My quest for Homecoming started young.

At six years old, I found myself on a plane leaving my country of birth as war began to unfold across Yugoslavia. Arriving at Heathrow, I sensed - without fully understanding why - that life had shifted forever. I had left one home behind, but didn’t yet know where the next one would be.

Growing up between cultures, I learned how to adapt quickly. I tried to belong, to perform the role of an “English girl,” while quietly feeling I never fully belonged anywhere at all. I felt English in Macedonia, Macedonian in England, and eventually, as though home was something always just out of reach.

So I did what many women do - I tried to earn my place through achievement.

My early life was shaped by ambition, striving and success. From Head Girl to a first-class degree from King’s College London, to a successful career as an arts producer, life looked full on paper.

But beneath the surface, I felt increasingly disconnected. Long hours, high stress, and the pressure to keep performing drew me towards burnout, alongside a quiet but persistent belief that something in me needed fixing.

Then - life interrupted.

When my best friend Hannah died, grief became a profound wake-up call. I knew I couldn’t continue living in the same way. I stepped away from my career and began searching for something deeper. That journey led me to meditation, including ten days in silence at a meditation centre, where - sitting alone with myself, with nothing to perform or distract - I heard something I hadn’t heard in a long time: my own inner voice.

And with it came a realisation that changed everything.

I hadn’t been lost - I had simply been looking for home in the wrong places.

Wellbeing, I discovered, wasn’t about becoming someone new or fixing what was broken. It was about remembering who I already was. Returning to myself. That was my homecoming. That realisation changed the direction of my life.

I immersed myself in meditation, holistic healing and inner work. I came to understand sensitivity not as weakness, but as wisdom - discovering a more compassionate way of relating to myself, rooted in meaning, embodiment and truth. I founded an international wellbeing events company, working with partners like Ruby Wax, Claudia Hammond, and Psychologies Magazine - an experience that still shapes my understanding of wellbeing daily.

Eventually, I retrained as a Psychosynthesis counsellor and starting coaching, and later became a meditation teacher and facilitator. After years of creating stages for others to speak on, I found my own voice as a guide.

Today, this is the heart of the work I offer women.

I support high-achieving, sensitive women - often navigating transition, burnout, anxiety or a sense that outer success no longer matches how life feels inside - to come back home to themselves.

Because so often what we call struggle is, at its root, disconnection:
from our bodies,
from our truth,
from our sense of belonging within.

Together, we create space for reconnection - through counselling, coaching and embodied practices that invite greater authenticity, self-trust and wholeness.

A lot of what I hold space for is insight, meaning, empowerment and safety - especially in seasons of change, when old identities are being shed and something truer is asking to emerge. My own journey continues to deepen this work, including through perimenopause, which I’ve come to experience as another powerful invitation to listen more closely to what’s true.

Alongside my private practice, I’m Senior Facilitator & Coach at Luminate Wellbeing, where I’ve supported thousands of individuals and organisations globally - from charities and universities to clients including the NHS, Earthshot Prize, Pret A Manger, Rolls-Royce and the Australian High Commission. That work continues to expand my understanding of what meaningful wellbeing can look like: not as something separate from life, but woven into how we live, lead, work and relate.

At the heart of everything I do is a simple belief: when we feel at home within ourselves, everything changes.

We relate differently.
Lead differently.
Live differently.

And that inner homecoming ripples outward - into how we love, parent, create and move through the world.

That’s the work I care about. To help create a world where more women remember how to belong to themselves - in mind, body and heart - and from that place become a source of presence, love and joy in the world.

These days, when I’m not teaching or facilitating, you’ll find me in the wilds of Kent with my husband and son, occasionally in cold water when I’m feeling brave, or at a mum rave remembering that movement can be medicine. You can find me talking all things wellbeing @jana.nightingale.