I'm a Children's Book Author!

Or at least... I very soon will be! My fourth book, How To Say No, is coming out this August and I'm so excited to be marking my debut as a children's book author!

My first children’s book How To Say No will be hitting your bookshelves on 17th August (4 days after my 30th birthday)! From setting boundaries with friendships, phones, family, your body, and much more! With funny and informative illustrations, this important, playful and empowering book is a one-stop guide for readers aged 9+ to create the rules to your own life, and knowing when it's okay to say NO!

Let’s start off by saying none of this would be happening without you. When I published The Joy of Being Selfish, one of the main messages I was getting in my DMs was asking if your kids could read it and if not, could I write a children’s book. And after one too many DMs, I sent my agent an email asking if she thought it would be a good idea and that’s how all of this came about.

I know one of the stereotypical things people say about their work is they will say their purpose is to help the world but for me, I think a little differently. Maybe it’s being such a proponent of the world selfish but I believe if you do things that make you happy, you will always be fulfilled and therefore the side effect is you help the people around you because you are at your best. Very selfishly, this is the case with this book.

It has been my personal dream to work with children since I was a kid myself. Before I knew what job I wanted to do, I knew I wanted to work with children and my CV demonstrates that. The first place I worked was in a child development clinic in a hospital, then I worked in a swimming programme for autistic children and then at a primary school as a teaching assistant for Year 2 Maths and then in a summer programme for disabled children. All of this was before the age of 18. It was the one thing I knew for sure so my heart broke a little when I found it so hard to work with children as a life coach. Life coaching was such a new job back in 2014 when I started that trying to get adults to trust you was already hard, therefore getting adults to trust you with their kids was impossible - no matter how DBS accredited I was. In the end, I decided that I could work with children in a non-occupational setting so I started volunteering at Great Ormond Street Hospital and worked there for a little more than a year until I had to recognise this experience was rubbing against my own trauma of being a child in hospital and preventing me from healing and letting go of the past.

Sometimes you have to let dreams go and so working with children was put on the back burner. Until now. All of this is to say, I’m getting to live my dream. This has been such a fulfilling project for me personally and I can’t wait until this is in the hands of children and I get to go into schools with this book.

This is the book I needed when I was younger and every time I learned more about boundaries, the main thing I would think was ‘I wish I knew this sooner’. This book lights a little candle of hope that one day we can grow up in a world where children knowing their boundaries are the norm and that setting boundaries is second nature to them!

I truly believe you can’t teach your kids boundaries if you don’t have them yourself so I hope this book serves as a book for the whole family. As an avid children’s book reader, children’s books can be the perfect source to make a difficult topic like boundaries, accessible and digestible!

I’m so excited for this to be out in the world!