A note before you listen: this episode includes discussion of suicide, self-harm and disordered eating. Support links are at the bottom of these notes.

Emma-Jayne arrived in Cumbria eighteen years ago with two children under four, everything she owned in a Ford Fiesta with one working door, and two weeks of somewhere to stay. Inside those two weeks she had a job and a house. She went on to build a permanent recruitment division from nothing, set up a nuclear division for a second firm, founded her own senior appointments business, and then took a senior role inside the nuclear organisation she had spent years publicly holding to account, ending up as the person its chief executive turned to for a second opinion. She now works in strategy and growth, and runs her own purpose and culture consultancy alongside it.

In this episode, Danielle and Lauren talk to Emma-Jayne about what it takes to keep performing at work when your life outside it has come apart. She's honest about the message she read on her husband's phone one Father's Day, the choice she made between full-time work and benefits and why her own childhood made that decision for her, and the years she spent being judged for the way she speaks: first for not being posh enough, then for being too posh.

It's a conversation about purpose as something you work out, about what changed the day she told a man to his face that his tone wasn't acceptable, and about the period when she was holding a senior role together while her youngest child was in crisis and the services meant to help weren't helping. She and her child turned that experience into a campaign, and, five years on, into crisis packs that now sit in hospitals and GP surgeries.

Topics covered:

The message on a phone on Father's Day, and the drive north with two small children and everything that fit in the car
Two weeks on her parents' floor to find work and a home, and the nan who lent her the deposit
Growing up as one of the council house kids, and why that settled the choice between full-time work and benefits
Being judged for how she speaks, first for not being posh enough and then for being too posh
The joke about a hired dress that got her investigated by HR
The blog that made her known across an entire supply chain, and the section her readers actually turned up for
Walking into her first board meeting and feeling like she'd wandered into the staff room at school
Being told she was only good for pouring the tea, and the change in how she spoke in meetings that ended it
The man who got in her face after a presentation, and the sentence she says changed her life
Rebuilding the culture of a large organisation from the bottom up, with a strapline she wasn't allowed to print
Her child's mental health crisis, the video she posted from a hospital waiting room, and the campaign that came out of it
What purpose looks like when you apply it to your own life rather than someone else's

"You're never alone, even when you think you are."

If you've ever sat in a meeting knowing your phone could ring any minute and you'd have to drop everything, this one's for you.

Support

If anything in this episode is close to home, help is available.

Crisis packs These are the packs Emma-Jayne describes, produced by Every Life Matters. Free to download wherever you live.

Parent and carer: https://www.every-life-matters.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/ELM063-Suicide-Crisis-Pack-PARENT-CARER.pdf

Young person: https://www.every-life-matters.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/ELM063-Suicide-Crisis-Pack-Young-Person.pdf

Adult: https://www.every-life-matters.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/ELM062-Suicide-Crisis-Pack-ADULT.pdf

If you need to talk now

Samaritans, free day or night on 116 123: https://www.samaritans.org/

Shout, free 24/7 text support, text SHOUT to 85258: https://giveusashout.org/

Papyrus, for anyone under 35 or worried about a young person: https://www.papyrus-uk.org/

Further support

Mind, contacts for suicidal thoughts: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/suicidal-thoughts-and-suicide-prevention/useful-contacts/

The Mix, support for under 25s: https://www.themix.org.uk/ Suicide Prevention UK: https://spuk.org.uk/

In Cumbria

Every Life Matters: https://www.every-life-matters.org.uk/ Always Another Way: https://alwaysanotherway.org.uk/

Her Ascent

Episodes 5

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