03 - Reclaiming Self-Love on the Frontline with Claire Goodwin-Fee

What does sustainable empowerment look like when you’re the one holding everyone else up?

In this powerful episode, psychotherapist, author, and Frontline 19 founder Claire Goodwin-Fee shares her deeply personal journey from burnout to balance, and how supporting others begins with finally learning to support yourself.

We explore the emotional toll of working in the NHS and emergency services, the creation of Frontline 19, and Claire’s transformative experience on the I Am Me programme. From embracing self-love to redefining leadership, this is a conversation about reclaiming your worth, one breath at a time.

Whether you're leading others, serving on the front line, or simply learning to receive, Claire’s story will leave you inspired to make your wellbeing non-negotiable.

💜 Thank you for tuning in to Inner Alchemy: Transforming Self-Care into Global Sustainability.

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Transcript

Hi everybody, it's Wendy Gardner here, your host, and welcome to episode three of Inner Alchemy, where we explore the heart of Inner Alchemy, transforming self-love into sustainable empowerment. Today I'm truly honoured to be joined by the remarkable guest whose work embodies the power of compassion, resilience and meaningful change. My guest and friend is Claire Goodwin-Fee, a multi-award-winning psychotherapist, speaker, game-changer and author, and also a founder and CEO of Frontline 19, a vital service providing emotional support for NHS and frontline emergency services across the UK.

Claire's dedication to supporting those who care for others is both inspiring and urgent. But beyond her professional accolades, Claire is also a graduate of my I Am Me programme, where she embarked on her own journey of inner transformation, and actually I'd say reclaiming her power and embodying sustainable self-love. In this conversation, we'll explore the emotional reality for frontline workers and why compassionate support is crucial.

How self-love isn't a luxury, but a necessity for sustainable leadership and change-making. We're also going to look at Claire's personal journey through the I Am Me programme, and how it shaped her current work and her current why. And whether you're someone who serves others tirelessly, or leads big teams, or a leader navigating emotional complexity, or simply seeking to reconnect with your inner strength, this episode will remind you that caring for yourself is the first step to empowering others.

Let's dive in. So, Claire, what I'm really excited about you being here today is that I know, but I want the listeners to hear, that, you know, I know how important supporting the NHS and the emergency services through your Frontline 19 is both vital and deeply, deeply compassionate of what you're doing. But I want you to tell us, because it's really a beautiful story, of what inspired you to create that organisation.

It's funny, because when you think about it, it's love, really. My dad was very poorly back in 2018, and the staff at that point were just amazing. He was in a coma, and the care that they gave to me and to my family, I mean, at that time my son was a little tiny boy, he wouldn't eat because grandad was his best friend, and they took, you know, time out of their day to, I took him into intensive care and walked him around intensive care, and they showed him all the machines and things, and then after that he then started eating again.

And it was kind of this family, this warmth, this kind of dedication to the work that they do. And so fast forward just before the pandemic, I kept thinking about all these people in intensive care that had had such love for our family. And I know we weren't anything different from, you know, the thousands of people they must see, you know, throughout their careers.

But I kept thinking about who helps them, who supports them, who gives them that space, who loves them. And there was a particular guy called Paul, who was a young Irish guy working in this particular hospital who'd been part of my dad's team. And I kept thinking about him and one of the other doctors and thinking, I hope they're okay, like, who's going to look after them? And so I thought if I could utilise my own background as a psychotherapist and connect, you know, a small group of people, I'm laughing as I'm saying it now, a small group of people to some therapists that perhaps I knew to give them that space to process this very difficult situation they were going through, that would be amazing.

Little did I know. I started with an idea to help, I thought I'd help 50 people and at the time my stomach really hurt when I was like, well, 50's a lot of people. And the very first day I set up a little Facebook page and I pressed the button and 750 people came in and I thought, oh my gosh, what have I done? And then last August we hit over a million people.

Wow. And all of this has been born of a love for other humans, a love for other people that care about people, but also the love that they give to all the people that come into the services. And so, yeah, I think really looking back now, obviously we've got the anniversary of lockdown coming up and COVID and all that stuff, which always makes me feel emotional.

It's all about love really. I know that you have got your mission about love and kind of bringing that out into the world. But for me it's very similar, but just we come at it from very slightly different aims, which is beautiful.

I love it. Really beautiful. I mean, you are a very giving human.

I mean, when I first met you, Claire, I know. But the one thing that giving humans are usually not as great at as receiving, actually. And I know that you gave me the privilege of holding space for you during my I Am Me programme.

And I just wanted to ask you to share with us, how did that experience coming on that programme impact you? Because you're such a giver and I want you to tell us about how you're starting to receive. Oh, my gosh. Do you know what? And I think I said this to you.

