A west Fife woman who refused to accept her deteriorating health is now using the same determination to help others.
It was back in 1998 when Maureen Sharphouse, then only 42, began to suffer from a range of complex health issues. The music and drama graduate, who has had successful careers in performing and teaching, was working in property management when she started showing symptoms including numbness, tingling sensations, shooting pain, a loss of balance, fatigue and lack of concentration.
“I got progressively worse my mobility got a lot worse and some times I was in excruciating pain,” she explains. “I’d never experience fatigue like it it was terrible and sometimes I was spending half a day in bed.”
With simple tasks often beyond her, Maureen found her life shrinking. Unable to return to work, she depended on a stick or a Zimmer to get around at home, and used a wheelchair if she wanted to venture further. She also had carers for two years to help her bathe and to dress her.
“It was a whole range of neurological symptoms and I had major surgery and it got to the stage the simplest of things were difficult and in the end I was told basically to accept it.”
Now registered disabled, she looked within herself to try to pick up the pieces of the life she once knew.
“I have always been a motivated and ambitious woman but when I started the rounds of hospital treatments and was told to get on with it, it took over me and illness was my life. Then something clicked, and I thought that this isn’t the way I want my life to be,” she said.BelievingMaureen admitted she “found some fight in me” but it has not been an easy road to where she is now. She started with self-help, with physio, hydrotherapy, regular exercise and complementary therapies.
“I started to turn it around and started believing in myself and that I was going to get better and that I was going to have a good life,” she said.
Leaving an unhappy marriage, with no job, few friends, little resources was a giant leap for her but Maureen felt it was the right thing to do to help herself.
“I believe your body is amazing cut yourself and it heals but for a body to get the best chance to help itself it has to be free of stress and unhappiness. If it is bound in negativity you are fighting that as well.”
As she took small steps back to wellbeing, she enrolled in charity work and then turned herself to a coach. Since then she has trained as a life development coach, holding the certificate of professional coaching practice and is an accredited member of the International Coach Federation and has set up her own business, Find Your Wings, from her home town of Dalgety Bay.
In this International Coaching Week, Maureen explained her role is not as advisor or counsellor, but to listen, support, inspire and motivate clients to achieve their own goals.