I Helped Build a Company from 65 to 750 People. Then I Walked Away.

On paper, I had it all.

Over twenty years as an HR Director. A seat at the leadership table. A central role in growing an organisation from 65 employees to 750. I'd built teams, shaped culture, supported leaders through every kind of pressure and change. I was good at my job, and I was proud of what I'd achieved.

But somewhere along the way, I started asking a question I couldn't shake: Is this still worth it?

Not because I'd failed. Because I hadn't. I never missed a school event. I was there for the dance competitions with my daughters, the golf tournaments with my son. I managed the deadlines and the demands and the constant juggle that every working parent knows intimately. From the outside, I was doing everything.

But the cost was too high.

I'd spend my weekends at my kids activities, handling the usual domestics and preparing for the next working week, and then Monday would arrive. The commute. The traffic. The mental shift back into the rat race before I'd even reached the office. I wasn't exhausted from long hours necessarily. I was exhausted from always feeling torn between where I was and where I needed to be.

And then life, as it does, added more weight to the scales. My mother-in-law became ill, and my husband was increasingly needed to support his parents at the other end of the country. My children, now teenagers, were growing up faster than I wanted to admit. I started counting summers. How many did I have left before they finished school? Before these years slipped away while I was stuck in back-to-back meetings and firefighting someone else's priorities?

We're sold the idea that we can "have it all" if we just try hard enough, optimise better, push through. But having it all often means carrying it all. And no one talks about what that weight does to you over time - to your energy, your presence, your sense of who you are outside of your role.

I didn't burn out in the dramatic sense. But that feeling of surviving rather than living? It was with me for a long time. Years, if I'm honest. I knew something had to change, but fear held me back. Fear of the unknown, of walking away from everything I'd built, of what it might mean for my family's security.

What shifted wasn't a single moment - it was a gradual opening. I retrained as a coach and started to see things differently. I began to believe I could make different choices. And eventually, I sat down with my husband and my kids and told them honestly what I was feeling - what I wanted for myself, and what I wanted for them.

They became my biggest cheerleaders.

That mattered more than I can say. But it also clarified something important: this decision wasn't just about me. It was about modelling a different way of living for the three people watching me most closely. I wanted them to see that success doesn't have to mean self-sacrifice. That it's possible to choose yourself. That you can build a life that aligns with your values - even if it means walking away from the path you thought you were supposed to follow.

So I stepped off the corporate ladder. Not because I stopped caring about leadership or business or people, but because I cared too much to keep doing it the way I had been.

Today, I'm an Executive and Leadership Coach. I work with driven leaders, managers, and professionals who are carrying the same weight I carried. People who are successful by every external measure but quietly wondering if there's another way to do this. People who don't want to wait until they're completely depleted to make a change.

I'm not here to tell you to quit your job or burn it all down. I'm here to help you find clarity - about what success actually means to you, about how to lead without losing yourself, about how to stop surviving and start living with intention.

Because I've learned something important: you don't have to sacrifice your wellbeing and your relationships to be successful. But you might have to redefine what success looks like. And that's not failure. That's wisdom.

If any of this resonates, I'd love to hear from you. Sometimes the most powerful first step is simply admitting that something needs to change.