I was 60 when I made a decision which would completely change the course of my life - and lead me to being the person I am today.

At the end of 2018, I was co-leading a manufacturing and design company working crazy long hours as the face of the company, on a knife's edge all the time. 

It was enormously challenging, with endless delivery demands in a male-dominated world.

Simultaneously, I was parenting two teenagers, constantly battling with guilt. 

My kids needed me on so many levels, and while I wanted to meet all their needs, support them to achieve, and give them plenty of attention, I also wanted to support my husband in building our business, which was a lifelong dream.

Both were of great importance to me, and I felt pulled between the two all the time, always giving 100 per cent in every area of life.

My mother had just died too, a grieving process that had brought up memories of never feeling good enough.

Life was on 'go', all the time, never with a moment to myself, and my body was telling me to slow down. 

I got very ill with shingles the last three months of 2018 and knew something had to change.

My daughter had previously been on two silent retreats. She hadn't exercised, talked, or been on her phone. 

Seeing how stress was affecting me, she suggested I do the same, but I told her I was terrified of the prospect of it.

I didn't want to unpick my past, uncovering old scabs and bleeding from wounds I had thought healed.

But she insisted, and to build a bond with her, I signed up for a ten-day silent retreat at a Vipassana centre a 90-minute drive from our home in Cape Town, South Africa. 

Vipassana is an ancient form of silent meditation where you objectively observe your thoughts and any physical sensations, becoming a non-judgemental bystander in your own mind.  

I gave her my word that I would stay for the entire time, no matter how hard I found it.

I knew I wouldn't be allowed to use my phone, so I made sure everyone - friends, family, and business associates - knew I wouldn't be contactable.

When I walked into the centre, I handed the staff my phone, the first time I'd parted with it in years. I only brought a bag of clothes with me - nothing else.

As hard as it was not to have my phone, it wasn't what I feared most - not being able to exercise was. 

I had come to depend on movement as a means of decompression, even keeping weights in the back of my car when I needed to squeeze in a quick workout.

During those ten days, I couldn't even practice yoga, as I was told that meditation through stillness was paramount.

Writing and reading were prohibited too, both activities I usually did in the evenings to quiet my mind before bed.

Normally an extravert, I couldn't speak to the 30 other people on the retreat with me. There were so many times I wanted to talk to someone about what I had been processing or ask them about their own experience. Even this wasn't an option.

With all of my coping mechanisms stripped away, I was faced with silence, only my own thoughts.

We rose early in the morning for meditation that lasted on and off all day, broken up with small, vegetarian meals, and a short evening seminar.

We sat silently, ate silently, moved silently.

In the first few days, I was in agony from sitting so still. My back throbbed, and I couldn't stop thinking about how long it had been since I had moved. 

While I had practiced meditation previously, I had never done it consistently, or for long periods of time - I had just squeezed it into my insanely paced schedule.

But by the sixth day, I could sit unmoving, meditating for three hours at a time, only watching curtains swaying in the wind.

While I struggled to sleep in the nights at the start of the ten days, without reading and writing to send me to sleep, by the end, I quickly drifted away to the sound of silence.

I navigated new patterns, gently forcing my body into a different normal – one that was slow and quiet. I'd been stripped of structures for survival and had to find new ways to survive, ways only found in myself.

In the silence, there is only so much thinking you can do, before your brain just quiets. 

I spent the first days thinking through questions, memories, critiques, and plans, but eventually, it all emptied out, and I was left with nothingness, just space. 

I found a deeper subconsciousness, one that was slow and authentically me. 

Through stillness without words, I shed all the emotional baggage, anxiety and depression I'd entered the retreat with.

By the end of ten days, my body and mind were quiet, something I'd never experienced previously. 

I felt a crystal-clear understanding of why I was on the earth - to tell my story - which I have done time and time again since leaving, through work and relationships. 

It became the foundation of everything I do.