The very last session that we did as a group, I wanted to start it all over again. It's been life-changing. And that sounds like a very flippant thing to say, and it generally isn't.

I connected to parts of myself that I didn't even know I had. I'm a mum. I'm a daughter.

I've been married. There's all sorts of different people around me. But I think even being a CEO, I'd lost that connection to looking after me.

And I would have said to you prior to going on your course, oh, I haven't got time for this and I don't have the time to think about anything else. But actually, I can't afford not to, because unless I look after me, things get completely lost. And since then, I've started to – I'm still a work in progress, but I've started to really work on me and to love myself.

And even on the days where things aren't perfect, to go, it's okay. This is just normal. And it's such a nourishing environment, and you've got such a beautiful, warm kind of – you hold space so warmly.

I mean, I remember the first session rocking up and thinking, everyone's going to think, why is this woman here? She's a psychotherapist. Why hasn't she got her shit sorted out? But, you know, none of us do. And I remember purposely sitting very quietly on the call and thinking, don't tell anyone what you do, because if you find out, they might think you're a wally, because, like, you should have this stuff.

And then there were these women that were, like, amazing at this and amazing at that and were, you know, big caught in our sight. You're in the right place, because actually, they're exactly the same. It's so true.

And I was definitely one of those hence why I do what I'm doing now. Because we go into – we do lots of leadership stuff and people stuff, and we very rarely go into self. And I've been, like you, over 30-odd years, you know, in business, blah, blah, blah.

And only, like, the last five years have I been really truly looking at self. And as you see, it's not one and done, right? This is like, oh, is there a way of life now? And I would – seriously, I won't just say this. I will absolutely do the course again at some point, because I think – when I think about the different hats that we wear as women, you know, I'm a CEO.

That can be really lonely at times. You know, I'm sitting there having to make major decisions. As you know, I have contact with the government.

I'm in and out of parliament all the time. I'll do TV shows, radio – you know, it's high pressure. And it's not always easy, and sometimes there are decisions that I have to make that don't sit comfortably with me.

And it's like, well – and then you come away from it, I think, oh, I don't feel great about that. Did I do the right thing? Am I, you know, then questioning yourself? And actually having the space to really – it's a little bit like stretching before you exercise. It is.

It's great. If you have the chance to – if you don't stretch before you exercise, you're going to end up sore and a bit stiff, and kind of possibly a bit burnt out later on down the line, because it doesn't – then exercise doesn't feel great. But if you can kind of prep into it and stretch and honour yourself and really love yourself – and genuinely, I remember sitting crying one day after one of our calls, thinking I've never loved myself, and I felt so sad that I'd not loved – and it's not about ego.

This is about saying I love me for who I am and for where I am right now. And whether that means you've got lumps and bumps that you'd rather not have or that, you know, you're not as organised as your next-door neighbour who irons their knickers every morning. You know, whatever the thing will be, you know, there's me running out the house with a protein bar, hanging out my mouth with probably, you know, one of them mum cups full of watercolour.

Come on, kids, hurry up! You know, with coats hanging off and dogs at my heel and all that. That's just life, and actually that's okay to be that way. But it's about grounding yourself first before – because life, that's real life, and we're in real life, right? But I think this brings me on really nicely to the next question is that, you know, because you're constantly giving yourself, as we just said, but what does sustainable empowering mean when it comes to that then? I love your concept, and I think you are a trailblazer with this.

When we think about sustainability, quite rightly we think about the planet and we think about, you know, our impact on the planet, and that can go through businesses and all sorts of things. But we also need to consider, not exclusively, but to consider about our own sustainability. I have never, ever thought of the concept of my own sustainability, like what keeps me going? Well, it's just what you do, isn't it? No, it isn't, actually.

And it makes me really angry for myself and other women to go, why do we not think about this? Why do we not think about – so we think about the planet and we recycle, you know, we do all these different things, hopefully, that kind of will start to turn things around. What about nourishing ourselves? What about our own sustainability? Why have we never even been thinking about this, or even no one's mentioned it? When you mentioned about sustainability as a human, it kind of blew my mind. And do you know what? It's really interesting because it seems to be getting a really good reaction, which kind of surprises me but doesn't, in that circle.

So I was invited on myself to another podcast as a guest, which was Curiosity, but Sustainable World, me and Curious. And they were saying to me, oh, you have a really unique point of view. I'd love you on that.

I'm like, what? Humans that are unique point of view? I just got really interested. We had academics on there. We had futurists.

And they were all saying how hard it was to be in the industry of sustainability because it's been like 25 years of hard knocks, and there's a lot of people who are actually depressed, believe it or not. This futurist said they were on antidepressants. And I was like, well, I guess what it is, is that what I did for a living before I did this was I actually used to be the voice of the customer.

