It was infertility and my desperate pursuit of motherhood that led me to the Hoffman Process. And, in turn, the Hoffman Process led me to many things including writing three books, swimming the English Channel and climbing Mount Everest!
This is my Hoffman story.
I was 34 years old and Chief Executive at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre in London, when my partner Peter and I first decided to have a family. We threw away the contraception and assumed, as lots of people do, that we would get pregnant relatively quickly and easily. How wrong we were. After a year of trying nothing had happened, and we made our first visit to a fertility clinic. After a series of routine tests we were told we had ‘Unexplained Infertility’, which is a terrible diagnosis because it basically means doctors have no idea what’s wrong. You’re just told to keep on trying, and encouraged to do IVF. I have come to realise the hard way that is no guarantee of a baby either.
Looking back now, I see that so many of the sex education messages we’re given in school revolve around pregnancy prevention. There just isn’t enough about what to do when it doesn’t work. Peter and I spent a decade of our lives trying for a baby. A journey that involved a total of 11 rounds of unsuccessful IVF, multiple miscarriages, and an ectopic pregnancy which nearly took my life – a perfect baby but in the wrong place: my stomach. It was a very dark and difficult period of my life that involved a massive investment of time, money, headspace and heartache. It took its toll in many ways.
During one of our many meetings with fertility specialists, I remember my anger surfacing, and Peter suggested that maybe I needed to deal with it. Soon after that I booked myself onto an anger management course. It was a new experience for me and at one point – I’ll never forget it – the man running the course said, “Jessica, you’re not angry, you’re sad. You need to do some work on your inner child. You need to go and do the Hoffman Process.” I went home and googled it immediately. My interest was piqued.
I was about to turn 40 at the time and this milestone proved to be a real wake-up call for me. I decided to take a 3-month sabbatical from work. Signing up for the Hoffman Process in 2011 was a gift to myself, and felt like a good way to begin my sabbatical and a new chapter.
The Process was truly transformational and changed my life in many ways. I’m now 53 and I still feel its impact, on both a psychological and practical level. If I’m honest I think I went into Hoffman hoping I would unlock some sort of psychological key to my infertility which would allow my body to get pregnant. Sadly that didn’t happen. But it was the beginning of a journey to a completely different life. A life that I never imagined and is extraordinary and exciting .
I now describe myself as an author, arts producer and adventure activist. It’s a unique and unusual job description. I hope I’m also a bit of a female pioneer.
The first thing I did on completing the Process was write my first book, The Pursuit of Motherhood which detailed my fertility struggles. The book was published in 2014 and the act of writing it was hugely cathartic for me but has also helped many other women and raised public discourse around infertility and IVF. Although I’d always written business reports for work, I’d never considered myself to be a creative writer. Hoffman unleashed my inner ‘Artist’ and helped me discover what has become one of the greatest passions of my life. In fact I write about doing the Hoffman Process in my first book.
I’ve since gone on to write two other books based on my life’s work and adventures since the Process, 21 Miles (my story of swimming the English Channel in search of the meaning of Motherhood) and Save Me from the Waves, (my story of climbing Mount Everest fuelled by listening to every episode of my favourite radio programme Desert Island Discs, and the wisdom and music of all it guests). More about these crazy challenges later!
I credit the Process with giving me many gifts including a new vocation. I left my job at the Lyric and feel like I’ve now become Chief Executive of Jessica Hepburn PLC (metaphorically not literally). My life is my work these days and I seem to have managed to make that into a career. There was a real shift in purpose during the course that has lasted, helping me to accomplish everything that I have achieved post-Process.
But just as profound as this was the opportunity it gave me to explore the impact of my childhood and process how it made me who I am.
Reflecting on the week now, I recall some elements with great clarity.
To help prompt memories of childhood, we were asked to bring a photo of ourselves as a child. Looking at that photo of myself as a little girl with adult eyes was when the work on my inner child really began. It was a pivotal moment of tenderness and kindness towards myself which I think is very rare. With it also came the realisation that she was still part of me, and was not to blame for the bad things that happened to her and it was time to start to be a mother to her (and me). In fact I have now come to believe that on some level my own relentless pursuit of motherhood was driven by my need to ‘re-parent myself’ and that we should all start by doing that for ourselves – whether or not we become parents to other people.
I still recall the structure of the week and the way it was perfectly put together. I particularly remember the powerful use of music. At the end of the Process I remember dancing to Bobby McFerrin’s song ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’ which has become imprinted on my brain. I write about this in my new book (‘Save Me from the Waves’). It would definitely be one of the eight tracks on my own Desert Island Discs list.
