Burnt out at 33, I left my marriage and job, and moved to Ibiza

Belinda left her husband and her job within the same week (Picture: Belinda Clarke)

‘One day, I told my assistant I was going home as I wasn’t feeling very well,’ says Belinda Clarke, 54. ‘I never went back.’

To an outsider, Belinda, then just 33, was living the perfect life. She’d climbed the career ladder, working in criminal justice and managing a team of 30.

She had two teenage girls, Kacy, 17, and Jem, 13, and was married to Steve*, who she’d met at university. ‘We had a nice three bedroom, mortgage free house with two cars on the drive,’ says Belinda. ‘But I was miserable on the inside.

‘It was a week after I left my job, that I told my husband I was leaving him too.’

Belinda doesn’t feel that she was having a breakdown, but says rather that she felt ‘completely out of balance’.

‘In my 20s, I adopted a male persona to get on professionally and advance the career ladder,’ she says. ‘I decided it would help me in my work life if I became more masculine, tough and competitive.’

After struggling in early 30s, Belinda is content

She believes this desire for success was due to her rocky adolescence. She was just 14 when she fell pregnant with her first daughter, Kacy, and five years later, she had Jem.

‘I was 20, a single mother without any financial help and I consciously decided to climb to the top of the corporate ladder as quickly as possible to provide a good income for my family of three. I was determined to be able to afford a good life for my children.

‘I adopted more and more stereotypically masculine traits. I didn’t do emotions and was as competitive as hell. I wore pinstripe trouser suits, flat shoes, short dark hair and glasses. I was bossy, aggressive and unemotional.’

But Belinda says this wasn’t something she could sustain ‘in my job or my marriage.’ Despite having everything she wanted, she was unhappy. ‘I found myself stressed and in need to control everything around me.

After feeling burnt out in the UK, she loves her life in Ibiza

‘I tried to convince myself that all I needed to do in my job was to work harder and smarter, and all would be okay. But my intuition told me I was throwing myself into a toxic lion’s den daily, with no escape route.’

After leaving her job and her husband within just days of each other, Belinda started to explore a different way of living.

First, she took a six month sabbatical from her all-consuming career, before finally quitting for good. ‘By giving myself space and slowing down, I took long walks in nature and questioned what I wanted to do with my life.’

Belinda was dedicated to providing for her daughters Jem and Kacy (Picture: Belinda Clarke)

She gave herself a ‘life audit’, reflecting on what she really wanted from life, what would make her happy, and what needed to change to make that happen.

‘I decided I was going to learn how to windsurf and change my career,’ says Belinda. ‘I also studied to be a life coach and reiki therapist, which helped me work on myself, opening my heart and the door to my emotions.

‘It was like discovering a magic gateway, the real secret of life. In this time, I also met Toby, the love of my life, who I married in 2004.’

The pair married in Ibiza

Toby and Belinda moved to Staffordshire and bought a house on a golf course. ‘We lived in a gated community and lived this very wealthy life – drinking champagne in a hot tub. But it didn’t make us happy.

‘Toby ran an engineering firm, but he decided to resign, and we made a plan to go travelling for two years with a tiny backpack each,’ says Belinda. ‘My girls had left home and were living their own lives by then.’

During a year of back packing in South America, they travelled to Peru and went to see a shaman who told them to move to Ibiza. ‘Toby had been brought up by his hippy parents in Ibiza when he was a child and just like that, we made the decision to move back,’ she says.

Belinda says the couple followed their intuition to Ibiza

‘We followed our intuition. Many people ignore their intuition when making choices and base them on logic, fear, denial or doubt. Over the years, I have learnt through trial and error to live in alignment with my intuition.’

Within a month, Belinda, who is the author of The Feminine Codes, and Toby had started a healing festival on Ibiza. ‘It was magical.

‘When we first arrived on the island, it was known for being a party-island but we connected with its sacred qualities.

‘Toby decided to walk around the island with one euro in his pocket, without his phone and reconnect with himself and with the island.’

This experience inspired him to start his own guided walking company in 2010. ‘I work as a therapist and a coach and a writer, while Toby is a walking guide.

‘We live this very simple life with our dog Cosmo on this magical island. We walk every day, swim in the sea, we are part of this vibrant, spiritual, island community – and we are very happy.

‘I am a completely different person to that unhappy, burnt out woman at 33.’

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