I remember the review and application group.
 
It was in the second week of my first Leicester Conference, 2008. We were six in the group. Two presented the previous day: A woman from Sweden and another woman from Kuwait. That day, it was my turn, together with a man from the Netherlands.
 
I presented some sort of mind map of the various roles I found myself in outside of the conference. The previous night I had worked into the morning hours to get it completed.
 
There was my role as lecturer at the university, my part-time team building facilitator role, my previous HR role at a local bank, my role in a research team as well as my role in a local community project in Johannesburg. For each role I mapped out the significant authority figures involved, the tasks I were responsible for, the pressures.
 
On this map I superimposed a map of my conference experiences until that point, complete with cross-references and colour codes. It was a masterpiece!
 
We were sitting in a circle. The group hunched over the flipchart paper on the floor with my sticky-note mind map and arrows and colours. I spoke and pointed and explained. I wanted to show something of how much responsibility I was taking. How I was being pulled into different directions. But I also wanted them to see how good I was at this. That I got it.
 
When I finished, I sat back in my chair, waiting for the consultant, a lovely bald man from Portugal, to speak. Ready to receive some praise for my hard work.
 
He was sitting next to me. In silence, for a moment or two.
 
Then, he looked straight at me, and asked: "May I ask you a question?"
 
"Yes," I said. My heart rate picking up.
 
"How many fathers do you have?" The question, like an arrow, pierced right through the noise and pretence. Bulls eye. "And what do you owe them?" Ouch. Another one. Deadly accurate.
 
I looked around the room. Swallowed at the lump in my throat. A wetness in the corners of my eyes. I saw the empathy on the others' faces. Realised that they had seen exactly what the consultant saw.
 
Somehow, that which I did not say, seeped so thoroughly through my presentation, that no-one could miss it. Except me.

I had been so busy, the previous night and the years before that, trying to impress and work and satisfy, that I missed the obvious pattern running through more or less all my role-relationships: The unpleasable father-in-my-mind. Re-created. Again and again and again. In a never-ending series of attempts to finally please perfectly.
 
What a liberation.
 
To join the 2024 Leicester Conference, click here.

It is now 16 years since that fortnight in England that changed everything. 

I remember arriving there, in that typical ‘not-knowing-what-I-don’t-know’ certitude. Thinking the fact that I was a psychologist put me in a better position than the business executives around for what was lying ahead. 

I remember having tea with a group of people, who seemed more or less my age, just before the conference started. There was a guy from Singapore, one from Denmark, a woman from Romania and one from Lithuania. We were filled with butterflies, knowing that we were about to dive into an immersion that would change us. 

What I didn’t know, couldn’t have known, was just how profound this change would be. It was that first Leicester experience, in 2008, that kick-started my journey into myself and onto what would become an unbelievably fulfilling career.

Like any life-changing adventure, there is only one way to make it happen: Decide that you want to go. Then figure out the practicalities. 

This year the conference will be in August, and I will be one of the consultants, working alongside some of the people whom I met during that 2008 conference. 

Get the 2024 Leicester Conference brochure here.