40 & Unfinished

The Decade of Dismantling What Wasn't Mine

“40 is just a number…” “just a number…” I hear myself say on repeat. Friends around me are reminding me… And yet… I can’t help feeling like something doesn’t sit right.

I’ve been trying to process this all year… my friends asking what I’m doing for it, insisting it’s a big birthday, it has to be celebrated. And in all honesty, I just wasn’t in the mood.

Not because I’m afraid of ageing, I believe in ageing gracefully. But because, looking at where I am, I feel somehow “worse off” than when I turned 30.

I know it’s not the full truth. But that feeling was there.

A Brief Look Back On My 30s

30 was filled with parties and optimism, career growth and youthful dreams of a stable future. I was roughly at the same life stage as most people around me. Ten years on, everything has shifted… sideways, in spirals.

I’ve lived a full life. No regrets. I’ve truly followed every dream, experienced places, people and situations that far exceeded my imagination.

And yet, eight years ago, I burnt out.

I was chasing the pay rise, the promotion, the team, the recognition. And I couldn’t get there, so I broke down. It may seem superficial to some. Low self-worth to others. For me, not growing was failing. And so I collapsed.

What happened next was swift. Within two years I had a VP role, more than doubled my salary and was managing a team at a fast-growing scale-up. The professional recognition came.

And somehow, the recognition of the real me had not. The soft healer. The one who was always there and never learned to be herself.

Every dream I’ve had in this life, I have accomplished. Some were short-lived. Others took enormous effort to materialise. Some lasted far longer than I imagined. Some turned into nightmares. Either way: lived experiences. Data points.

The unravelling of my inner Wild Woman

What happened in the eight years following that first burnout was the unravelling of something deeper. An inner calling for a life of purpose and creation. I call it the rise of the wild woman archetype. I held a vision of family life and companionship, and yet the desire to birth a meaningful, purpose-led enterprise grew bigger and bigger.

It started with Ayurveda in 2017, and the understanding that my inner world is in direct correlation to my outer world. I began running workshops in London with a friend studying herbalism, delving into our shared passion and bringing others along. In 2019 I completed my 200-hour yoga teacher training in ashtanga and vinyasa, and began guiding friends and colleagues through yoga, nidra and meditation.

In both, it felt like a remembering. Not something I had to study hard for, though that was part of it. More like reviving something that had always been there, dormant. When my facilitator voice switches on, it no longer feels like me speaking.

Feeding the Wild Woman Whilst Exalting The High Achiever

Just as COVID paralysed us in our homes, I started my online training with the Academy of Healing Nutrition to become a holistic healing coach. I was existing in the tight orbit of my hardest-working other half and the relentless demands of my online job. I remember Roger, the founder of the school, saying: “your life will change forever after this course.” I felt the internal “uh oh.”

When your inner world changes, your outer world changes too. Sometimes radically, sometimes progressively. During COVID, this new persona was intensifying at the very same time it was starting to feel repressed in my daily life.

By the end of 2020 I was working on my nutrition dissertation. I had two angles, because of course I did: The multiple facets of fertility: a guide to conscious procreation, and Ancestral recipes: reconnecting with our lineage through foods and interviews.

Holding the dream of a family high in my heart, I chose fertility. What began as a guide to help couples optimise their chances and consciously enter parenthood slowly transformed into something else entirely: a tool of leadership empowerment through the understanding of the womb’s rhythms.

2021, The Year Of Pivots & Endings

2021 was a hard year. It started with New Year’s celebrations alongside a partner of seven years, the two of us on the verge of leaving our flat to buy a family home somewhere less central. It ended with me at my family’s house in France, celebrating New Year’s 2022 alone with them.

What happened in between: a change of jobs, a breakup that took months to fully come into effect, endless phone calls, endless tears, two vaccine shots just so I could leave the country and find solace on my mom’s lap, some travel, a wedding, facing my fear of driving in the mountains… And begining the habit of going towards my fear. What followed after was only the continuation of it. From the standup comedy stages to the bold moves into the unknown and optimistic delusional trust in life.

