This time last year Ilkley was covered in snow and I was coming out of my second conversation filled peak season on the shop floor of Oliver Bonas. I’d applied for a seasonal role the previous Christmas and it was due to last around six weeks but I ended up staying for 18 months. Isn’t it amazing how the right job at the right time with the right people can make such a difference.
I loved being an employee again. I loved leaving the house to work. I had start and finish times to my shifts and tasks to do even if chatting to customers, tidying and refilling shelves with brightly coloured clothes, accessories, textiles and shiny jewellery didn’t remotely feel like work.
I had colleagues and team meetings, I loved adding to the biscuit haul on the table in the office. I loved seeing a company culture ‘Work hard, play hard and be kind’ brought to life firsthand in such brilliant and relatable ways especially after so many years of grappling with that very challenge in various internal communication roles..
But mostly I loved the conversations and the buzz I got from talking to so many different people and that’s the energy I want to bring into Moor Communication.
It sounds like a cliche, but walking down the hill to work and stepping into this sensory filled space brought colour and light into my life. It gave me the biggest confidence boost I didn’t realise I needed. Or maybe I did realise it and that’s why I applied for the job after spotting the ‘Vacancies’ sign in the window one day.
Starting from scratch
Putting solid foundations in place, taking a step back to consider the bigger picture and finding space to allow fresh ideas and perspective to emerge are recurring themes in conversations with clients. It sounds easy doesn’t it. The words roll off the tongue but it is so much harder to do in practice.
The reality is that I’ve been applying this same thinking to my life since moving to Yorkshire in September 2017 and it’s taken a minute to get to a place where the foundations feel pretty solid. Those 18 months at Oliver Bonas felt like putting a crucial foundational stone in place after years of shifting sands.
The move to Ilkley came three years after relocating from Bath to Bournemouth in 2014. A move that came a 18 months after mum, dad and grandma died in 2015. A move followed by a breast cancer diagnosis along with settling three children into new schools, friendships and everything that comes with relocation including finding a home to live in.
The word ‘relocation’ is far too clinical, way too transactional to convey what it really feels like to uproot your life, and we did it twice in the midst of other life changing, life altering events. It’s taken a long time to feel rooted, to feel like I’m walking on solid foundations.
There’ve been a lot of tears, and thankfully increasingly more smiles to get to where I am right this minute. And where I am in January 2026 is sitting in my home office tapping and typing this almost exactly 8 years after my final radiotherapy session.
I’ve been immensely grateful that I’ve had this freelance communication and writing work to fall back on over the years. Its current version is Moor Communication, being my own boss meant I could carry on working and earning amongst the moves and ill health (there was ME/chronic fatigue before breast cancer).
Crucially it also gave me something for me, a sense of purpose and identity when life was changing in such a profound way that I didn’t know which way was up.
My freelance communication work has always been about communicating, connection, words and people even if that’s taken different shapes and forms over the past 18 years. I’ve been happy to stay in the shadows during that time, at my happiest working behind the scenes giving clients the words, confidence and encouragement they need to do what they want and need to do, to connect and build relationships with their communities.
Right now that looks like writing email newsletters for Leonie’s community of sewers at The Sewing Shed, crafting relationship building newsletters and putting solid communication foundations in place for local charity A Bit of a Break, helping yoga instructor, physio and meditator Jacqui Taylor clarify her messaging as her services evolve and I’m delighted to have just started working with cancer charity Pseudomyxoma Survivor.
Finding my voice on the page and helping you to find yours
A big part of building my confidence back up, understanding who I am, what makes me happy and feeling rooted in this post-treatment phase of life as the children grow and leave home too has been finding my own voice through writing.
Initially that started by emptying all the thoughts and memories and crap onto the page. I started by turning up to 8am Writers Hours with London Writers’ Salon back in 2020 filling page after page with handwritten scribbles. I found companionship, camaraderie and energy in those small Zoom squares.
This led to a memoir writing course with Curtis Brown Creative, submitting to writing competitions including being shortlisted in the Fish Short Memoir Competition with The First Funeral and being published in the fourth London Writers’ Salon Anthology in 2024.
I joined a local writing group Moor Words, take part in Spoken Word evenings and started writing The Gentle Writer on Substack. Last year I made the shift from writing memoir to fiction but I’m still drawn to reflective writing and suspect I always will be.
Maybe the shift from memoir also reflects how I feel right now. Ready to create and play with stories and characters away from my own lived experience.
Writing has helped me to find my voice in a way that’s felt safe when I’ve felt vulnerable. It’s given me space to explore and reflect. It’s opened up communities and worlds I’d never otherwise have come into contact with, and above all, I love it. I’ve always been an avid reader and written for others, but I’d never seen myself as a writer.
Here for all the conversations
I left Oliver Bonas last Spring because I felt it was time to bring this newfound confidence and experience of working as an employee again into this writing life of mine – writing for others here at Moor Communication, writing fiction and writing reflective posts at The Gentle Writer on Substack.
And what does this mean for you? I guess it means I’m here for all the conversations, ready to listen and help you to put strong communication foundations in place, whether that’s refining your core messages, putting a messaging strategy in place, clarifying your tone of voice, carrying out an audience analysis or anything else that will help you to build trust and relationships with your audiences so that you and your organisations can thrive.
Thank you for reading,
Harriet