I connected people to the technology that we were selling, connecting it to what their needs were. And I think that's a real opportunity for us to now connect with humans around sustainability, sustaining themselves, because you're out of a world to reflect your inner world. You're then going to understand why it's important to look after the rest of the earth, right? And cue that to something kind of like, of course.

No, but I can't. But particularly as women, and I don't know if that's because of menopause or I'm generally thinking about I've had a few life changes and different things going on, but I do think about, I remember someone saying to me once, what wedding dress did you dream of having as a little girl? And I kind of pulled her face. I thought, I never even thought about it.

And it's like, you know, someone else said to me, oh, but, you know, did you have the wedding that you wanted? I said, I didn't really ever want to get married. Well, why is that then? Well, because actually my background was quite interesting because my dad, believe it or not, was quite a feminist. So he taught me about woodwork.

He taught me about building things and kind of, he always said to me, you can do anything you put your mind to. It doesn't matter who you are or what, you know, he had two girls. He didn't have any sons.

But I never felt like a disappointment to them at all, particularly my dad. And so this concept that we're here to kind of facilitate other people's kind of journeys, but not look at our own. I mean, it blows my mind.

I mean, I'm a huge fan of the suffragettes and some of the things that they had to do to obviously, you know, get us to vote. So I always, always vote, even though I wouldn't say I've got a particular political home. But I just want to change the narrative around this.

And I think that young women and kids, and even I want to bring up my sons to be men that women run towards, not away from. And so I want them to, I had a conversation with my eldest, who's 10, and we were talking about superheroes. And he said, mummy, why are there not that many female superheroes? And I said, well, I think because the majority of people that draw them are guys.

And we had this conversation. He went, that's ridiculous. He went, and also the superheroes that are there, why have they all got skimpy clothing on? I said, what, the women? He went, yeah.

I said, well, again, I think you've got to look at who's doing the drawing. He went, if I ever become an illustrator, he said, my superhero will be a girl and she'll have jeans and a t-shirt on. Because he said, if you're going to kick down doors and fly through the air, that's much more comfortable than spandex.

I love that. But you know, it's really funny, because my son, who's now 18, when we were looking at schools and I wanted him to go to a co-ed school, like boys and girls, but actually he had to sit for a boys' school as well. And he got offers from both.

And I said to him, he was only seven, so similar age to your little ones. And I said, so which school would you like to go to? And he went, oh, I'll think about it overnight, because he loved the idea of being given. When he came down and he went, I want to go to the school he went to, which was BMS.

And I said, oh, why is that? And he went, well, because it'd be really silly to be in a school without girls. And I'm like, go boy, go boy. I mean, how lovely was that? At seven years of age, he had that attitude.

I think it's obviously because we're your son's mothers and we're advocating for women, right? Which is really cool. But going back to the suffragette thing, which I thought was lovely you mentioned that, because I've been asked to do a bit of a video to get people to a woman networking event. And I'm thinking about, you know, they want 100, they've got 50 signed up.

And I'm thinking, you know what? We take it for granted that we have the freedom to actually attend a networking event. And it's been pretty fun. And I thought one of the things I'd do in the little video was say, I want you to close your eyes and imagine it's 1905.

And you get in the car with your husband and the driver is taking you to your husband's place of work. And that place of work is actually the Houses of Commons. You go and get out of the car and you've got your prayer book in your hand and you're going to say, you say, goodbye, darling.

I'm going to go and pray now. Yeah, yeah. And they all turn up in the meeting rooms, all the wives, pretending to have their way of Bible class, but they're actually elevating the suffragette movement.

But they had to do that in secret. But it's crazy. But also, I do understand when we talk about sustainability, how people in that environment could probably get quite down about the work to be done.

And I kind of sometimes feel that way about females in the world. So I went to the House of Commons two weeks ago for a select committee thing. And we went in and as I was coming out, we were kind of a bit more of a leisurely walking out, I looked around.

Every single marble statue in there was male. Every picture was male. And I said to someone I was with, where is the suffragette statue that's in here? Because I know it's in here somewhere.

They said it was tucked away in a committee room. No. What? Why is it tucked away in a committee room? Why isn't it right out the front? Because actually that was a pinnacle moment for women to have the vote.

And then weirdly, Samantha, who works with me, we were chatting about what we're doing for the weekend, and she was going to the Suffragettes Museum. And I went, what? Where is that? I didn't know that was happening. Right.

And it's this little tiny museum. I forget the exact, I think it's up north. I want to say Manchester, but don't quote me on that.

