Meet Sarah
Founder of Raise Your Village — bringing together trauma informed practice, nervous system understanding and over 25 years of experience supporting children, families and professionals.
I have spent over 25 years supporting children, families and professionals through some of life’s hardest moments.
Over 15 of those years were spent as a teacher and in leadership, specialising in SEMH, trauma informed practice and emotional wellbeing. I worked closely with children and young people navigating behaviour challenges, neurodivergence, trauma and unmet need, alongside the adults trying their best to support them.
What I saw time and time again was this:
People are struggling.
Children. Parents. Professionals. Leaders.
Not because they don’t care.
But because so many of us are trying to cope under huge pressure, without truly understanding what is happening in our minds, bodies and nervous systems.
That realisation changed the direction of my work.
What if behaviour is not defiance, but communication we have not yet learned how to hear?
Lived Experience Alongside Professional Practice
Alongside my professional work, I am also a single mum to three neurodivergent children.
Life has taught me that healing is rarely linear.
Like many people I support, I have navigated seasons of overwhelm, survival, grief, rebuilding and learning to reconnect with myself after difficult experiences.
I know what it feels like to carry too much.
To advocate when exhausted.
To hold things together whilst quietly trying to heal your own wounds.
My children have been some of my greatest teachers, showing me, sometimes painfully, how systems designed to support can instead overwhelm, exclude or wait for crisis before help arrives.
That lived experience deepened my understanding of trauma, nervous systems, behaviour and what people truly need to feel safe, supported and able to grow.
My lived experience does not replace my professional knowledge.
It grounds it.
