Why I Am Writing About Peace

For as long as I can remember, I have had a desire to help people. I think that was probably one of the biggest reasons I created Boil and Broth, and later the British Broth Company. My own experiences had made me interested in health, but more than that, I could see how many people were struggling with their long-term health and looking for answers. I wanted to share what I had learned, talk about my own experiences and create products that might genuinely support people in looking after themselves.

Over the last few years, though, I have found myself thinking about health in a much wider sense. I have started to realise that looking after ourselves isn't only about what we eat, how much we exercise or the things we put into our bodies. What is happening in our minds, our relationships and our homes matters too. In fact, I have come to believe that peace begins in the home. We may not be able to control the chaos happening in the world around us, but we do have influence over what happens within our own four walls, and particularly over what we bring into them ourselves.

For a long time, I felt that I could help people through the businesses. I could share my story, explain the things I had learned along the way and talk openly about health. But as the businesses have grown, inevitably they have become more about running businesses. There are employees, manufacturing, regulations, accounts, websites, orders, suppliers and all the other responsibilities that come with building a company. There are also restrictions around what businesses like ours are allowed to say about health. Even sharing my own health story became difficult because of the way Trading Standards can interpret health claims when you also happen to sell a product.

I understand why regulations exist, but personally I have found that frustrating. My story is part of the reason the businesses exist in the first place, yet I have increasingly felt unable to tell it properly. Add to that the constant criticism that seems to come with having any sort of public-facing business today, sometimes from people who have never even bought anything from you, and it can slowly drag you down. You can start something because you want to help people and then find yourself spending an enormous amount of time dealing with the business of being a business.

I still love what we have created and I will continue running the businesses, but over the last few years I have found myself thinking about whether there might be another way I can help people. Interestingly, my thoughts have moved away from physical health alone and towards something I think is just as important: what is happening in our minds, our relationships and our homes.

That is where this book about peace has come from.

The more I look around me, the more I see people struggling. We live in a world where we are constantly busy, constantly distracted and constantly being told that there is something else we should be doing. There is work, money, school, children's activities, social media, phones, news, appointments, emails and endless expectations. We have created a way of living where almost every minute can be filled with something, yet I am not convinced that filling our lives has made us happier.

I think the effect of this is particularly noticeable within families. People are stressed. Parents are exhausted. Marriages are under pressure and children are growing up in a world that is very different from the one many of us experienced as children. Even when families are physically together, there are so many things competing for their attention that they aren't necessarily with each other. There seems to be very little space left simply to exist together, talk, think or even be bored.

And I think this is why peace has to begin at home. Our homes are where our children are learning about relationships, how to deal with conflict, how to communicate and what it feels like to live alongside other people. The atmosphere we create within our homes becomes part of their childhood. We cannot give our children a world without difficulty, stress or disappointment, but perhaps we can give them somewhere peaceful to return to when the world outside feels chaotic.

But I also believe that peace within the home has to begin somewhere even more personal: within ourselves.

I think many women live with an almost constant internal conversation about who they are, who they should be and whether they are doing enough. We think about the mistakes we have made in the past, worry about what might happen in the future and compare our lives with other people's lives. We question whether we are good enough mothers, wives or women. We replay conversations, imagine problems that haven't happened and sometimes carry things from our past for years without realising how much they are affecting the way we live today.

When your mind is constantly occupied by those thoughts, finding peace becomes incredibly difficult. And I have started to realise how closely this connects with the physical health that I have spent so many years talking about.

We can tell people that they need to eat differently, exercise, sleep better, stop drinking too much, give up smoking or break whatever habits and addictions are damaging their health. But changing those things is considerably harder when someone's life feels chaotic. Sometimes the thing we are telling somebody to give up is also the thing they are using to cope. If somebody has no peace in their mind or their home, it is understandable that they might look for something that temporarily switches everything off.

That doesn't mean we are powerless. In fact, that is really what I want this book to be about.

I don't believe we can remove every problem from our lives. Families will always have difficulties. Children will challenge us, marriages will go through difficult periods, money can cause stress, people will disappoint us and things will happen that we simply cannot control. Finding peace isn't about somehow creating a perfect life where nothing ever goes wrong. I think it is about learning to recognise what is taking our peace from us and understanding what we actually have the power to change.

I particularly want to write this for women because I think we have an enormous influence over the atmosphere within our homes, while at the same time often carrying an enormous amount ourselves. When we are overwhelmed, angry, distracted, anxious or unhappy, it doesn't remain neatly contained inside us. It affects our relationships, our reactions and eventually the atmosphere our children are growing up in. Equally, when we begin dealing with some of the chaos within ourselves, the effect can spread beyond us too.

That is what I want to explore in this book. I want to look honestly at why peace is missing from so many people's lives, the pressures families are facing today and the things that can gradually destroy peace within ourselves, our marriages and our relationships with our children. But more importantly, I want to talk about what we can actually do about it.

I want women to understand themselves better, to recognise the thoughts that are controlling them and to stop being defined by things they have done in the past. I want them to question some of the expectations they have placed upon themselves and rediscover who they actually are underneath all the noise. And ultimately, I want to help women understand that while they cannot control everything happening around them, they can begin to change what is happening within them and, through that, bring more peace into their homes.

When I think about it that way, perhaps this isn't such a different direction for me after all. Boil and Broth began because I wanted to help people look after their health. I still want to do that. I have simply come to believe that health is about considerably more than what we put into our bodies.

Sometimes looking after ourselves also means looking at what we are carrying in our minds, what is happening within our relationships and what kind of life we are creating inside our own homes.

Peace begins in the home. But perhaps, before that, it has to begin within us.

And that is why I feel compelled to write about peace.