I’ve been singing professionally since 2010 when I began a five-year career transition from working in corporate communications and running my own PR and marketing business to working full-time in the world of entertainment.

Over the years, my self-confidence has been up and down. Like most musicians, I’ve had awesome gigs and not so awesome gigs – and the odd “bad day at the office”.

I find it quite hard to fight off the gremlins in my head. Always have. So, my mojo gets knocked easily. Then, after my dad died and mum began declining rapidly, it all got a bit too much and my confidence levels hit the floor. So, in May 2018, I decided to take a break from gigging.

Fast forward to September 2021 and I get a call asking me to sing at a Christmas party for the members of Curves Gym in Hampton. The call came from two lovely ladies who used to work in a restaurant that I had a residency in for many years.

If I was going to return to performing for anyone, they were the perfect clients! And I decided to use this as a challenge.

I enlisted the help of vocal coach Mandy Bell, and we worked hard to restore my shattered confidence, along with fixing some vocal technique traps I’d fallen into.

People wanted to party!

Omicron uncertainty had me wondering whether the party would actually go ahead, but we were in an outside pub garden so it was as safe as it could be. And people wanted to party!

We had an absolute blast. A friend gifted me a gold sequin dress (thanks, Alex), which was the perfect outfit for the occasion, and I topped it off with a Christmas hat!

We sang, we danced, we chatted, we laughed, we drank and we celebrated the season – it was a brilliant night.

Vocally, I have a lot more that I want to work on, but I’m learning to make peace with the fact that I’m a work in progress. I always will be. We all are.

Confidence-wise, I have a long way to go but I did it. I’m back in the game, and I’m really proud of myself. In some ways, this has been my toughest challenge yet.