'Where do we go if there's no love? Where do we turn if there's no one?'

–Maverick Sabre

Chapter One

If there's one thing The Great Creator seems to have made sure of it's that us women can't have our cake and eat it.

We can't have hot sex and long-term companionship. We may well have a pert arse in our twentiesyet a woman'ssexual peak only arrives when she's forty. And ask any mother if she's successfully juggling work and parenting, and you'll hear a resounding 'no' rising from the floor where she has collapsed.

But, I ask myself, is Madonna busting a gut in the gym every day, and doing all she can to say 'Fuck you' to Mother Nature, for nothing? Isn't now the time to take our feminism to another level?

After all, what's the point of having a cake if you're not going to eat it?

I didn't want to end up lying on my deathbed, croaking: 'I could've been a contender.'

I didn't want to leave this life feeling I've done nothing apart from inflicting further stress on the planet. Yes, some parents think they're being so selfless and eco- committed, when the best thing they could do for the bigger picture is to not have kids at all, and instead chaine themselves to whatever is left of the rain forest...

This was the sort of nonsense that was continued to rattle round in my head.

Alongside: what the hell am I going to cook the kids for supper tonight?

Despite the nagging worry that I needed to do more with my life, I'd resigned myself to being a stay-at-home mum. Why? Because I'd never found an employer who was interested in my working for them from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. while my kids were at school, the only time I had free.

However, a chance meeting turned all this on its head.

I wish I were able to think of a play on the word 'head' – apart, that is, from giving it – but it's 8.30 a.m. and the only strong, hot thing I want to put in my mouth is a coffee.

I'm Sandra, and I guess you'd call me a facilitator, helping you to open the door between your old self and the person you turned into once you got married and became a parent. I know from experience that sometimes it feels like those two selves belong to completely different people.

Take my own case, for instance. For me, there was something about the drudgery of housework and looking after young children that slowly calcified the person I once was, turning her into an isolated and frigid rock.

Every day felt like a struggle: trying to keep the kids organised so that they arrived at school on time, with their homework done and their lunch packed; making sure they got to their parties, ballet classes and football games. When my kids were younger I would watch them running around, happy and unburdened. Once evening came and they were finally asleep, I'd find myself staring hopelessly at a single sock left at the bottom of the washing basket. A child will skip merrily along, oblivious not only to the glove they've dropped, but to the feelings of loss and despair their mother will experience when the child returns home without it. I once became so desperate looking at a single Welly – wracking my brains over where we'd abandoned its mate – that I ended up planting a daffodil bulb in it.

There is a particular pain to losing one of a pair. That is until you marry, and then somehow the arithmetic takes a quantum shift because one-plus-one seems to halve you – and that's if you're lucky.

And now of course you want to ask me: 'How? Please tell me, I'm dying here – how can I get back the person I was? What's the answer?'

Well, listen up. You've waited this long, you can wait a bit longer.

It wasn't anything I'd planned. You know the joke, how do you make God laugh? Tell him your plans.