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…

Arrival

It’s rainy and 3 degrees, but I’ve never been so happy, excited, inspired and full of anticipation as I am in this moment as the plane makes its final moments of descent into my new life.

Everything has changed not just around me, but inside of me. From broken, lost, unsure of either my place or value, here I am having chosen and navigated my way into a whole new world of possibilities and my future has never looked so bright, despite the bleak weather.

I already have plans for a catch up with a newly married friend, soon relocating to Germany to join their partner, for an aperol spritz amongst the magnificence that is Tuscany in the future. 

I managed a few hours sleep on each leg of the flight, hopefully enough to get me through the day and the immediate tasks at hand like getting a local number, opening a bank account and picking up some essential supplies for at least tonight, then starting fresh tomorrow. 

I honestly cannot believe I have taken on this momentous challenge and achieved it, with the support of some very special people in my life who have done everything from picking me up after surgeries, to driving me to the airport, and just emotionally supporting and encouraging me every step of the way. My love to each and every one of you. 

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