When Is Enough Enough?

"I am overwhelmed by what I’ve achieved. I don’t quite believe it myself..."

I wrote that sentence recently, in a moment of rare honesty with myself. And then I sat with how strange it felt to write it.

Because for most of my adult life, 'enough' was a moving target.

Sound familiar?

I spent a decade working in broadcasting. Radio, TV, drama, documentary making, specialist music shows, live breaking news…

I loved it. I worked hard. Really hard.

I held multiple jobs at once to fund my own degrees, chased opportunities to work worldwide. Even won a journalist of the year award from The Guardian. By most measures, I was doing well.

But there was another track running underneath.

A quieter one. A voice that said: Not yet. Not quite. Nearly, but not enough...

At some point - and I won’t dress it up - things got very hard.

With £25k of debt, I carried shame and fear. Some days I didn't have enough money for food or the bus to work.

And yet I was performing competently 'on air' while quietly falling apart behind the scenes.

For years I was struggling, and working in an environment that ground me down.

Enough, at that point, meant: 'survive today'.

In 2017 I made a decision that terrified me. I left the security of permanent employment to explore what running my own business might look and feel like. I had no guarantee it would work. I just knew that something had to change.

What followed is 9 years of experimentation that I could never have predicted or planned.

Hundreds of podcast episodes. International documentaries. Sound art exhibitions. Visualised podcasts as films. Smart speaker apps...

I've followed threads without always knowing where they led.

I've said yes to things that scared me, and learned from the ones that didn’t work out.

And slowly, quietly, I found my way back to music.

Alongside years of therapy - real, difficult, necessary therapy - I came to understand that music had been the key to my healing all along.

Sound does something that words alone can’t always reach.

It bypasses the part of your brain that’s busy being capable and organised and fine, and goes straight to the part that just feels.

The nervous system doesn’t lie. You can tell yourself you’re okay. But your body usually knows otherwise.

This is what drew me to sound therapy.

So when did enough become enough? The morning I realised I wasn’t running from something anymore - I was running towards it.

Enough stopped meaning have I done enough to justify my existence today?

It started meaning something else.

More like: I have what I need. I am safe. I am loved. This is enough.

And now - and I say this with genuine wonder - it's an honour to share this with others.

To sit with someone in a sound bath and watch their nervous system remember how to rest.

To offer a guided meditation to someone who has forgotten what stillness feels like, because the world has been very loud for a very long time.

When someone exhales and you can feel the room shift.

That’s more than enough.

That’s what inspires me today.