I’m back from this year’s Reclaimed Means Business
RMB is Lindsay McGlone‘s incredible event combining creativity (especially burlesque) and business.
I’ve been reflecting on how much has shifted for me since I went last year.
In 2025 I got a last minute ticket. I drove the full four hour journey in the morning and was incredibly overwhelmed the whole day.
I cried in the toilets, I cried in the sensory breakout area, I cried all evening afterwards and I cried all the following morning.
It was only the second big event I’d been to since I was diagnosed autistic
(I guess I don’t get out much!)
And the first that was openly inclusive.
I’d hoped that the inclusivity would magically remove my awkwardness, but it very much didn’t. I was unable to speak for most of the day. I loved all the talks, but I felt frozen in my chair when it came to any kind of interaction.
But something about the magic of the event made me want more
I immediately bought my ticket for 2026.
I decided I needed to make more connections so that I’d know more people next time, and started making small efforts to do that.
My next baby step was in January, when I chose co-regulation my word for the year. I started asking for help and support from the people around me a little more than I used to.
In April, I was lucky enough to get a last minute ticket to Happier Life Live
Again it was a very inclusive event – smaller and less intense than Reclaimed Means Business.
And again, I showed up and felt overwhelmingly that I didn’t belong. The difference was this time I made more effort to sit with my feelings and pay attention to what was really going on inside.
Listening to a talk by Sarah Steinhöfel unlocked something deep inside me. Sarah was talking about the power of our stories, and after sharing their own, asked if anyone in the audience had a story to share.
I did.
I immediately remembered the time when I was 7
My parents were getting divorced, and I was moving schools. A friend happened to leave my tiny rural school just before me and was given a gorgeous goodbye assembly. I was so excited for my own assembly, but it never came.
I didn’t quite muster the courage to put my hand up and share my story then, but Sarah made the very generous offer to the whole audience to privately bear witness to any stories that wanted to be shared. And I did screw up my courage to go up to them and ask to take them up on that offer.
Over the following week I sat with that memory, and shared it with Sarah too. And something new came up for me.
I’d made a vow in my 7 year old brain and heart
“Fine! If you’re showing me I don’t belong here enough to be worth a proper goodbye, then I’m never going to trust that I belong anywhere again! [insert your best 7-year-old raspberry here]”.
I was turning up everywhere I went fully not expecting to feel like I belonged. So OF COURSE I was making that be real!
I started experimenting with what it might be like to choose to be in community
Especially leaning on the incredible Real Life Resource Lab. Joining in body doubling sessions and the group chat.
That sense of belonging has been slowly growing since then.
This year, at Reclaimed Means Business I set myself three goals:
Prompted by the wonderful GG who co-hosts the Real Life Resource Lab. A year on from shedding all those tears because I “couldn’t do big events”:
- Go for a run in an unfamiliar place (anxiety-inducing, but I wanted to keep up my practice)
- Talk to “some people”
- Practice what I preach and listen to my body.
I’m so proud to be able to say I smashed those goals:
- I did not just one run, but two. Short, but sweet. Round a local park
- I spoke to 19 different people! Some just a fleeting hello, some longer conversations
- I kept checking in with myself (and kept surprising myself with how regulated I felt). I left when the time felt right. I was the first to go to bed the night before, and I left halfway through the evening show at the event (nothing was going to top Janice Robinson’s incredible performance of Dreamer for me anyway!)
I was also so so proud to watch the amazing Anna Knight (GG’s cohost of the Lab) who fulfilled a promise they made to themselves last year to speak on stage. And absolutely smashed it! If you want to make more social change in your life or business with more ease, you need to give them a follow.
The lesson I’m taking from all this
By tuning in with myself and taking tiny steps all year, I was able to leave RMB26 feeling incredibly proud of myself, instead of drenched in shame that I “couldn’t do it”.
I know that for some people, the sensory overwhelm and intensity of the event means they couldn’t manage it – or they wouldn’t want to, and that’s completely valid. There are plenty of events that I can’t, or don’t want to, manage too.
But sometimes, it’s hidden decisions we made when we were seven that have been holding us back ever since. And maybe it’s time to unpick them!