Thresholds have shaped almost all of my adult life. I have changed countries, homes, careers, relationships and directions more times than I can count — often leaving one life before I could clearly see what would replace it. For many years, I was also the person encouraging others to take the leap: the wild voice saying that if something no longer felt alive, perhaps it was time to move.

Long before thresholds became the centre of my work today, I was already working with them. In my early thirties, I created Open Platform, a programme for young people questioning conventional career paths. I later founded Transition Mentoring, and for a time coached with an organisation called Crossing Thresholds. Looking back, the thread is almost comically clear.

What I understand differently now is that crossing a threshold well is not simply about having the courage to jump. I always knew fear was there, but I was much more identified with the part of me that knew I had to move. I had not yet learnt how to remain present to both — the knowing that something must change, and the part that is frightened, grieving, angry, doubtful or simply not ready to trust what comes next.

Midlife has deepened that understanding. I am less interested now in encouraging anyone to leap, and more interested in creating the conditions in which we can listen closely enough to recognise our own movement when it comes. Not overriding fear. Not allowing fear to run the whole story. Not romanticising the unknown. And not demanding certainty before we move.

This is the place from which I hold The Threshold Years: not as someone standing on the other side with the answers, but as a woman with a long and lived relationship to crossing — and an increasing respect for everything that needs to be met along the way.