About Anna

I built the life I was supposed to build. Thirty years of marriage, children, a career, a worldview that felt complete. And then, in my early fifties, everything fell apart.

Divorce, redundancy and having to sell my home. So I packed a bag and went to Nepal, alone, to answer the question, what now?

What followed was a decade of genuine searching. Buddhism found me in the mountains. I came home and trained as a mindfulness teacher, working with people living with terminal illness and in bereavement — people facing things far harder than anything I had encountered, and doing so with a presence and courage that changed how I think about being alive.

I wrote a book. I kept searching. I found myself, of all places, sitting in a vicar's living room on Thursday evenings, passing a bowl of sweets around with a group of strangers who were slowly becoming friends.

All of that searching turned, eventually, into the work I do now.

I'm a published author, a former mindfulness teacher, and someone who has spent the last several years thinking seriously about what it means to live well in the second half of life. Not with a bucket list. Not with false optimism. With honesty about what this stage actually asks of us and what it makes possible.

Every Thursday I write one honest reflection on meaning, identity, and how to live well as we grow older. If that's the conversation you've been looking for, you're in the right place. Subscribe here.

If you'd like somewhere to start, I've put together a list of my favourite books that can help us rediscover purpose as we grow older. Get it here.

— Anna