The #midlifefunkcoach is Georgie Bingham!

There's a reason to introduce myself fully - if any of this resonates with you, then you know you aren't alone! 

Hi - I'm Georgie - and when I hit my mid forties, I went on a rollercoaster ride. This midlife, peri-menopausal, career-crashing lonely place was not a fun, hold-on-folks! kind of situation, it was dark - at times felt impossible - and all of it was conducted behind a mask of smiles and bravado.

What I know now is that this isn't uncommon. In fact, I'd go so far as to say this is part of a growing-up process. I think having kids makes people grow up - and those of us who don't procreate might take a bit longer - but the whole thing seems to converge on the years when the kids leave home, and the reality of our parents getting older (and leaving us) increases. At the same time, our own midlives and mortality are right there, laid bare.

This was my grow or die point. BUT - I wasn't into growing; I didn't think I needed to. Hey, I was smart and pretty good at surviving the industry I was working in, I didn't anything really, just a good pay cheque, a good night out once in a while, and some golf.     But, turns out, I was wrong. I needed meaning, I needed thoughtfulness, I needed to be better.  This meant I had to change a whole lot.  A full 180. I'm now six years without alcohol, I left broadcasting 3 years ago, I am a peaceful, happier person, and I am no longer lonely, sad or frustrated.

In my early 40s, I went from sociable, gregarious, and pretty normal to increasingly withdrawn, worried, and lonely. I didn't know and couldn't find the answers, and I probably wasn't really looking in the right place either. I'd failed at relationships with the most awful people I should never have let anywhere near me. My drinking went from sociable to solo, I loved being in on my own with a nice bottle of wine. But alcohol made me stuck, and before long I was choosing the nights in with telly and wine over friends and parties. It made me lonelier, but when I was out, or with family or friends, I also felt lonely, so I didn't think it was any one thing in particular. When my mental health was at its shittest, along came Covid to fuck with us - BUT - it turned out to be a turning point and a huge gift for me that I shall always remember.

Faced with living alone in my house during lockdown - for the first time really - I was terrified. (Explanation,  I had the kind of job that required working long or anti-social hours, or both; loads of travel to incredible places and destinations, BUT it meant I was never really at home more than a day or two at a time and even then I would be knackered, or check in and out of it like a hotel as I went onto the next job or destination.)  The thought of living at home alone was scary; I would be in my own company, in my house, on my own.  That was a terrifying prospect.   I knew that my loneliness was so bad I felt I wouldn't survive. 

I made the decision to take a break from alcohol.  I'd previously stopped drinking - once for a year, another time for two - and that was easy - I'd just stopped. This time was much harder. Two days without, then back to a wine in front of the telly. A week off, then back to it again. In the end - I got help. I've become more honest about that period of my life because on reflection I was at the very edge of a cliff and steps away from a tumble into full addiction when I stopped drinking, and I now know I stopped just in time. I KNOW in my heart that I am an alcoholic who never drank as alcoholically as some - but was becoming powerless to alcohol. I think I was months away from falling into oblivion and I couldn't be more grateful that I was so scared I took action.

When I first got sober, I was hanging on by my fingernails. It ended with me healthy, happy, gardening, walking, golfing, falling so heavily into nature that I would spend hours just marvelling at it.  I was half way through my life and realised I'd missed most of it.  Especially when I drank.  When I drank, I didn't live in the present. I ruminated about the past; things that hadn't gone my way or that made me cringe - or I was there thinking about the future I was going to have;  where everything was better and I was more successful or had a bigger house or had moved somewhere else and found happiness.  When I stopped drinking, I realised how much time of my life I had wasted on feeling sad, being sad, being stuck, being unhealthy, being in shit relationships, and I also realised that drinking meant my anti-depressant medication hadn't worked and was the main reason I didn't sleep.

So, I did the work. Gradually, over the first two years of my sobriety, I made my life better. I read, I asked questions, I had root-cause therapy, and I found my community. I realised I couldn't face going back to broadcasting and while I was working out what that meant, my dad was diagnosed with cancer so I spent time at home looking after him until he died in 2024.  I'm super super grateful for that. It took me ages to work out what to do next, but in the meantime I started a book on midlife that's ended up becoming my whole coaching blueprint.

I realised I wanted to help others, and coaching does just that. I specialise in alcohol free(dom) coaching, which really helps people change their relationship with booze and thrive in a new, energetic, and happier way.   I see people blossom like I did. I've realised that there's a kind of middle ground with alcohol - people who drink too much but would never set foot in an AA meeting because they don't consider themselves an alcoholic or addicted - but they want to drop the booze and change their lives and if I can help, I do.

Since I started coaching, I've also done a lot of loneliness and single-people coaching. I've found that so incredibly exciting - us single people don't ever want to burden other people with our stuff, good or bad, and I find that holding space for them to work out what needs to change is really very exciting. I'm not even single any more - but I lived in that world for almost my whole adult life, always beating myself up that I could never make a relationship work, always choosing badly, always drama - always feeling like I was missing out on something and there MUST be something wrong with me.  There wasn't -  but I  only found the key to existing in singledom in a happy way in the last two years before I met my husband. What a waste of decades of my time!   I can't believe I wasted so much time trying to make relationships work with people who weren't worthy of my time or affection, and how little value I gave to myself, what I wanted, and needed as an individual. Amazing how long it took me to come to that!

So this is my tale up to now. I'm a coach and I'm here for you. If you want to know more about what I do and how it works, then go to my coaching page to see.