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…

New Beginnings

So today a whole new start begins, a new place, new start. I get to see and experience the world with fresh eyes and a renewed heart, soul and spirit.

I’m leaving behind a metaphorical pile of baggage and weight I’ve been carrying for far too long. It has no place on this new journey.

This new life is all about lightness, joy, happiness, harmony and freedom and I am embracing it with every inch of my being.

Although there are a few practicalities to be worked through during the day, this afternoon I literally start moving toward an entirely new life. One that I chose and can truly call my own.

One in which I am the master of my own destiny, the decision maker, the judge and the jury, choosing what I think and feel not what other want or expect me too.

It is truly liberation day, but I wouldn’t be being honest if I didn’t share that there are nerves and some anxiety.

Flying always triggers this, but this trip, this is the biggest of my life. My meeting with my true, most authentic self and allowing her to just be.

That level of freedom is scary because with it comes absolute accountability for if it all goes wrong, but I already know that’s not going to be the case.

This is my calling, my yearning, my destiny, all awaiting me on the other side and that can’t possibly be anything but exactly right.

So here’s to living life to its fullest, freeing yourself from others expectations, letting go of everything that’s been holding you back and finally Putting Yourself First.

Love

Clare xoxo

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