Hi! I’m Corinna — if we were meeting in real life right now, I’d probably already be making you laugh…
or at the very least, creating a curiosity for you, as you leaned in closer to hear what I have to say.
There’s a story here — it has curveballs, comebacks and two cats who stole my heart and quietly changed my life. 🐾
Your story
But before we get to my story — let me tell you about yours.
You know that feeling.
That quiet, creeping sense that somewhere between the life you built and the life you’re living — you misplaced yourself. Not dramatically. Not all at once. Just gradually. The way a song fades out before you notice it’s gone.
You’re still showing up. Still functioning. Still holding everything together for everyone else.
But somewhere in the back of your mind, a question keeps surfacing:
“When did I stop being the main character in my own life?”
Life got loud. You kept showing up for everyone else. And somewhere in all of it — you forgot how to just be you.
You look like you’ve got it together on the outside — but something on the inside doesn’t feel like you anymore.
However you got here — you’re here now. And that’s not the end of the story. That’s where it gets interesting.
That feeling? I know it well. Because for a long time, it was mine.
MY STORY
Forty-something years ago, I moved to Toronto, Canada with big plans, a bigger personality and absolutely no idea what was actually about to unfold.
I was going to study, build something, become someone. Toronto was going to be the place where everything clicked into place.
What actually happened was messier — and honestly, more interesting.
I loved big city living with my whole heart. I was a tad rebellious by nature — not in a destructive way, just in a I’ll get there when I get there kind of way. I worked in a variety of different jobs. I lived fully. I was having fun, and genuinely loved myself, even when the path wasn’t exactly straight.
I wasn’t lost. I was just taking a really long time to find my footing.
What I was building — without fully realising it — was an extraordinary capacity to manage complexity, anticipate needs, hold space for other people’s chaos while keeping everything moving. I became, over those years, genuinely brilliant at managing other people’s lives.
Just not my own.
My mom, on the other hand, had a slightly different vision for me. She wanted me to have the husband, 2 kids, the settled life — the whole picture perfect package. I wanted to experience everything first, feel everything — I just wasn’t ready for that life yet. We loved each other deeply, my mom and I. But we didn’t always see eye to eye. There was an unresolved disagreement sitting quietly between us. One of those things you always think there’ll be time to fix.
And then the first curveball hit.
My mom died suddenly in her sleep when I was 27. No warning. No goodbye. No chance to make it right. Just gone.
And with her went something I didn’t even know I needed — the possibility of resolution. Of being truly understood by her. Of her one day seeing that my way of living was valid too. That unresolved disagreement between us? There was no longer any time to fix it. That was the part that undid me most.
Slowly, quietly, everything began to unravel. The funny thing about confidence? It doesn’t just disappear completely. I could still chat up a total stranger like we’d known each other for years — no problem whatsoever. But I felt it start to slip in ways I hadn’t expected. Turning down invitations I once would have jumped at. Going quiet in rooms where I used to shine. Second guessing decisions I once made without a second thought. Apologising for things that didn’t need an apology. Slowly shrinking when I used to take up space so naturally.
Confidence is sneaky like that.
More curveballs followed. Bad relationships chipped away at me more than I ever let on. Loss kept hitting. And I kept being the strong one — showing up with a smile while quietly falling apart inside. And here’s the thing nobody talks about — just because we show strength doesn’t mean we aren’t suffering. We just learned a behaviour to hide it.
And that behaviour? I had perfected it.
I suffered through depression. My relationship struggled under the weight of two people carrying their own pain — and it certainly didn’t help that grief was sitting at the table too. I kept being the person everyone leaned on, right up until the moment I couldn’t.
Because anxiety had crept in so softly I almost didn’t notice it had moved in and redecorated. At my lowest point I even developed agoraphobia — terrified to go anywhere alone, sometimes too scared to leave my own home. Me. The one everybody leaned on.
It was a remarkable therapist named Winnifred who helped me find my way through. I’m grateful for her every single day — even now that she’s gone. Through the therapy, the slow rebuilding of health and confidence, one small act at a time — I began to find my way back.
And it was through that rebuilding that something else began to take shape. A clarity about what I was actually good at. What I could offer. What I deserved to build for myself.
It wasn’t until about 25 years ago that it all clicked. I found my professional grounding as an Executive Assistant — and spent the next 25 years building a career I’m genuinely proud of. Over two decades in the field. A reputation built on trust, discretion and an almost supernatural ability to keep things together.
I wasn’t becoming someone new. I was remembering someone I loved — and finding that she had even more in her than I’d ever given her credit for.
Life took a different shape than I’d imagined. Children didn’t come. But family did. Two very small, very furry, utterly irreplaceable ones who became my children in every way that mattered — for over 20 years.