The use of silence was also a really impactful part of the experience for me, allowing me the time to converse with myself and not to get drowned by chatter with other people. And I also just have to mention the food which I still remember as being so delicious, providing real nurture and comfort.
I’ve always believed in the words of the Philip Larkin poem ‘This be the Verse’ – the one that starts with the lines: ‘They f*** you up your mum and dad, they may not mean to but they do…’ which became the inspiration for Oliver James’ book, ‘They F*** You Up’, and I would say that Hoffman operates in the same arena. Beforehand, I didn’t even realise that I would be doing so much work on my parents. However, this work helped me understand my childhood in a way which I’d never done before, and I’ve never felt the need to re-visit in detail again.
The group nature of the course is part of its magic. I think it’s brilliant how you feel totally bonded with this group of strangers and yet you don’t get to know the detail of their back stories. You become united by sharing your pain and vulnerability side by side and these connections last way beyond the Process week itself. I’m still in touch with some of the people from my group and with one woman in particular. We’ve continued to help and support each other over the years. But if the whole group did get back together again, I know that we would all be totally connected straight away due to the week we experienced with Hoffman.
On the last day when I left the Process, I had a feeling of absolute radiance, as if my heart and head were truly aligned. I felt that I could do anything I wanted to and that whatever the world was going to give me, it would be glorious. After the Process, Peter picked me up and we went straight to France on holiday and I started writing The Pursuit of Motherhood immediately .
It also signalled the start of a new and very different adventure for me. I decided I was going to swim the English Channel. I often describe it as ‘part childhood dream, part mid-life crisis’. I had no idea what was involved, how hard it would be or how cold. I’d never swum in open water before, in fact I wasn’t even a very good swimmer. But as a child I remember consoling my dad when I didn’t get into the swimming gala by promising him that one day I’d swim the Channel instead, and I’d never quite forgotten that promise. My dad died within a year of me doing the Hoffman Process, and it felt like it was time to do something completely different with my life – I embarked on it partly in memory of him.
Training for and swimming the Channel was undoubtedly the most transformational experience I’ve ever undertaken. What I didn’t realise is how many parallels there were going to be with my IVF journey. Nature decides whether you will conceive and carry a baby. Nature also decides whether you will cross her seas. And she gave that to me. In many ways it felt like my own version of giving birth. It took me 17 hours 44 minutes and 30 seconds of labour including violent vomiting and jellyfish stings all over my body and face. But all the pain was eclipsed by euphoria as soon as my feet touched the sand in France. It became the subject of my second book 21 Miles in which I also interviewed 21 famous and inspirational women about the meaning of motherhood.
Then after all this healing, life threw me another curveball. My relationship with Peter, the love of my life, ended. It was devastating, heaping loss upon loss. For a while I fell into an abyss. My only answer was to turn to adventure again as my way out of heartbreak. I ran the London Marathon and then I embarked on the biggest challenge of my life – climbing Mount Everest.
I knew nothing about mountaineering like I’d known nothing about swimming. But one of the wonderful things is that the adventure also enabled me indulge in my life-long obsession with the Radio 4 programme Desert Island Discs which became my fuel up the mountain, and the subject of my new third book Save Me from the Waves which was published in March.
So whilst I may never be a mother, my adventures have transformed me from unlikely athlete to record breaker – the first woman on the planet to complete the ‘Sea, Street, Summit’ challenge (which is to swim the English Channel, run a road Marathon and summit Mount Everest). I have now become an activist for the power of adventure to improve your mental health when you’ve been through dark and difficult times. I’m equally passionate about micro adventures as I am about massive ones – the important thing is doing something new; something that requires effort (for you); and something where the outcome is unknown. I also use my own adventure story for activism around women’s health, particularly fertility. I give talks in schools as well as for many other events and organisations. My personal mantras are ‘Live Big and Brave’ and ‘Your Shit is Your Superpower’. Going on the Process really was the springboard for this change in me, and the new direction of my life.
I truly believe that everyone can benefit from meeting their inner child, and exploring what I call: ‘the shit that shaped you’. In fact, I believe it’s the key to inner peace and living your best life. Doing Hoffman was the right decision for me and came at exactly the right time. Whatever your situation, I believe it’s a gift to yourself that will deliver what you need. —
Jessica Hepburn is an author, arts producer and adventure activist. She was nominated as an Amnesty International ‘Woman of Suffragette Spirit’ and a ‘Woman to Watch in 2024’ by Women and Home Magazine. She has written three books: The Pursuit of Motherhood, 21 Miles , and Save Me from the Waves and also writes weekly on Substack here.
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