I didn’t grow up with a clear path or an easy start.

I grew up on a council estate where survival came before dreams, raised by a loving but struggling family, surrounded by hardship, uncertainty, and the quiet belief that life might never offer more. Football became my escape, then my career, but it was never the full story of who I was becoming.

From a young age, I learned what it meant to feel out of place. At school, I was labelled. At home, I carried responsibility beyond my years. In football, I lived between two worlds—talent and doubt, opportunity and rejection. I experienced racism, exclusion, pressure, and the constant feeling of having to prove my worth.

Despite this, I became a professional footballer and achieved what many only dream of—playing at the highest level, scoring at Wembley, and living the life I once imagined would fix everything.

It didn’t.

Behind the success, I was fighting battles no one could see. Anxiety. Identity loss. The weight of caring for my mother through addiction and illness. Grief. Burnout. I learned the hard way that achievement doesn’t protect you from pain—and that ignoring your inner world eventually catches up with you.

That breaking point changed my life.

It forced me to stop running, to face myself honestly, and to ask a deeper question:
Who am I without performance, praise, or success?

From Survival to Purpose

Healing didn’t happen overnight. It came through therapy, reflection, accountability, and learning how to truly tend to my own garden—my mind, my values, my boundaries, and my wellbeing.

What I discovered was this:

Resilience isn’t about being strong all the time.
It’s about being honest, vulnerable, and willing to grow.

That realisation led me beyond football and into the work I do today.

I trained as a therapist, speaker, and wellbeing coach, driven by a simple but powerful purpose:
to help people who feel stuck, overlooked, anxious, or disconnected find clarity, confidence, and meaning again.