ep 46: The Affair Wasn't the First Sign Something Was Wrong
I want to take you back to 2019. Sat in Homerton Hospital, in the fertility department with my then husband next to me. Signing the consent forms for IVF.
And the whole time, I was carrying the secret that I had been unfaithful to him.
That moment, I can see now, contained the whole story. Because I was sitting there trying to create life whilst being completely disconnected from my own.
The irregular periods, the fertility struggles, the rage at my own body for not doing what I needed it to do - I thought that was the problem. I thought my body was failing me. But what I understand now is that my body wasn't failing me at all. It was trying to get my attention. It had been trying to get my attention for years.
The affair wasn't the first sign something was wrong - It was just the loudest one.
In this episode, I share what was really going on underneath the high-achieving, always-pushing, never-needing version of me that walked into that hospital. The woman who went to IVF appointments alone because asking for support felt weak. Who was so disconnected from her own emotions that she didn't even know she was carrying grief. Whose body was screaming, and who had no idea how to listen.
And I share what happened when I finally did.
In this episode, we explore:
The moment in Homerton Hospital that I can now see contained the whole story
Why the woman who can fix anything - organise a crew to the North Pole in three days (!) - couldn't fix her own menstrual cycle, and what that was really about
How living almost entirely in masculine energy showed up in my body, my relationships, and eventually, the affair
Why I went to IVF appointments alone, and what I now know that version of me actually needed
The connection between emotional numbness and fertility struggles that nobody was telling me about
What it means that my cycle became regular after eight months of deep emotional work, and why I'm more fertile at 43 than I was at 34
How the affair, the infertility, the exhaustion - none of it was the beginning. All of it was the body sending the same message, louder and louder
The question I never once stopped to ask myself: how am I actually doing?
What it feels like to stop trying to force and control, and surrender instead
If this episode landed
If you recognised yourself in the pushing. In the never slowing down. In the part of you that had built an entire identity out of being the one who didn't need anything - until something cracked open and demanded to be heard.
The Sanctuary is my private, ongoing community for women in the aftermath of an affair. Not a programme. A room of women, carrying what you're carrying, where you get to be completely honest, to say what's actually happening and to begin to listen to yourself again, surrounded by women who just get it.
Because after my affair, as I started this, there was nowhere for me to take any of this. I built The Sanctuary because that place needs to exist.