The expectation of a forever move

In 2022, after a long trip to Thailand cut short by a broken ankle (not from a motorbike fall, I should clarify, but from running to a yoga class), I moved to Barcelona. The city of my heart, of my dreams, the place I had been longing to return to since 2007. This was intended as a forever move. I envisaged growing my esoteric work there, meeting someone, buying a flat, building a family life.

After six months working extremely hard online, barely breaking into the local community, I made another leap: setting myself up as a consultant and giving my wild woman path more room to breathe, to grow.

Maybe reading these words feels easy. But chasing those dreams was nothing short of moving through fear, solitude, doubt and the relentless inner voice asking “what am I doing? what if it was all a bad idea? what if I fail? what if I am wasting time?”

Seeing the next mountain and telling myself: not another one.

And yet, in my body and in my heart, there was simply no other way. What looked brave to others was something I HAD to do. Not because it wasn’t scary. But because I couldn’t visualise a future in which I hadn’t taken the leap.

An irrepressible urge. A physically compelling sensation. No other way.

My mom said to me recently: “you always have to go all the way to the end of things.” In French: au bout des choses. I am Taurus after all. We can be stubborn… resilient.

The Blooming Of The Wild One

In Barcelona I stepped into my full, multi-dimensional self. Teaching yoga on the beach, reading cards, hosting women’s circles, half-day retreats, weekend retreats, nutrition workshops. I trained in trauma-informed breathwork and began guiding both one-to-one and group ceremonies. That too felt like a remembering.

Creating ceremonies felt like my thing. It still does. I ritualise my days, keep altars in my room, my lounge, my car, by the entrance of the house. I collect pieces of nature to represent the elements, a constant reminder of the forces that move around and within me.

2024, The Plunge Into The Unknown & Birth Of The Heart Way

The start of 2024 felt different. I had a sense that the year would end very differently than it began, and I was right.

The year before had started with a flight to Cambodia, to be with my first love, with whom I had recently reconnected. It ended back in my Barcelona flat, just returned from a solo trip to New York, a lifelong dream I had finally given myself as a gift. I have truly lived each and every one of my dreams.

Ironically, that trip was paid for by a tax return from the UK. A timely signal from the universe. The money is always somewhere; it finds its way to you when you need it.

As 2024 began, I felt powerless watching the rising crisis in Gaza, the mass protests, the weight of it all. I turned inward and asked myself: how can I contribute differently? Something beyond yoga, nutrition and breathwork wanted to be born.

I had a vision of the whole world stopping at once, the way we honour a minute of silence in remembrance. Why not do this in the name of love, ahead of time? Thousands of humans simultaneously connecting to their hearts, activating the frequency of love. From that vision, 5MIN4LOVE was born: a movement aimed at shifting the world’s frequency, counteracting the pain and suffering of our inner and outer wars by cultivating, remembering and radiating love.

The first gathering was on 14 February 2024. What followed was a monthly, then bimonthly, then weekly online gathering to connect with the heart. Sometimes there were 30 people. Other times 5, or 2. Once I was alone. I made T-shirts and tote bags. I even joined an accelerator to explore scaling it into a business.

As the Barcelona reality started to shift, work and home contracts ending on the same month, I felt this was an invitation to leap to another place.

In reality in felt like a letting go of a long standing dream, the vision crumbled, again. And whilst I moved through it, I decided to create 14 Days of love, a guided of daily meditations and journaling to connect with the heart, to observe the different types of love, the themes of boundaries, fear, trust, abundance, and accessing the heart’s purest dreams.

Before Building Anew One Has To Turn Bare

As the Barcelona reality started to shift, work and home contracts ending in the same month, I felt it as an invitation to leap somewhere new, to peel away more layers of identity and allow myself to unravel who I am when I am not my identities acquired through life’s changes, successes and failures.

In reality it felt like letting go of a long-standing dream. The vision crumbled, again. And as I moved through it, I created 14 Days of Love: a guided journey of daily meditations and journaling to connect with the heart, exploring the many faces of love, the themes of boundaries, fear, trust, abundance and the heart’s purest dreams.

What came after Barcelona? After a 15-year dream came a vision built in a matter of months. It was going to be Ikaria, Greece, the island of longevity, reached via a trip through Delphi and Donousa that never materialised. I somehow ended up in Mallorca instead, via a few more months at my parents’ home, where I celebrated my 37th birthday in tears.

