I was a young twenty-year-old who had not figured life out yet. My son arrived and gave me purpose. In many ways, that’s where my story begins.
By the time Lewis was three, I was a single mother living above a convenience store that I was managing. I was struck down by glandular fever, which cost me my job and, by default, my home. I had to find a way to get well and build a new direction for us both.
That period taught me that the basics matter. Before anything else, you need to be strong. Navigating serious illness, finding a new source of income and securing a new home as a single mother was a tough lesson in foundations.
My immediate fix was to make lunches for a local building site. Over the following ten years, I grew that into a food production business supplying hospitals, schools, airlines and independent retailers across the region. During this time, I met and married my first husband and became stepmother to two more children. Life was full. When the marriage ended, the business was broken up and sold.
We had to start again. Again.
I then consulted on the reopening of a small manor house in West Sussex and discovered a passion for hospitality. That path opened a world that I grew to love. By then I was living in Arundel, thriving in my work, spending time in America, and embracing opportunities to travel that I could never have imagined years earlier.
Then COVID arrived. I went from a highly social existence to being entirely alone in lockdown. It was one of those periods that changes how you see things. During the intermittent lockdowns and reopenings that followed, I started dating Charles, now my husband. We married and moved to Dubai, where I continue to lead strategy and planning across EMEA.
All of that is the lived experience behind The Burr Method. Not theory. Not research. Recognition of patterns from a life that has asked me to keep every part of it in check, in the challenging times and the good ones.
I am blessed with a large family: a wonderful son, three beautiful grandchildren, and two stepchildren through my marriage to Charles. I also gained a sister-in-law who is quite possibly my soul sister: the most unexpectedly precious thing to come from becoming a Burr.