1. Describe a moment when you had to rebuild your confidence from rock bottom.

I can still feel that night, the weight of the air in the room, the quiet hum of my son’s breathing as I held him close. He was just a baby, warm and innocent in my arms, completely unaware that our entire world had just shattered. That was the night I left my marriage. I walked out of the door with not much but my son, clothes and a heart that was breaking into a thousand pieces.

I left behind the home we had built, the belongings that carried memories, the sense of security I once knew. But more than that, I left behind the woman I thought I was. In her place was someone I didn’t yet recognise: a woman terrified of what came next, but who knew she couldn’t stay.

What followed wasn’t the freedom I had imagined. It was a battlefield. The legal proceedings were brutal, endless paperwork, hearings that dragged on for months, and then the trial. A trial I will never forget. I can still picture myself sitting in that cold courtroom, the sound of the barrister’s voice cutting through the air like glass. Every word felt like a dissection of my life, my choices, my very being. It was exhausting. It was expensive. And it broke me down to my core.

By the time the trial was over, I wasn’t sure there was anything left of me. Financially, I was drained. Emotionally, I felt hollow. I remember standing in a tiny rental apartment one night, the walls bare, my son asleep in a cot beside me, and thinking: This is rock bottom.

But somewhere in that silence, I heard another voice. Faint at first, but persistent. It said: This is not where your story ends.

It was a turning point, not a glamorous, movie-worthy moment, but a quiet, fierce decision made in the stillness of a broken night. I realised I had two choices: stay buried under the rubble or rise and rebuild. And for my son, I chose to rise.

That decision became the first brick in the foundation of my comeback. The next brick came when I enrolled in law school. I didn’t have much money. I didn’t have much time. I didn’t even have the energy, if I’m honest. I was working during the day, parenting solo and attending lectures at night. My kitchen table became my desk. There were nights I sat with my textbooks open and tears streaming down my face, wondering if I was out of my mind.

But every assignment submitted, every subject passed was a piece of my confidence being stitched back together. Slowly, the woman who had walked out of her marriage with a baby in her hands was becoming someone new, someone stronger, someone who knew her worth.

When I graduated and stepped into my job as a family lawyer, I remember standing in the office, holding my practising certificate, and whispering to myself: You did it. Not because I had a new title, but because I had rebuilt myself from the ashes.

The moment I truly knew I had risen, though, came later. It wasn’t in a courtroom or a lecture hall. It was one quiet morning, making breakfast for my son. He was a little older then, smiling at me with that same innocence, but now mixed with admiration. Out of nowhere, he said, “Mummy, you’re really brave.”

And in that moment, I realised rock bottom had given me a gift. It had stripped away everything I thought defined me and forced me to discover who I really was. A woman who could lose everything and still choose to rise.

That was the moment my confidence stopped being something the world gave me and became something I owned, forged in fire.

2. What internal beliefs did you have to change to reclaim your self-worth?

When I hit rock bottom, I realised something painful: it wasn’t just my circumstances that were broken. My own beliefs about myself had been quietly chipping away at my worth for years.

In those first raw months after leaving my marriage, my mind became a battlefield. The loudest voice in my head said: You failed. Failed as a partner. Failed as a mother. Failed as a woman. Every time I looked in the mirror, I saw someone who had “ruined everything.” That belief was like a chain around my chest, tightening every time I tried to take a breath.

To reclaim my self-worth, I had to confront those beliefs one by one and rewrite them. It wasn’t a lightning bolt moment. It was slow, gritty work, the kind that happens in the quiet at 2am when you are rocking a baby and wondering who you even are anymore.

The first belief I had to shift was the idea that my worth depended on someone else loving me or validating me. I had spent so long measuring my value by the role I played in someone else’s life: wife, partner, daughter that when that role was gone, I felt like nothing.

I remember one particular night vividly. My son was asleep, and I sat alone at the kitchen table with bills scattered in front of me. The silence was deafening. I felt invisible, as if the world had moved on without me. Then, a thought crept in: What if my worth has nothing to do with who loves me or what I have? What if it’s just… mine?

That small question cracked something open. I started speaking new truths to myself, even when I didn’t believe them yet:

I am worthy because I exist.

I am not broken; I am rebuilding.

My past doesn’t define me; my choices do.

Another belief I had to dismantle was that strength meant never showing weakness. Growing up, I thought being strong meant holding everything together and never letting the cracks show. But during my darkest days, that belief became a cage. I was crumbling inside while pretending to be fine.

It was only when I allowed myself to be vulnerable to cry in front of a friend, to admit I was scared, to say, “I can’t do this alone” that I realised true strength is not about never falling apart. It is about letting yourself be seen, even in the mess, and choosing to rise anyway.

And then there was fear. Fear became my constant shadow, fear of failing, fear of not being enough, fear of never rebuilding. At first, I let it terrify me. But somewhere along the way, I decided to change my relationship with it. Instead of seeing fear as a sign I should stop, I started seeing it as a sign I was stepping into something bigger.

Enrolling in law school terrified me. Sitting in my first lecture surrounded by students ten years younger than me, I felt like an imposter. Starting my own mediation business in my 40s was even scarier. But every time fear showed up, I told myself: This means I am growing.

Perhaps the biggest internal shift was learning to see myself as the author of my story, not the victim of it. Rock bottom taught me that circumstances can strip you of everything, but they cannot take away your ability to choose who you become next.

Changing those beliefs didn’t happen overnight. Some days, the old voices still whisper. But now, my louder voice, the one forged in fire answers back: I am worthy. I am strong. I am enough.