person.

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 was lost, and 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.

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.

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. I haven't. Not because my experience is a blueprint for somebody else's. But because 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.

I didn't need another label. I needed connection. Confidence. Things I enjoyed. 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.

That's what I want Beyond Today to create space for.

Not somewhere that asks people to forget what has happened to them. 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 I don't want people to come simply to receive help.

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 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.