Episode description

Emma Wren is a female founder of Revor Vintage who worked for the police, in construction recruitment and in prison education before she became a full-time vintage founder. Along the way she ran a vintage fashion side hustle, then counted her customers, handed in her notice and built Revor Vintage into a community-focused business that now has its own appointment-only studio.

Emma talks to Bethany Wright about growing up in Middlesbrough, a first job at 14 and watching her mum retrain as a teacher at 35, and why a Notting Hill bedroom, a two-hour walk home and a £15 coat in a Romanian thrift store shaped everything that came next. She shares what it really takes to build a brand rather than just resell vintage clothing, why she'd rather have a loyal "crew" than a big following, the big financial leap behind her Trophy Jacket collection, and the behind-the-scenes graft nobody sees behind a beautiful feed.

Show notes

This is a conversation about building something slowly, loudly and on your own terms. And about what changes when you stop treating a passion as a hobby. Emma and Beth talk work ethic, community over algorithms, how a career in the police and prisons taught her to meet people where they are, and why she says consistency is the only advice she keeps giving.

Themes: female founder story, side hustles and leaving a full-time job, building a community building business, women in business and women supporting women, building a brand rather than reselling, vintage fashion, consistency and showing up, affordability in vintage, and learning to appreciate how far you've come while still wanting more.

If you've ever had an idea you keep talking yourself out of, this one's for you.

Key takeaways

• A side hustle becomes a business when you can count real, loyal customers - Emma's test was a hundred.
• Build a quality audience, not just a big one. Emma says the algorithm never worried her because she had her crew.
• Consistency beats motivation: post, show up and keep going even on the days you don't feel it.
• Act while the idea is warm. Emma doesn't build mood boards for her business - she just does it.
• You can want more and still appreciate how far you've come.

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Podcast Editor: Charlotte Gunnell

Episode Description

Plum Ruffles spent most of her life being told, one way or another, that she was too loud, too emotional, too opinionated and somehow, at the same time, not enough. Diagnosed with ADHD at 41, after two children, a lifetime of masking and a family that's neurodivergent from top to bottom, she's now the founder of Not Too Much, a community that's grown from one honest Christmas Day Instagram post to nearly 30,000 followers in months.

Plum grew up in Kuwait, including through the Gulf War at age eight, before moving to the UK at 13 into a schooling system and a level of bullying that nearly cost her everything. She talks to Beth about what her nervous system learned from that childhood, the diagnosis that finally gave her a framework for who she is, what happens when ADHD, autism, postnatal depression, perimenopause and PMDD all collide at once, and why she believes community - not another self-help book - is what actually helps neurodivergent women survive motherhood.

Show notes

This is a conversation about being handed a label late in life and discovering it isn't a life sentence. It's a manual, albeit an incomplete one. Plum Ruffles and Bethany Wright talk about childhood environments that hold a neurodivergent brain together (and the ones that don't), the grief that comes with a late diagnosis, and what it actually takes to build a life, and a motherhood, with enough room in it.

Themes: ADHD and autism diagnosed in adulthood, neurodivergent motherhood, PMDD and perimenopause, masking and burnout, bullying and mental health, and building community around honesty rather than performance.

If you've ever felt like you were too much in one breath and not enough in the next, this one's for you.

Key takeaways

• The environment you grow up in can hold a neurodivergent brain together or let it fall apart — the brain doesn't change, the surroundings do.
• A late diagnosis brings relief, grief, disbelief and anger, often all at once, and often not in that order.
• Masking protects you as a child but exhausts you as an adult — and self-compassion has to come before anything else can heal.
• Community with other neurodivergent women isn't a nice-to-have — Plum calls it "the medicine" for a lifetime of feeling like the odd one out.

Find Plum Ruffles

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/plum.ruffles/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/plum-ruffles/

• Not Too Much (community): https://www.instagram.com/wearenottoomuch/

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• Listen on Spotify: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/bethany-wright6/

Podcast EditorCharlotte Gunnellhttps://charlottegunnell.com/

Episode description

Samantha Alice Leigh had hyperemesis gravidarum through two pregnancies. Sickness so severe she couldn't eat, couldn't leave her bed for months, and couldn't bring herself to celebrate either baby until she was 20 weeks along. This episode is about what that illness actually felt like, and what it took from her identity, twice over.

Sam grew up in Oldham, the eldest of three, learning early to hold things together. She spent over a decade building a life in Australia with her partner Paul before moving home to the UK where for a second time, hyperemesis gravidarum and new motherhood stripped her sense of self back to almost nothing - first it was physical, then, the second time, mental. She talks to Bethany Wright about dimming her light at school, the redundancy that reshaped her twenties, becoming a mum in a country far from family, and why she eventually decided to talk about all of it publicly and honestly on Instagram, as Motherhood Diaries.

Show notes

This is a conversation about the identities motherhood takes from us and the ones we have to rebuild in its place - sometimes gradually, sometimes all at once. Sam and Bethany talk through two decades of friendship and one very honest account of what hyperemesis gravidarum actually costs, physically and mentally, and what's left of you on the other side of it.

