Heal – Laugh – Live
Never let anyone or anything keep you from your dreams
about
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.
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This morning (very bloody early I might add, here in the UK) our house sold, which means I’m another step closer to finally being free and clear to really start living this new life, this fresh start and this whole new beginning. It feels like a huge hurdle has been overcome and a tremendous weight…
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I managed to stay awake for my first day after arriving, although it was a very early night that followed. But I achieved some key things that afternoon that I needed to get off my to do list as part of the settling in process. After a good nights sleep, (note to self, buy ear…
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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…
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And so after a long road of health battles, hurt and healing tonight I step fully and wholeheartedly into my new life with a passion, excitement and enthusiasm for life I have never experienced before. All my hopes, dreams, aspirations and desires lie on the other end of this flight as I open myself up…
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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…
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Been broken, been isolated. Now I’m ready to rise and trust that the path ahead is the destiny that has been quietly calling to me all along, I just had never allowed the silence to descend long enough to hear it. Ready for all the blessings I know are coming my way. Dreams really do…
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I know the year is not officially over yet. But for me it kind of is. You see today is a bit like my New Years Eve as I await the beginning of a brand new start, living life through fresh eyes, in a new place, meeting new people, building foundations and connections I hope…
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What a year it has been, the incredible clearing away of all that no longer served me, making space on my path for a brand new destiny I believe was always written in the stars. It’s been a year of challenge and change, heartache and healing, clearing and clarity. There are so many people who…
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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…
Heal - Laugh - Live 