Up north somewhere. And I was like, and she said, yeah, it's only open, I think, at the weekend or whatever, because obviously it's quite little. Why? And it's the actual buildings that they did the work and that they've got.

And you think, again, why is this place not rammed full of people? And I think going back to what you say, is because I think also, in the nicest possible way, we have to take responsibility for our own journeys. And so stop hiding your light under a bushel and going, oh, I'll take a look at that. You know what? Step up and go.

And so for now, so with your I Am Me course, I'm able to go, I've not got an ego about it because I don't, but I'm a CEO. I am a fundraiser. I'm a mother.

I'm a psychotherapist. I'm a partner. I'm a dog mum.

And you know what? A lot of those things I'm bloody good at, but I'm also a female and I'm a human and I deserve to be loved and respected and to have a seat at the table. And if I don't have a seat at the table, I'll make my own table. Yes.

And I totally agree with that. And you know what? We must start really unlocking our authentic voices. Yeah.

Being true to who we are. And it's really interesting because what I've noticed through the I Am Me courses I'm doing, there's been a lot of amazingly beautiful corporate women and they all struggle to really recommend the course. But it's bonkers because I've spent the last 20 years as a therapist, and within that space, my clientele is genuinely people that are very, very successful in their work.

But I call it the Russian doll syndrome. The outside looks amazing, all single dancing, and they're corporate this and that, and they march into rooms and they're really good. And you're like, wow, they're amazing.

And they'll do keynote speeches and all this stuff and they're sitting on the board and you're like, yes. But in their private lives, they struggle. They can't love themselves.

They've got a very internal critical dialogue and they need to learn how to have fun and to nourish themselves from inside as a human being. And so really, the inside is little and the outside is big. And so I've spent nearly 20 years working with people to do that.

And so why are we surprised by this? And you know what? It's really true. But I think we're asleep. Not asleep.

I think that's the wrong word to use. But I think we're almost just so immune almost to it because it's really interesting. Because I was the same.

I was always looking for external validation when I was in corporate for the last 30 years. I would always say, Claire, what do you think I should do? I mean, I didn't even apply for roles. I waited to be given roles.

And the last job I did was the only one I probably applied for, which is really weird in all that time. But you kind of gratefully receive things because you're working so hard to be included that you forget your sense of self. You start thinking you're at the gate.

Yeah, I think you do. And also, I think that it's very difficult because we have a big cancel culture. And there's a kind of a big conversation that I'm watching unfold on a particular professional social media platform.

We all know which one I'm referring to. And so somebody was talking about women's rights. And they were talking about someone had done a pamphlet saying people that give birth or something like that instead of saying women and people that give birth.

And I think it's like a lot of things. In order to get to a place where we can all be seen and heard, it's about having conversations openly but allowing that space to go, well, actually, I don't quite feel comfortable with that. Tell me a bit more about that.

See, I think one of my biggest skills is that if there's something that I'm not particularly keen on or I don't know, I will walk in there and say, can you help me to understand this? Now, I'm very honest. I'll say, I don't want to be converted. But I want strong opinions held loosely.

And I think that's where curiosity comes in, Claire. I think we've lost the scale of being curious. And so therefore, I totally agree with you because I remember I went to Africa last year.

And I had the most amazing time working with African women. And it was just so liberating for me to know that I can do this across cultures, across languages. But what was really interesting was I went to one of the kind of the sacred sites and the keeper of that site, he renamed me.

He gave me a new name. Did he? Enike. And I was really privileged to receive that.

And then all the elders on the trip kept calling me Enike. And I was really privileged. That's lovely.

I know. But it's really interesting, the difference. So I came back to England.

And I was speaking to a colleague of mine who was this beautiful black woman. And I said to her, I was so privileged. And she said, well, my name came from slave trade.

Ah, OK. I said, OK, can we have a conversation about this? Yeah. Because really and truly, we are not really open to having conversations.

No. And we should be having conversations. Because how am I going to realize that I have got a white privilege? Right? How am I going to realize that if nobody tells me? You know, and nobody shares those stories and how they feel about me saying that? Because I'm not saying it from a place of, I'm saying it from a place of ignorance because I was pleased to receive it.

I didn't know her history. So I think it's about us really being able to converse and talk to each other. About fear of being reprimanded or being called a racist.

Or getting it wrong. Or getting it wrong. And I think, and it goes both ways.

I remember when I trained, and I do talk about, I'm a white woman, I do talk about race with my clients. And I do have clients that are from all different backgrounds that are non-white. And I remember having a conversation one day and this new client had come to me and she was Asian.

And I said to her, look, I have to be very honest with you. This is the type of work I do. I said, however, you can see me, I'm very white.

I'm probably the whitest white person you've ever met. And she laughed. And I said, I can have an academic understanding of racism.

