Natalie Roberts
My Journey to Restoring Sparkle!
Hello!.. welcome to some highlights of my story and why I’m so passionate about supporting others to recover themselves and thrive in their neurodiverse relationship.
Neurodiversity arrived in my story in 2014.
I thought it would be an answer and an end to everything that had been difficult for 15 years.
While discovering neurodiversity revealed new information and offered our family new ways to talk about issues, it didn’t solve the challenges in the relationship as I experienced them. I learned lots about neurodiversity but I wasn’t feeling any better about things and actually began to feel worse.
Since then, through devotion to recovery and soul CPR, I’ve discovered I’m a gallivanting sparkling nomad who loves adventuring of all kinds, being outdoors, dancing the seasons and connecting with others about life and possibility!
It feels a world and a lifetime away from how sad, hopeless and powerless I felt in March 2015. Back then I’d have given anything to be a ‘normal’ family, in a ‘normal’ relationship, doing all the things that I saw others doing with apparent ease!
Between despair and delighting in life was a very challenging chapter. I realised I was experiencing a collection of symptoms that have been labelled a number of different things over the years – Cassandra Syndrome, OTRS (Ongoing Trauma Relationship Syndrome), Affective Deprivation Disorder. I recognised myself in their descriptions. However, other aspects associated with them didn’t add up for me. They largely placed the blame at the door of neurodiversity and, more specifically, my partner’s ‘deficiencies’. I wasn’t 100% convinced. Subsequently, I began to realise the part I’d been playing in the relationship challenges and in my losing myself… and that was something I could 100% do something about. I had no idea how though! …and the thought of changing anything was really really scary.
Everything I’d read suggested that surviving in my relationship was the best I could hope for and that my partner couldn’t change. Some even said it was bound to get worse. NONE of the suggested solutions I found worked in the day to day life I was living.
So recovering myself, reversing the impact of unknown neurodiversity became my mission!
My partner wasn’t open to working on anything at all at that point in the story and I subsequently discovered that didn’t matter.
This was an inside job! I needed to focus on ME! ✨
I began to find ways to navigate the new territory I felt I’d landed in without any map! With new ways to see the map and some new tools to travel with too, I began to see a possible path through the darkness. I noticed glimmers of hope and kept going until I emerged into the light again. What I’ve learned about myself and life on the way has changed everything, not only my relationship!
These days you’ll find me living between my base at home, the woods, the seaside and travels in Spark my camper van! I’ve unravelled most of me and my life and woven something very different and more beautiful.
My relationship with Pete, my husband of 25 years, is transformed. We know each other better than ever, old hurts are healed and we’ve been finding our way back to each other. It’s been challenging often and I’ve lived to the edges of my marriage several times since 2014. Each time, an unexpected path ahead has unfolded.
Life is exciting. I trust myself in it. I trust life with me. Join me there! ✨
I have a new way to navigate life and be in healthy relationships with my children, other family members, friends and humans I don’t know yet too! I’m living a different truth – that you can reverse the impact of unknown neurodiversity and thrive!
I’m passionate about sharing the map I discovered and continue to live into so that you can ‘Be YOU again!’ and flourish in your life ✨
This passion has fuelled my next chapter…!
Reading
The Impact of Unknown Neurodiversity Doesn’t Need to Continue Once You Know About It
In 2018 I created a business to support others who find themselves lost in the same map as me.
Since then I’ve created coaching adventures so that you too can follow your own path from lonely to laughing, exhausted to excited, chaos to calm, resentful to relaxed, frustrated to free!
Professionally, I’m a Level 6 accredited Master Coach and Integrative Practitioner, using many different ways to support you to see the road behind and ahead more clearly, heal the wounds of the past and walk a path in the direction of your dreams for the future.
Bringing yourself back to life is big work. We need support to do it. If it’s our physical health we need doctors and defibrillators. If it’s our emotional, mental, social and spiritual health we need people alongside us too. I feel privileged every day to be this kind of support for clients and anyone else who meets me on the path I’m travelling.
I coach individuals struggling in their neurodiverse relationship to reverse the impact of unknown neurodiversity and thrive so that they can be true to themselves and feel empowered to make courageous decisions that bring to life the person they are and the relationships and life they dream of.
I created the unique Embrace & Thrive Approach as the foundation of my coaching for neurodiverse relationships. By truly embracing it, you can ‘embrace yourself, not brace yourself’ in your relationship and life.
I also have a degree in Anthropology, a Diploma in Theology and Ministry (specialising in wellbeing, recovery and mutual support) and I’m a qualified Mental Health First Aider. My knowledge and expertise also extends to neurodiversity, autism, sensory issues, LGBTQ, wellbeing, trauma, healing, Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), recovery, culture, identity, communication, behaviour, language, relationships, psychospirituality and soul work, all of which enhance how I work with clients.
Coaching Invitations
Working with Natalie
We Need Company and Cheerleaders to Begin and to Keep Going!
Both of those made ALL the difference to my journey. So join me in the adventure of navigating my neurodiverse relationship and life, and be YOU again as you start walking the step by steps I’m going to show you! Here’s where you can find me:
Loving Difference: Hope and a Way Forward for Neurodiverse Relationships
In 2020, I co-founded Loving Difference, an online community hosted by professional Coaches with experience navigating life with difference. Through the stories we share and the transformational coaching programme we host, we want you to believe there is hope and that change is possible!
Loving Difference is a fresh and ‘life-changing’ new approach to your neurodiverse relationship. I coo-host it with sparkle partner and fellow Coach Heather Parks. It’s enabled me to support more people and create the sense of travelling with others ‘in the same boat as you’ which has also been key to my journey, travelling since 2014 with Heather and a group of sparkling stars, all committed to being more of ourselves and finding new ways to navigate our neurodiverse relationships.
“I have recently joined the Loving Difference subscription. The resources and community I experienced in just over one week, have already been transformational. The subscription is a unique experience and source of support, unlike anything I have tried before.. and I have been in therapy for like 15 years.” – Loving Difference Member
Myth Busting Neurodiverse Relationships Podcast
Somewhere else you can find me! I co-host the Myth Busting Neurodiverse Relationships podcast with Heather Parks – listen on Spotify, Apple and wherever else you access podcasts. Or watch us on YouTube too!
‘Watching the podcasts and my mind is being blown! Resonate so much with what Heather and Natalie are talking about, and so glad that they focus on the self and the changes we can make without stigmatising or blaming the other.’
Ready to turn toes together?
Look where you’re standing right now, move only your toes and change direction a little. When you’ve ‘turned toes’, even slightly, the view ahead will not look exactly the same as before. You don’t have to navigate this journey alone. I’m here every step by step of the way.
Your Next Step