Themes:

• Hyperemesis gravidarum
• Identity and motherhood
• Isolation in early parenting
• Long-distance friendship
• Building a life abroad
• Learning to be "not there yet" without a deadline attached.

If you've ever lost your sense of who you are inside new motherhood, or wished someone had warned you what pregnancy could actually feel like, this one's for you.

Key takeaways

• Hyperemesis gravidarum is far more than "bad morning sickness" and the lack of awareness around it leaves women feeling like they're failing at something that's actually a medical illness.
• Identity loss in motherhood isn't a failure of resilience - it's a near-universal experience most people just don't say out loud.
• Community with people in the same season of life isn't a nice-to-have when you're isolated - it's often the thing that gets you through.
• "Quality over quantity" applies to more than content - Sam's approach to slow, honest growth on Instagram is really a philosophy about not performing a version of yourself you don't recognise.

Find Samantha Alice

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Podcast editor

⁠Charlotte Gunnell⁠

Episode description

Holly Louise Ditchfield found out she was pregnant at thirty-seven weeks. Not a missed period, not a hunch - thirty-seven weeks, with three left to go, after she'd poured water on the test hoping it would lie for her too.

Eight years later she built a business, Lash Lounge, from her bedroom, fitting clients around school pick-ups. And in 2024, at twenty-nine, she went on Married at First Sight and became the woman a lot of the country remembers for remembering who she was as she wrote 'Leave'.

In this conversation, Holly talks about what was really happening behind that decision, what the show didn't show, and the six months between filming ending and it airing, when no one around her knew where she'd been.

Holly also shares something she's never spoken about publicly before - a loss, and what happened on the exact same day one year later.

Now engaged to Aaron, training to be a midwife, and expecting twins, Holly talks about the difference between chasing fame and choosing yourself.

Show notes

Holly Ditchfield became a mum at sixteen with no warning at all, built a beauty business from her bedroom as a young single mother, and later became known nationally through Married at First Sight - a process she says she'd never repeat.

This conversation moves from a Greater Manchester and Yorkshire childhood through the relationship she left at twenty-one, the years spent building Lash Lounge from nothing, the reality of what happens once the cameras stop rolling, and a loss she's never spoken about publicly before - up to where she is now, expecting twins and training to become a midwife.

Themes:

• Becoming a mother with no run-up, and what it costs to grow up in public
• Building a business alone, and the "mum guilt" nobody warns you about
• What reality TV is actually like once the cameras are off
• Remembering who you are under public pressure and public opinion
• Loss, timing, and choosing to try again

If this one landed, send it to a woman who's ever had to remember who she was before she could move forward. Leave a review, or send us a message and tell us what stuck with you. And if you're new here, hit follow - Notes from the Not There Yet is out every two weeks.

Key takeaways

• Losing yourself in a relationship or a role doesn't mean you can't find your way back - it might just take one decision, made quickly.
• "Great in a crisis" isn't the same as okay - the strength people see from the outside is often the least of the story.
• You don't need qualifications or permission to build something; a passion will push you through the hours nobody sees.
• Public opinion is built on an edit, not on you — the people forming it don't know what you know about your own life.
• Not every loss needs to be shared right away. It's allowed to wait until you're somewhere safe enough to say it.

Find Holly Ditchfield

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Episode description

Faye Roddy is a strategic business coach who built one of the UK's biggest cleaning franchises from nothing and sold it in a single thirty-minute meeting. But the version of Faye people see today didn't start in a boardroom. It started on market stalls in Salford, counting pennies for her mum at ten years old.

In this conversation, we go back to the decision that shaped everything, leaving school at fifteen, and the year that nearly broke her: becoming a mum at twenty-two, a medical emergency with her baby son that changed how she saw the world, and walking away from her marriage with £10,000 and nothing else. We talk about the fourteen years she spent building a flagship franchise business while quietly carrying a cancer diagnosis she kept from her own children. And we talk about the "ice queen" mask - what it costs to be the strong one, and what happens when you finally put yourself on the list.

Faye Roddy went from waiting tables in her mum's café at eight years old to building one of the UK's largest franchise businesses - and then walking away from it, twice: once when it was sold out from under her, and once by choice, on her own terms. This conversation moves from a Salford childhood built on graft and independence, through single motherhood and a secret cancer diagnosis, to the moment she handed her life's work to her team in a thirty-minute meeting - and what she's building now, for herself and for other women.

Themes:

• Growing up "old-headed" - independence as both a gift and an armour
• Becoming a mother, and nearly losing a child, at twenty-two
• Rebuilding a life from a £10,000 car sale and nothing else
• Building a flagship business while carrying a cancer diagnosis in secret
• The "ice queen" mask, and what it costs to always be the strong one
• Choosing to sell, choosing to develop others, and choosing freedom

If you've ever been the one everyone else leans on, send this to someone who needs to hear it. Leave a review, or send us a message and tell us what stuck with you. And if you're new here, hit follow. Notes from the Not There Yet is out every two weeks.

