Why I Call It Reclaiming (Not Confidence)

People often assume "The Reclaimed Woman" started as a nice bit of branding. It didn't. It started with dog and a campervan.

“Betty and me, somewhere the middle of starting again - no real plan for what came next, just taking life one day at a time.”

Two years ago, I left a relationship that was quietly costing me myself. I moved out, and for a while, I didn't have a proper home.

I camped. I stayed with friends. I stayed with family. I remember lying in that tent at 57, everything I owned reduced to what would fit in a car, having absolutely no idea what came next. It wasn't dramatic.

It was just quiet, and a bit frightening, and strangely still.

Somewhere in the middle of it, I remember thinking: this isn't how my life is supposed to look right now. I should be settled by now.

That thought didn't help. But it was honest.

The part nobody warns you about

What I didn't expect was how much the practical side would frighten me. Not the heartbreak of leaving — the money.

Would I actually be okay?

Could I build something at my age, starting again, more or less from nothing?

I was working at the college at the time, and I applied for a full-time role in apprenticeships and assessing.

Not because I felt ready. It wasn't really about the job title or the promotion that came a few months later.

It was what the job meant — the first time in a long while I could properly breathe.

The first time the fear in my chest quietened enough for me to think about something other than survival.

“A new chapter beginning - the job that gave me the security to stop surviving and start thinking what I wanted next.”

Why "reclaiming" and not "confidence"

I used to think what I was chasing was confidence. Looking back now, I can see why I had to walk through it the way I did — confidence was never really the point.

It's what turns up afterwards, once you've done the harder thing.

What I was actually doing was reclaiming.

Taking back the pieces of myself that had quietly gone missing over years of relationships, responsibility, and trying to be who everyone else needed me to be.

My sense of what I actually want, rather than what I'd settled for. My belief that I get to decide what the next chapter looks like — even at 58, even starting from a tent.

I stopped living by default and started living by design.

That's the shift, really. Not becoming someone new — just finally building a life that belonged to me.

It felt like a spiritual journey. I won't try to explain that any further than that.

“Reclaiming felt like planting a flag in the ground and saying: this is my life!”

The flag

When life began to settle again — flat, job, a life I'd actually chosen rather than fallen into — it felt like planting a flag at the top of a mountain.

Like reaching a summit I genuinely wasn't sure I'd survive climbing.

That's where "reclaimed" comes from, for me. It's a flag in the ground.

I wouldn't choose to live through that time again. But I wouldn't erase it either.

If you're somewhere in the climb right now

If you're in the frightened middle of your own version of this — the not-knowing, the money worry, the "I shouldn't be here at this age" voice — I'm not going to tell you it's not wasted, or that everything happens for a reason.

I don't know that.

What I do know is that I'm sitting here now, on the other side of my own Campervan, more grateful than I've ever been for what it taught me about what I actually need and want my life to feel like.

Maybe that's true for you too, further down the road.

You don't need to know the whole route.

You just need to let yourself want something different — and let yourself imagine it.

That's where reclaiming actually begins.

“Turns out, the other side of the climb looks a lot like coming home to yourself.”

This story became something bigger 💗

Much of what I learned during that time — about losing yourself, starting again, learning to trust yourself and choosing what you want the next chapter of your life to look like — eventually became The Reclaimed Woman™.

It's the book I've been writing for the woman who has spent years being everything to everyone else and has quietly started wondering:

I don't want the next twenty years to look like the last twenty.

It's not about blowing your life up or becoming somebody completely different.

It's about finding your way back to yourself — and deciding, perhaps for the first time in a very long time, what you want your life to look like.

The Reclaimed Woman™ is coming soon.

💗 Join the waitlist and I'll let you know when it's ready.

With love,
Nicky ❤️