If we’re starting from zero, I want to start with something I’ve never said out loud before.

For the past few years, I’ve held back from sharing images of our life here in New York. Not because I didn’t want to or I didn’t have anything worth sharing but because I was afraid of being judged.

That we were bragging… or swapping our old life for a glitzy glossy version and were “rubbing it in” somehow.

The truth is so much messier than that. And this series is me finally being open and honest about all of it… the good, the bad and the ugly.

Four weeks’ notice. Six suitcases. One enormous leap of faith.

When Andy told me we were moving to New York, we had four weeks to make it happen.

Four weeks to close down my photography studio - a business I’d built and loved for over ten years. Four weeks to sell and empty our homes in Newport and Winsford. Four weeks to say goodbye to the lifelong friends, family, neighbours and the life we had in the UK.

I remember standing in our house in Chepstow Road with my best friend Sam as the last of our things were packed onto the shipping container parked out front - looking around at the empty rooms, thinking: this is really happening?

The feeling was surreal, like a numbness but with no panic - at least not visibly. We were in the zone of ‘let’s do this and get this done’ because it was happening whether we liked it or not. We were nervously excited.

If I’m honest, I had no idea what the next few month’s would look like - so I was going along with everyone else’s vision of what life in New York was going to look like.

You know the one…

Carrie Bradshaw. Brunch on a Sunday. Walking the streets of the City with shopping bags swinging. The skyline glittering in the background. The electric energy of anything being possible, just by stepping out of your front door.

We were going to live.

The first few weeks gave every reason to believe the dream.

Andy had gone ahead a few weeks earlier while I stayed behind to close everything down. By the time I finally landed (six suitcases in tow, yes, six) and stepped out into New York City for the first time as someone who actually lived there, life was already moving fast.

Within days we were attending a glittering gala at the Cipriani. Conversations and photos with Johnny Depp, an event hosted by JK Rowling and Whoopi Goldberg. The following week, New York City red carpet premieres with J-Lo, Vanessa Hudgens and Milo Ventimiglia - the kind of events you see and think that’s not real life.

We were living it…

The reality nobody saw.

Everyone back home was living through the images we were sharing… but, here’s what the photos didn’t show.

We had moved to a community where everyone already had their people. Their families were nearby. Their friendships were decades deep.

I had no role. My visa restrictions meant I couldn’t run a business, and after ten years as a female entrepreneur, the idea of working for someone else felt like putting on clothes that simply didn’t fit.

I was proud of the businesses and success that had been built in the UK. I’d been someone with a purpose and a place in the world. In New York, I was none of those things yet.

I tried to make friends the way you do when you’re new somewhere. One afternoon, I put together one of our beautiful Moments Candles Co (a company I invested in) gift bags and knocked on a neighbour’s door...

I started attending networking events, gathering up the courage to walk into rooms full of strangers and introduce myself. Every time, the same three questions came back like a checklist:

Where did you graduate? Do you have kids? Where do you work?

Three questions. Three strikes. And the conversation would swiftly drift away to someone they could “connect” with. The whole experience was soul destroying.

Andy was extraordinary during all of this - my husband, my best friend, my entire world. But I knew, even then, that I needed more than just one person to help me through this season of change. I needed a community. I just didn’t know how or where to begin.

There was something else... something I hadn’t told many people before we left the UK.

Just before the move, I’d had major surgery to remove two fibroids - one 9.5cm by 7.5cm, the other 5.5cm by 3cm. Thankfully, the surgery was a success and I had been given the all-clear to travel but what I hadn’t been fully prepared for was what came next.

Just like a switch had been turned on, my body began going through surgical menopause, I was 39 years old. I didn’t recognize any of the symptoms at the time. I put the exhaustion down to the move. The anxiety down to being far from somewhere I called home. The loss of confidence was attributed to being in a new country without a purpose.

I had no idea that my hormones were in freefall. I didn’t know that my energy, my focus, my creativity - all the things I’d always leaned on - were being affected by something I couldn’t see and didn’t yet have a name for.

I just knew that I felt like I was failing. At everything. Every single day.

I was spiraling and it was a scary place to be.

This is where the ‘starting from zero’ story really begins.

Not at the Cipriani. Not on the red carpet or everyone else’s excitement of our new life in New York.

It’s in the quiet, uncomfortable, messy space between the life everyone imagined we were living (which looked wonderful on social media) and the reality of the life we were actually navigating - alone.

Over the next four articles, I’m sharing all of it - the lowest moments, the unexpected pivots, the things I thought were failures that turned out to be the most important chapters of the whole story. Because I’ve come to believe that starting from zero isn’t something that happens to you.

Often without you realizing, it’s something that’s for you. It’s a gift.

I hope you’ll stay for the whole story.

With love, Sarah x

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Up next in Starting From Zero: Article 2 - The Body: The storm nobody could see.