Heal – Laugh – Live

Never let anyone or anything keep you from your dreams

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Clare L Campbell is a published author, writer, and advocate with decades of experience working across government, policy, and community services. Her professional expertise sits alongside a deeply personal journey that includes surviving domestic violence, navigating serious health challenges, rebuilding after trauma, and rediscovering herself as a woman, mother, and partner and then soon to be divorcee in midlife.
Her writing blends warmth, humour, and historical context with a trauma-informed lens, allowing her to speak to complex issues in ways that are deeply relatable and accessible. Clare brings an authentic voice to the page – one that acknowledges life’s hardest truths while pointing toward resilience, healing, and hope.
This is not her first book. But this memoir/self help guide is written for midlife women facing the challenges that this period brings and supports and guides the reader through the journey of learning the art of ‘Putting Me First’.
‘Putting Me First – The Reckoning, The Reconciling and Rebirthing will also resonate with readers who enjoy memoirs that offer both honesty and uplift. It bridges self-help and memoir, offering practical strategies without sacrificing story, warmth, or humour.
We are in the middle of a cultural shift. Women are no longer willing to disappear quietly as they reach midlife. Conversations about perimenopause, menopause, mental health, trauma, and the reinvention of self are gaining momentum, but there is still a gap for books that combine lived experience with compassion, insight, and practical tools.
Putting Me First fills that space. It acknowledges the pain, the exhaustion, and the invisible labour carried by so many women, while providing hope, laughter, and strategies for beginning again. It is timely, necessary, and deeply human.
Written with warmth, humour, and a trauma-informed lens, the book blends personal narrative with psychological insight, cultural context, and practical reflection exercises. It speaks directly to women in their thirties, forties, fifties and beyond who are ready to stop living as an afterthought in their own lives and start putting themselves first as they navigate, empty nest, lost love, perimenopause, menopause and the promise that they could have it all was hollow and left an entire generation of women feeling unfulfilled and unsatisfied.
At its heart, the book is about resilience and renewal. It acknowledges the chaos and pain of lived experience, while celebrating the possibility of rebirth – of living boldly and unapologetically in midlife and beyond.

The future awaits…

Hello World!

This is the beginning of my journey into a brand-new life at midlife, aged 54, following the separation and end of a 25 year marriage and will explore and capture all the adventures as I navigate this brand-new beginning and take on the world with a new positive mindset, a bright future ahead, and I can’t do attitude that absolutely anything is possible for me now.

My memoir/self-help guide Putting Me First – The Reckoning, The Reconciling and Rebirthing, once eventually published, hopefully in late 2026 will give you an insight into my journey this past 54 years, how I became who I was and the transformation that has taken place over this past 18 months and has led to the new version of me that now has a sense of self-worth, a genuine belief in my value, and a strong set of boundaries about what I will and will no longer accept in my life.

For the very first time I have standards, expectations and aspirations for myself which are non-negotiable nor up for compromise.

So if you’re ready for an exciting ride of extraordinary new experiences and learning opportunities, then please join me on this journey which begins very, very soon with the most dramatic of transformations and life changes and which I hope to share with you as I navigate every aspect the good, the bad, the ugly and most importantly the incredible.

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