Snakes and ladders is a board game I have always felt aptly describes my life’s somewhat eventful entrepreneurial journey.
Self employed for all of my working life, I have had wins and losses, great victories and major disasters.
In 1998 I started a small soapmaking company called RAIN. Just two staff and myself - a genuine garagiste !
I grew that brand over a twenty year period - to become an international body and bath product brand with branded stores in the USA, Holland and Ireland. Thirty four stores in total and over two hundred staff.
There were great victories during those years but also a fair share of snakes.
The immense pressure and stress of growing the RAIN brand eventually manifested in my body in the form of stage 3 breast cancer discovered in April 2015.

These years can best be described as my annus horribilis times three. I lost my health. I lost my brand.
I lost 22 years of my working life - everything I had sacrificed for, everything I had invested, I lost my identity, my dreams. I LOST !

I decided to walk the Camino de Santiago Frances across Spain -to try to find peace, find answers, find myself. To pray and to seek God and understanding .
To make sense of the past three years. 890km and thirty five days later, I had laid down my RAIN brand at the foot of the iron cross ( Cruz de Fero) . I had released myself from the umbilical ties - one of the most difficult things I have ever had to do .

A wonderful opportunity to open a restaurant arose and, as I was under restraint of trade from Rain , I grabbed the chance at a new career, a new business. I named it Grace + Merci because I had experienced first hand , God’s absolute grace in that I was alive and well post breast cancer and Covid. The name is about gratitude - one says grace ( thank you ) before one eats. Merci is the French for thank you. All in all - deep gratitude at beating the odds, being alive and well despite everything that life had thrown at me. We opened in October 2020 - - when restaurants were going under everyday. It was a huge risk.

I opened my Secret Shop hidden away in the garden behind the restaurant. There I am doing all the things that made me so happy in the early days of RAIN. Sourcing, product developing, travelling, finding outlet for my creativity
I revived the defunct Under The Oaks Market on a Saturday and started organizing events for the town.
…. And slowly but surely, only by God’s immense limitless Grace, I have started climbing back up the ladder once again.

In 2012 , I visited the Himba tribe in the remote Kaokoveld region of Namibia. I had heard about their fascinating culture of perfumery despite being a nomadic very tribal people. I was studying perfumery at the time and was intrigued by what ingredients they could possibly find and forage in an extreme desert region. I was astounded to find that they source around 20 different fragrant ingredients from the resins to bark, roots and seeds. I came home inspired and started to play with tinctures and formulations.
Then came the dreaded breast cancer in 2015. The chemotherapy caused me to lose my sense of smell , and I abandoned the perfumery studies. Everything was packed away, archived and stored.
In 2023, I decided to do a big clean out and found all my bottles of experiments and tinctures from 2013.
On opening the bottles, I was literally moved to tears at the fragrances they contained. The years of maturation had made them mellow and glorious. I could never consider discarding this treasure.
So, I decided to resume my dream of a perfumery. I opened my perfume atelier at the end of 2023 and am loving the entire process of sourcing interesting and exotic natural perfume ingredients from around the world, formulating my own very small batch limited edition creations, and stocking my perfumery with beautiful soulful scent sensations.
I have been back to the Himba tribe twice since to buy replenish my stocks.