Key takeaways

• Being independent from a young age can be both the reason you succeed and the reason you struggle to let people in.
• You can hold a business together while your personal world is falling apart — but it has a cost, and it's worth naming.
• Selling something you built isn't a single ending. Sometimes you have to let it go twice.
• Developing other people's confidence can be the thing that finally sets you free.
• Freedom isn't the reward at the end. It's a decision you make on the way there.
  

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Not lost, not arrived, just not there yet.

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Gemma Lees is a performance poet, journalist, facilitator and fine art installationist from Bury - and a proud Romani gypsy. In this episode, she talks about growing up in a creative, self-employed Romani family, multiple breakdowns and period of homelessness in her early twenties, being diagnosed as dyslexic and dyspraxic at 21 and autistic at 41, and living with fibromyalgia after years of being dismissed by doctors. We talk about what people get wrong about Romani and Traveller identity, why she turns insults into material rather than shame, and how creativity - protest art, poetry, performance - became both her advocacy and her survival. She wants her work to make people "laugh till they cry, and cry till they act."

SHOW NOTES

Gemma Lees is a performance poet, journalist and installation artist who has spent her career turning her own story - Romani identity, late diagnoses of autism and fibromyalgia, a breakdown and homelessness in her early twenties - into work that dispels myths and refuses to be quiet about it. This conversation moves from an oral storytelling childhood through a difficult chapter at university, to the funeral that brought her back to creativity, to the advocacy and installation work she's building now.

Themes:

• Romani and Traveller identity, and the myths that surround it

• Late diagnosis (autism at 41, fibromyalgia after years of being dismissed)

• Creativity as both advocacy and catharsis

• Rebuilding after a breakdown, one decision at a time

• Turning insults and stereotypes into material, not shame

  
  

Key Takeaways

• You don't have to look like what people expect your identity to be for it to be real.

• Creativity isn't a luxury - for Gemma, it's advocacy, protest, and catharsis all at once.

• A late diagnosis doesn't erase the years before it. It just finally explains them.

• Rejection can become material instead of a verdict - turn the insult into a t-shirt.

• "Not there yet" can mean building something, one decision at a time, with no fixed finish line.

If this episode moved you in some way, please send it to someone who's ever been told they don't "look like" what they are. Leave a review, or send us a message and tell us what stuck with you. And if you're new here, hit follow - Notes from the Not There Yet is out every two weeks.

Find Gemma Lees:Website: https://gemmaleesartist.co.uk/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gemmathepoet/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gemmathepoet83Find the The Not There Yet Project: Website: https://notthereyetproject.co.uk/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notthereyetproject/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bethanydwrightSubstack: https://thenotthereyetproject.substack.com/Not lost, not arrived, just not there yet.

Episode Summary

Jenny Marshall has spent close to twenty years in mental health and seven years in private practice, working with people at every point on what she calls "the spectrum" - from quiet, low-level dissatisfaction to something far more serious when it's left unheard.

In this episode, Jenny takes us back to the school reports that called her a "classic underachiever," through the acute eating disorders unit she walked into at 23 with no idea what she was signing up for, to the traumatic birth that made her, for the first time in her career, the person in crisis instead of the one holding it together.

We talk about the marriage, the senior NHS role and the M&S-stocked fridge that looked like having it all and felt like nothing at all, and why she walked away from all three at once. Jen also takes apart the stereotype of the older man with a notepad and a couch, and makes the case that you don't have to be falling apart to deserve a space to talk.

Show notes

Integrative counsellor Jenny Marshall spent her career being the calm one in other people's crises until a traumatic birth put her on the other side of the bed and forced her to look at why "coping" had always come so easily.

This conversation moves from an underachieving childhood to an inpatient eating disorders unit at 23, through a marriage and NHS career that looked right on paper, to the moment Jen chose herself instead. Along the way, she and Beth take apart what people get wrong about therapists, and why "not there yet" isn't a crisis point - it's a spectrum.

Themes

• Being "great in a crisis" as a learned response, not a personality trait
• The gap between a life that looks right on paper and one that feels right underneath
• Why therapy doesn't require a crisis to be valid
• The stereotypes that keep people from asking for help
• Choosing yourself as an act of showing your children something, not just yourself

If this one lands, send it to the friend who's always the calm one in a crisis. Leave a review, or send us a message and tell us what stuck with you. And if you're new here, hit follow - Notes from the Not There Yet is out every other Tuesday.

Key takeaways

• Being "great in a crisis" can be a learned response you don't recognise until something forces you to stop performing it.
• You don't need to be falling apart to deserve therapy - not there yet exists on a spectrum, and it's easier to hear early than late.
• A life that looks right on paper and a life that feels right underneath are not the same thing, and you're allowed to notice the gap.
• The fear of being perceived as having failed is often bigger, and more paralysing, than failure itself.
• AI and social media can be a front door into therapy but they were never meant to be the destination.

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