I'm never going to know what that feels like because it's never my story. I said, I work really hard to try and understand that. It was a bit like saying to somebody, oh, this is what the fur of a, I don't know, a bear feels like versus you touching it and having a very different experience.

And I said, so if there is a point where you feel that that is something you want to explore, then maybe we need to look at that point, getting another therapist to be on board with that. I said, because you deserve to not have to explain to me the nuances of who you are and your kind of history. And she said, oh, my gosh, you know what? You're the first person that's ever acknowledged that.

She said, because sometimes you don't need that person to know it. You want them to know what they don't know. Oh, how beautiful and how generous of her.

That's beautiful. But one thing I was going to ask you was, what advice, though, would you give to leaders who wanted to create meaningful change while still prioritising their emotional health? You have got to know yourself. If you want to create change in the world, whether it's in business, whether it's in, I don't know, philanthropy, whether it's kind of in your communities, you have got to know yourself.

I, over the last five years, I went through a huge stratospheric curve of change where I was, you know, one man band in private practice, doing my thing to being on TV programmes all around the world, writing books, being interviewed at the same time as Donald Trump, all sorts of stuff, right? It was, it's really quite out there. And what I have found through my journey as a human is that I need to understand who I am because at some points you get to the stage as a leader where you go, the train that I'm on is driving me and actually I need to be driving the train because if you don't, you're going to burn out. So you need to have an emotional intelligence, you need to have an awareness and an emotional literacy about who you are and what your impact is to the people around you, and also to the kind of bigger stages that you may or may not be involved in.

So, you know, spending time in any kind of reflective spaces like the RME programme, considering your different, the different parts that you have. You know, I think as again, you know, you've not asked me to say this, I genuinely feel this way, is that to take the time to reflect on and to reconnect to you makes me a better leader because I know what my internal voice is, I know what my gut instinct's saying. And I've sat in a room and as I said to you, you know, the other day I was sitting in the House of Commons and I've got bright red hair, I've got a bright green dress on and I look around me and everybody else in the room is wearing a dark suit.

And there were quite a few white guys there, middle-aged, and there were a few white women, but very kind of business-like, nothing wrong with that. And I've got, you know, neurotransmitter tattoos on my arm and I was kind of sitting there looking around thinking, I look very different here, like I don't look like all the rest of the people here. And I smiled to myself and I thought, good, because you know what? The Pankhurst didn't look like the people there and Mother Teresa didn't look like the people there.

So you know what? In order to have that courage to be who you are and step into your space, you have to connect to it. How can you make huge changes if you don't know who you are? Oh, absolutely. I completely agree with you.

One of the things I want to know is, if you were to give one gift of insight from your journey so far to someone struggling on the front lines right now, what would that be? You are worthy. And I get quite emotional about this. And this is my fire.

This is my fuel, what keeps me going. So recently NHS England, it was announced that they would be disbanded, abolished, whatever you want to call it. And people are like, great, this is brilliant, less bureaucracy.

All of the wellbeing leads sit in there at the moment. And then I did some more research and actually wellbeing leads have perhaps 20, 30, 40, 50,000 people that they're looking after, one person. They don't have the resources that they need.

And these are people that are seeing, these are the nurses that you see in A&E that we go, oh my gosh, I had to wait 17 hours. They work in that. It's abusive.

They get people that touch them inappropriately in a sexual way. They get violence. They get abuse.

They get racism. They get spat on. They don't have enough time to drink a sip of water because they're so busy.

They have to do what we all know about corridor caring, which actually isn't care, it's treatment, where you've got elderly people that are kind of laying on beds in hallways and stuff and corridors, having scans and stuff and really intimate stuff and toileting. It's incredibly heartbreaking to watch because it's really disrespectful to them and the staff. And these people are in that all the time.

And they all really try. And it's heartbreaking. And I don't care what you say.

Nobody goes into any kind of medical or helping profession to work in conditions where they don't get great pay, they get treated appallingly, not only by sometimes the people that use the services. And, you know, I kind of get it, but it's still not okay. But also the toxicity around the whole idea that somehow if you work in the health and medical professions that you should be okay with this.

Why should you? And I got burnt out during COVID several times because the stuff that I was seeing, and, you know, I sat with medics that died because they didn't have enough PPE. I sat with people that took their last breaths and I helped them say goodbye to their loved ones. Why should I be the type of person that, well, you should be okay with that? Why? No one should be okay with that.

It's very natural to have a response from that. And so if you're working on the front line and you're listening to this and you're struggling with, you know, well, this is an awful situation. It is, but that's not about you.

The conditions that you work in and the way that you're treated is not about your worth. You're worth so much more and there are people fighting. I will keep fighting until it changes, until we have proper training for mental health for frontline workers so they have the right resources to get support when stuff does happen, because it will happen.