Why Mallorca? It was not a rational choice. I heard the call and I followed.

Intuition. Inner voice. Inner knowing.

You could say I’ve gotten better at hearing it over the years. More importantly, I’ve worked hard at not letting the voice in my mind spin lies that pull me away from it.

From Newbie to NOUS Bee

One year on, I have built a community of heart-led leaders, entrepreneurs and creatives, with the intention of creating a platform for a different kind of leadership. Less performance, more presence. Less KPIs, more intangible progress. Less hustle, more natural growth. Less competition, more synergy. Less profit-first, more heart-first.

The three years since I left my full-time job have been expansive, empowering, freeing. Chasing every heart-led dream, creating, building, gathering, raising the world’s frequency at my own scale.

Nous Collective is the full bridge of consciousness and business for me. Where my healer and strategist both get to exist.

And they have also been full of fear, insecurity, uncertainty. The sensation that the foundations I had worked so hard to build were being dismantled. By myself, for the most part.

And yet my inner foundations were only growing stronger. The skills developed and acquired, the shape-shifting: from yoga teacher to healing nutrition expert, breathwork facilitator, leadership event guide, event manager, producer, host, pre-opening strategist for luxury hotels, architect of the unseen, expert in materialising dreams into reality.

My own that is.

The Portal Of 40, The Strength In The Now

And despite all of this, despite typing these words while watching the sun set on the horizon, casting its golden light onto the pine trees and the olive trees, its reflected glow shimmering across the mirror-like surface of the sea, I feel like something isn’t quite right.

I wanted to feel like I had arrived. I thought that meant a partner, a child.

I realised a part of me didn’t feel open to meeting someone, or even proud of my life as it is, because when I look at it through a traditional lens, I am no longer affluent.

I don’t feel like I exist in scarcity. But I exist in an in-between. My heart projects have come to life, and there are many. And they don’t feed me.

I have spent 40 years setting up structures for others and I have failed to create my own.

I feel so unstable at times. And yet when I look at what actually matters, there is stability. I have a home. I have a heart-led community of like-minded souls who care about their mission and about reaching wide and far, who value beauty and aesthetics as the grounding space from which authentic creations are born. I have gathered a bounty of skills and experiences and one thing I know for a fact is that I am resourceful.

This is 40. I am alive, responsible and I believe in the abundance that results from following my heart.

From The Chaos Of The Unknown To Self-Empowerment

These are the anchors I have built for myself, and I offer them to you too. I believe our inner world and outer world are changing even more rapidly than ever before and it is each and every one of our responsibility to cultivate these practices, these inner pillars. The mutable. Like the trunk of a tree that moves with the wind but doesn’t break. Some branches might break in a storm, but new ones grow again…

5MIN4LOVE: a daily five-minute heart connection, at the start of the day or before anything that matters. A practice of returning to love.

Cycles Alchemy: moving through the month in rhythm with your cycle and the Earth’s. Each month, a new intention, at a pace that honours what is natural.

The NOUS Collective: a community of heart-led leaders, entrepreneurs and creatives growing their work together through monthly circles and business workshops. The space where my strategist mind comes alive.

The Soft Space Breathwork Ceremonies: a return to your inner sanctuary. A space I also find on my rooftop, on seaside hikes, in moments of intimacy with friends.

14 Days of Love: a guided journey of daily meditations and journaling to explore the many faces of love, from boundaries and fear to trust, abundance and the heart’s purest dreams.

Ironically, the last few years of dismantling the stable foundations of traditional life have built something much more future-proof: a healthy body, a grounded nervous system, a daily practice of heart connection, a curious mind, forever learning, expanding and connecting to the conscious collective, a life aligned with my wildest dreams, and a community of like-minded souls who inspire, challenge and nurture me.

The future holds more undoing and more rebuilding. I am sure of it. The only constant is change, and I am glad to be sharing some of this path with you.

If these words touched you, I would love to hear from you. If you are turning 40 this year, or have recently, I would love to walk alongside you into this new decade.

With love, Camille

Here’s me dancing with the chaos of life, as captured by Janet Kaczmarek