ABOUT RENEE

Founder of Wise Woman Returns

Co-Founder of the Self-Recovery Method®

My Story: Learning to Return

Wise Woman Returns came from my own experience of being disconnected from myself for far too long.

The story started much earlier than burnout.

I grew up with trauma and learned very early how to disconnect from myself. I didn't know that was what I was doing. I didn't know what it meant to really be in my body, recognize what I was feeling, or know what I needed.

I just knew how to keep going.

For much of my life, I figured things out on my own. I didn't have a guidebook for understanding myself, my body, stress, emotions, or the ways I had learned to cope.

But I always knew something was missing.

I couldn't have told you what it was.

I just kept looking.

When keeping going stopped working

For years, I worked hard, took care of other people, and pushed through whatever was in front of me.

My work supporting young girls in foster care exposed me to a lot of trauma. At the same time, I was carrying my own grief after miscarriage and five years of trying to conceive.

I kept going.

Eventually, my body couldn't keep up with me.

I was exhausted and carrying years of stress, grief, and pain that I had never really stopped to notice. Much of that tension showed up in my pelvic floor.

I eventually travelled to India looking for answers. The work I experienced there helped me understand how much I had been holding in my body.

It changed the way I understood the relationship between my body and my experience.

Then life changed again

I went on to conceive and gave birth to my daughter after a long and difficult labour.

My body struggled to recover. I experienced two organ prolapses and a severe diastasis. For months, walking was painful.

I had spent years being strong, pushing through, and getting on with things.

Now I couldn't.

I had to slow down.

And for the first time, I had to really pay attention to what was happening inside me.

That was one of the hardest and most exhausting periods of my life.

It was also when I began to understand something I hadn't been able to see before:

I had spent much of my life knowing how to get through things. I hadn't learned how to stay connected to myself while doing it.

Learning how to come back

After moving to the Netherlands, I discovered the work of Jenny Burrell in London. As a former personal trainer, I trained in her approach and became a certified Holistic Core Restore Coach.

But the work became about more than rebuilding my physical body.

I started paying attention.

To what was happening inside me.
To when I was pushing too far.
To what I needed.
To when I needed to pause.
To how my body responded to stress.
To what happened when I disconnected — and what helped me come back.

Over time, I built a different relationship with myself.

Not a perfect one.

A more honest one.

I began noticing the small signs I had missed for years — changes in my energy, mood, body, thoughts, and behaviour. I started to understand what pulled me away from myself and what helped me stay connected.

And slowly, I understood what had been missing all those years.

I didn't need more strength.
I needed a relationship with myself.

From my experience to my work with women

The more women I worked with, the more familiar this became.

Women who were capable.
Women who could handle a lot.
Women who showed up for everyone else.

Women who had become so good at carrying life that they had lost touch with themselves somewhere along the way.

Over the years, my work expanded beyond physical recovery. I've trained as a soft tissue therapist, breath coach, and therapeutic women's coach. I've continued studying the relationship between the body, breath, stress, behaviour, and the ways we respond to life.

But underneath all of it is one thing:

Learning how you work.

How you respond to stress.
How you know when you've had enough.
What happens when you disconnect.
What helps you come back.
What you need to feel steady, present, and connected to yourself.

Why Wise Woman Returns exists

I don't want women to have to wait until their body forces them to stop.

I waited too long.

The years it took me to find my way back taught me more than I could have learned any other way. But I often wish I had understood this sooner.

Because the longer you stay away from yourself, the harder it can be to return.

And the cost of waiting can be high.

That is why Wise Woman Returns exists.

Not to teach women how to do more.

Not to help them become better at pushing through.

But to help them understand themselves, build a relationship with themselves, and recognize when they are starting to disconnect.

To build the awareness, regulation, boundaries, and resilience they need to respond differently — before stress has a chance to build and take over.

You don't have to know exactly what you need when you begin.

You may simply know that something isn't working the way it used to.

That's enough.

The goal isn't to step away from your life.

It's to know yourself well enough to stay connected to yourself within it.

To return to yourself — in the moments and days of your busy life — so you don't have to leave yourself behind.

That is the work of Wise Woman Returns.