That's natural. That's a very natural thing. I hope one day I have the pleasure and the privilege to say to you, Wendy, do you know what, Wendy? I'm bored.

I've done it. I've sorted it out. Now what? You know, I'd like to think that it can be done.

It can be done, but will it happen in my lifetime? I hope so, but I would love the chance to say to you, I've done it and now I'm bored. So how can we as a society then better care for those of us on the front line, you know? I know you're asking what you want to do, but how do we? What do you think of your opinion on that? So I think the next time you're sitting in the doctors and it's really difficult because they're running 90 minutes late, just gently think about maybe they're with somebody that's just lost their husband after 50 years. Maybe they're actually sitting in their office crying because they're so exhausted because they worked till 11 o'clock the previous night.

Maybe they've got a horrific chest infection. They've come into work because actually there isn't anybody else. And, you know, surgeries don't have the finances because they're not given them and they're, you know, then short-staffed and all this.

So just please just gently consider. And I know it's really hard, but just think about what it's like for them to be part of that process. And also we as humans have got quite short memories.

Cast your mind back to 2020 when we all sat at home and we looked out the window and there were people going to work, you know, not just medical people, but there were people going to work in conditions that were horrendous. And, you know, irrespective of what you think about it, we used to go out and we would let people know that we were grateful for them being there. So just consider they're still trying really hard and also they still have the effects of COVID now.

Post-traumatic stress, trauma, burnout, all of that lovely good stuff is coming up to the surface now. We're getting the highest rates we've ever seen. So if you want to help them, just consider them and, you know, donate to non-profits and charities like myself or other, you know, places.

There's other places like Frontline 19 that are out there, but just think about what it's like to be that person and walk in their shoes for a day. You know, I think you're absolutely spot on, having that empathy and that consideration and actually being compassionate and really putting, you really put yourself in their shoes I think is really important. I often try and say that to the children, my children, you know, you just don't know what somebody's gone through because we've been through a lot and nobody would know on the outside that we were, you know what I mean? Because we do, like you mentioned earlier, we've got all the bravado and all the nice clothes and what have you, but actually inside I was dying, do you know what I mean? And so there, but of course we always put our mask on, don't we? And I've shown what happens, you know, with these frontline workers.

They put their masks on to go to work, so to speak. Yeah, inside they're breaking. So just have some compassion.

Definitely, and I think it's very, and there's also a very toxic kind of vibe and attitude within healthcare about you shouldn't somehow be weak enough to need X, Y and Z. And again, that's another hurdle. So generally when people rock up to frontline and need a support, they're not in a great place. And I'm like, you can come before this, it's okay.

And, you know, we worked with people at the start of the pandemic and come back and I'll never forget this lady. I remember being on a radio interview and whilst I was on air, there was a nurse that was sitting in her car that was going to take her own life. And she messaged via the emails that we've got and said, I really, really need help.

And so I came off the call and one of my colleagues had caught it. And, you know, we work with volunteers and therapists that are just amazing. And we had them sitting this nurse in front of somebody within 25 minutes.

And she's still here now. And every now and again, I kind of check in with her and go, are you okay? And she's like, yeah, doing great, blah, blah, blah, whatever. But people don't need to be in that space before they give back to themselves.

So whether it's going on an I'm Me course and kind of giving yourself that nourishment or whether it's having counselling or, you know, taking some time out to do whatever you need to do, but trust in your instincts that actually a lot of the things that are happening around healthcare at the moment, it's not indicative of your own worth as a human being. It's about the society that we're in. It's a socialist organisation in a capitalist society.

And we need to make some decisions about where this sits. But the bottom line is that the NHS is the people. That's it.

And we have to look after the people. That's it. And I think the people, I mean, look, systems are people.

And systems to change, people have to change. And one of the simplest but not simplistic way for people to change is actually to find who they are and to start caring for themselves and giving themselves permission to do that, that it's not selfish and it's not like, you know, it's not creepy to love yourself. I mean, the amount of times you hear that word love sound really dirty and it's just not, it's actually essential.

But the thing is you wouldn't say, oh, I'm a bit ashamed, but I love my dog. Well, I wouldn't anyway. I'd be like, I love my dog.

She's amazing. They're just, I love her to bits. But I think there's this whole thing about ego.

No, if you, I am in love with who I am, that's different from saying, I love myself. I'm amazing. Actually, I love the person that I am right now.

The person that, you know, may have toothpaste caught on the top of their blouse one day or coffee. It doesn't matter. You are worthy of that love irrespective of where you're at in your journey.

