About Me
Hi, I’m Lorraine
Chronic illness doesn't just change your body.
It quietly rewrites your identity.
Especially when you’re someone who was ambitious. Driven.
Someone who had a clear sense of what you wanted from your life and the ability to go and get it.
And then the rules changed — and nobody gave you a new playbook.
Needing to reclaim my power is a lesson I learned the hard way
In 2009 I was diagnosed with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis, a chronic neurological illness that causes multi-systemic symptoms, which for me most affects my respiratory, nervous, cognitive, and immune systems.
There were ten of us in the room that afternoon….
3 have since taken their own lives
4 are completely housebound with full-time carers
2 struggle with most daily tasks
I’m the one living a full life. Running marathons. Maintaining a demanding career. Running a coaching business.
I don’t tell you that because I think I made better choices than anyone else in that room. Chronic illness does not work that neatly. I tell you because I know how radically a diagnosis can alter the shape of a life, and because I also know that the future is not always visible from the day you are diagnosed.
I’m not telling you that to perform resilience, or to turn illness into a morality tale. I’m telling you because I know this territory from the inside, and because I believe your diagnosis does not get to make every decision about what comes next.
Your diagnosis does not revoke your ambition.
It just demands a different strategy.
I also didn’t really tell people I was sick as I didn’t want to be judged
I can’t even begin to explain the shame of no longer being able to remember things;
or needing to cancel so many plans at the last minute because I was unable to get out of bed.
I tried to keep pushing myself the same way I always had done.
I tried to make the old rules work. And I paid for it repeatedly.
It wasn’t strength. It was strategy built for a body I no longer had.
You don’t have to feel this way.
I thought I was doing ok, and then, I had a relapse.
I realised I had to develop new ways of managing work and life, but there was nothing available to help me. I was still bumping up against all those nos.
So I found my own way. I listened to the voices of my mind and body, and not to the voices of other people. It wasn’t, and sometimes still isn’t always easy.
But easy doesn’t mean ease. It’s not all or nothing. Living life and recovery live side by side.
Healing is messy, with ups and downs, and finding the resilience to say I want to try again, how can I do it differently.
I found simple ways to support my mindset, my movement, my energy. Ways to reduce mental and physical fatigue. All to ensure I stay in the best shape that my illness and broken brain allow.
I realigned and reclaimed my choice, my confidence, my power, and my joy.
Taking that chance on myself after diagnosis, to ignore what doctors and others were saying about what I could and couldn’t do, to find my own limits and not be limited by them, was an enormous, powerful leap of faith.
It’s one I keep choosing to make today.
My journey is what I developed into my SHIFT to Alignment programme
It’s not a list of things to fix. It’s a path back to yourself, one that accounts for your actual capacity, not the capacity you used to have.
And it works in layers. Just like the proverbial onion. There will always be another layer to work through. That’s not failure. That’s what real, lasting change actually looks like.
It isn’t linear. Life changes, capacity changes, and sometimes you return to an earlier phase with new information. That isn’t regression. It’s part of the work.
Let's find alternative solutions that fit for you and your life.
Ones you can sustain.
Tools you can use time and time again for when another layer of the proverbial onion comes off.
Different didn't have to mean worse. It just had to be different.
Education:
In my 30s I decided I finally wanted to do my psych degree, but half-way through I got too sick and my Neurologist gave me a choice of doing it all, or picking a headstone. I was on track for a first, too. *sighs* So, again, I found a new way
- Certified Body Healing Coach
- Certified Diet and Nutrition Advisor
- Certified EFT practitioner
- ME/CFS awareness diploma
- Gut-Brain connection diploma
- Energy anatomy diploma
- ICF Accredited Coach
- The Coaching Academy Certified
- 25+ years experience as trainer and coach
- Project Manager, US Law Firm
I am a back-of-the-pack runner, and a New York and Berlin marathon finisher, despite losing track of how many times I was told I’d never be able to run again.
When I’m not working with clients or doing the day job, you’ll find me testing recipes, exploring nature with my partner and dog, out for a run, lifting weights, or curled up on the sofa with a good book and a big cup of coffee.
Life in Align exists because I get it. I’ve been there. Sometimes, I’m still there.
Chronic illness changes the rules. It doesn’t erase what you want from your life.
Life in Align exists for women who want to build a life that works with their body rather than against it, without treating ambition, joy or what comes next as things they have to surrender.
You’re still in there.
Not as a version of you that has to be recovered exactly as she was, but as the part of you that still gets to choose, want, adapt, change and become.
If this resonates, there isn’t one correct place to begin.
If you’re not sure what you need yet, “Start Here” will help you choose the route that feels most useful now.
