I’ve spent almost thirty years telling other people’s stories—helping individuals and organisations, museums and exhibitions, to connect with an audience using time-worn storytelling techniques.

I was just where you are a few years ago. When friends and colleagues shared memories and stories from their past, I fell silent. The more energy I put into helping others tell their stories, the more unseen I felt. The more I realised I had no access to my own stories. I was blocked.

Ten years ago, I packed my life into boxes and moved from the urban hustle of London to the seaside stillness of the English south coast. I loved being by the sea. I loved our new home. But I never had the space to unpack my books, my photos and much of what made me me.

Without easy access to my own personal archive, I lost my already tenuous connection to my own memory.

I felt adrift. And I stopped writing anything that wasn’t for clients or for work.

Three years later, my partner gifted me a wall of bookshelves. I spent days unpacking, sorting and filing my books and my memories—finding snippets of myself in every object, image and note.

I found my creative art school self in old drawings and sketchbooks—my academic post-grad self scribbled in the margins of old ecology text books; my independent young adult working self in old calendars and notebooks—and a mishmash of memories from pre-teen to young adult in a forgotten photo album.

I started to write again—short pieces inspired by old photos and drawings. This new habit of focusing on my own needs made it easier to take notice of what was right in front of me. I started writing small observations about the garden and my daily walks. And I started to take photos again—adding to my memory bank for the future.

Gradually, I recovered many of the insignificant days and small moments which collectively add up to me.

But more than that, I started to consciously examine my relationship with my memories. I began to question some of what I’d been told was me. And I discovered that the me I’d been trained to be was no longer the me I either wanted or felt myself to be.

In time, I discovered a new version of me. One who, even before the move from city to seaside, before she packed herself into boxes, had been hidden under layers of expectation, guilt and obligation.

The unearthing helped me to rediscover moments of joy from my life—past and present—and realise where a lot of my old, unhelpful stories came from.

The Memory Mine is a gentle journey through that process.

The background, the content, the tools it contains, come from my years of experience of storytelling in different mediums. And from my personal struggle to access my own memories.

I will always be a curator of other people’s stories. I find great joy in that role. But that joy is immeasurably greater now that I also have the tools to share my own voice. Now I have the tools not only to say “me too” but to show “me too” and to guide by example.

Which is where The Memory Mine comes in.

This course is where I bring those two parts of myself together—the storyteller and the story facilitator—and offer everything I’ve learned to you.