And if being worthy of that love means that you go and do an hour course every week for six weeks with you and rediscover that bit of you so you can be, I'm a better mum, I'm a better leader, I'm a better dog mum, you know, since doing so, because I know who I am or I'm starting to really kind of embrace that. Yes. I have ADHD.

I am dyslexic. I am, you know, this person that is like a firecracker. I couldn't do what I do without the females around me.

And one of those is Samantha, who she's like the ying to my yang. I call her the mini boss. I come up with all the ideas.

And then by lunchtime, she's like, right, come on, Claire, we need to make sure that this, this, and this happens. How are we going to do this? And then I've got, you know, Lizzie and kind of Ness and other people that are around me that just bring so much vibrancy. But you need to know yourself before you can actually connect to people.

So with you and I, you know, Wendy, you have a richness and an amazing passion and compassion for other people, but you couldn't do that without knowing who you are. Oh, no. And that's like, I have to say, it's not always been that way.

You know, I've actually, it was through, obviously, a huge personal tragedy that I had to learn that, because actually I was very much conforming to the, you know, and not, it's not about male and female. This is the male energy. I was very much in the patriarchy, very much in the system, very much being successful within that.

I actually lost a complete sense of self through, or wouldn't even know who I was. Didn't even know what feelings were, to be quite honest. And I think, again, a really good tip for that is, I often say to people, get, you could do it with little, I don't know, you could do it with little pebbles and stuff, but little, just a bit of paper and sit and write out different emotional words.

If you go onto Google or search engine, you just put in, like, emotional words, and put them in a little pot and pull them out, and look at them and go, well, what's the difference between envy and jealousy? Do I know that? Where do I feel it in my body? I often do that with lots of clients. Well, do you know what's really interesting, you mentioned jealousy, because actually we've always been told that jealousy is a bad emotion. Yeah.

But actually, what jealousy tells you is what you desire, you know? So if you flip it and go, well, why am I jealous? Well, because I really want that. Oh, God, I want something. Well, I know that I want that, so let me go for it.

No, no, really, these things can give you huge insights to yourself. If you don't know, there's no emotions that are bad. It's about what you then do with them.

So if I'm jealous of somebody that, I don't know, is doing something, oh, I want to do that. Okay, use that to fuel yourself. So don't destroy that person, but use that energy to fuel yourself to go, right, I'm going to find out how they did that.

And maybe I might contact somebody on LinkedIn and go, I love what you're doing. I'd love to be able to do that. Would you mind telling me how, you know, what your journey was to this point? So you use it as fuel rather than destroying somebody else because they're doing great stuff.

So you need to know who you are, how you feel, and kind of, you know, connect deeply to that kind of inner world of yourself before you can actually really, I think, be a proper success. And success looks different for lots of different people, but you can't do it if you don't know who you are. And also, you know, we work all the time from our brains, not our own sight, like our heart, from our brains, but we never update the blinking software of our memory.

We update our phone, we update our computer. When was the last time you updated stuff about your beliefs or what you know? Very rarely do you update that. And I think it's something that we should get into more practice around because there's a lot of stuff that we stop ourselves doing because we just don't believe we're worthy.

Do you know what I mean? And that's not always true. It's just stuff we've been told, isn't it? Yeah, and I kind of go back to firm beliefs held softly or kind of a variation of that. I forget who said it in the first instance, but I think it is about thinking.

First, we've got to be aware of what you're thinking and where you're at and then be open to the possibility that things may change. Yeah. Because it is important that actually you don't just get stuck on one idea.

I mean, I'm never going to change my mind that dogs are awesome. I agree with you. But I'm open to understand how people may not believe.

Obviously, they're wrong. Of course, they're wrong. But, you know, joking aside, but it is about I'm curious about everything and I want to understand why people feel the way that they do.

Now, in order to feel confident to walk into those spaces, can you help me understand your position with this? Because I think a lot of times people don't want to have those conversations because they're fearful of, you know, what if I get into a situation I don't know how to get myself out of or what if this, what if that? And you're frightened of how the other person perceives something. I think there's a great richness in that gap between how we feel and what the other person feels and that knowledge to have that conversation. Will I walk away from it going, yeah, they're right, dogs are rubbish? No, of course I'm not.

But what I will walk away with is the knowledge that actually I now understand how they feel and it may be super interesting. Again, I may not agree with it or even like it, but isn't it cool that I get to know that? But, you know, what's really interesting is I actually, just for our listeners, I didn't, I had to learn to be curious because I was so in the system, right, and I was so driven by targets and so driven that actually sometimes I forgot to take people with me and to be curious about what their views and opinions were. Well, of course.

What I had to learn was how to be curious. And so what I learned was, and this was like through coaching, was that the word, the thing that works for me is before I went into a meeting, I'd always say, I'm going to be curious. Yeah.

By doing that, it meant I was in a much more open and, you know, exploring with people as opposed to just pushing my ideas to get my job done and to get my target and my goal achieved. And so actually you can learn to be curious by being conscious, and I think that's a really important thing. And it's what happened to me.

And I often do it even now. I'm like trained in it now. I'll go, I'm going to be curious.

So when I got a call with Claire, I'm going to be curious. Do you know what I mean? As opposed to just bombarding you with all my news, which I was proud of doing. But it's enriching, isn't it? Because there comes a time when you think, oh, I'm bored of hearing my own story.

It's like, I don't really want to talk about that. I want to know what you're doing. And I kind of chuck a few hard.

I said, well, tell me about your, okay. But I think it's that curiosity and that enrichment. But if you don't feel confident or aware of where you're at, you probably wouldn't go into that space because you're too busy thinking, well, what would they think about this? Or what would they think about me? It doesn't matter.

I think some of the best conversations I've had were with people that are very humble, very down to earth. And they've done probably amazing things, but they just, that's not their starting point. It's about you as a human being.

And I remember I had a conversation with somebody the other day and I really giggled. And I was a, I don't know if I was a bit naughty, but this person said it was funny because, well, you can have fun with it. Right? So there was this situation and I mentioned something and they said, oh, look, when you've been qualified for a long time, you'll find that you'll learn so much from da, da, da, da.

And I said, oh, okay. I said, well, how long would I have to be qualified as a therapist for that then? And this person said, oh, you know, at least two or three years. I said, oh, okay.

Two or three years. Right. Yeah.

And they said, and how long have you been qualified now? I said, oh, this year will be 21 years and just smiled at them. And I said, but the difference is I'm still open to the knowledge exchange. And the difference is I know that even students, the same as even really experienced people bring something to the table.

It's like a buffet. Everybody brings something different. We can all learn from each other.

If you just drop the pretense and the kind of arrogance and the ego and say, I want to learn from, I learn when I have supervision students who are training therapists, I love working with them because I learn so much from them. And they always go, oh, thank you so much. And I'm like, no, let me tell you, I'm grateful to you because you're teaching me.

And that's what the world should look like. And even children. You can learn so much from children.

They tell you so much. And we just dismiss them all the time. So Claire, I'm going to bring us to a conclusion.

I can go, you know, you and I probably would have an episode two of this because we've got so many wonderful things to always talk about. And it's always a privilege to be in your company. But if you were to use, thank you, darling.

If you were to use one word to describe your current learning, like through loving yourself, what would you use to describe yourself at the minute? Oh, see, just one word. I'm going to have to squash them all together. Just a cheat.

What would I say? I'm happy. And I'm discovering who I am. And I love it.

And I don't always get it right. I make some horrendous mistakes, but I have fun doing it. But the bottom line is I don't beat myself up after it.

I might have a little think about it and think, okay, what could I learn from that? But I'm an imperfect human living my life. And you know what? That's fucking awesome. As far as I'm concerned.

You're perfectly perfect. I love that. And Claire, obviously there's going to be information on here around Frontline 19 and how people can connect with you and how we can help you with your mission.

And I want to say a huge, huge thank you for you showing up here today to help, you know, advance yourself and your mission and my mission. And also just being a great mentor, friend, and absolute awesome business woman. So thank you.

Aw, thank you so much. It's been an absolute pleasure, Wendy. Thank you.

Well, what an incredible conversation. And thank you, Claire. You know, Claire's work with Frontline 19 is a powerful reminder that sustainable empowerment begins within.

And that those who care for others also deserve to be cared for. Claire's journey through the I Am Me program shows us that when we reclaim our self-love, we gain the capacity to lead, heal, and serve with greater strength and authenticity. You know, as you reflect on today's episode, I'd like you to ask yourself, how can I begin to prioritize my own emotional well-being while still showing up powerfully for others? If Claire's insights resonate with you, share this episode with somebody you care for.

And consider how you too can embrace your inner alchemy. To learn more about Frontline 19 or to support their essential mission, check out the links attached. And again, please follow us, subscribe, and give us your feedback at ohanafoundation.com. Until next time, remember, you caring for yourself is not just an act of love.

It's a source of power. Take care. Goodbye.

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Inner Alchemy, transforming self-care into global sustainability. Now, remember, subscribe and follow us to stay updated. And if there's a topic that you'd like us to explore, please let me know.

To learn more about collaborating with me or initiatives at Ohana Foundation, visit our website, ohanafoundation.com, or connect with me on LinkedIn. You know, your engagement fuels our mission to empower self-love and global sustainability. Until next time, take care and nurture your inner alchemy.