My coach says I’m leaking.

Not literally; though that would explain some things. He means something is unhealed, something unresolved seeping out despite my expertise.

My coach is forcing me to use my own tools to confront the shadow of my own leadership: teaching repair whilst simultaneously holding onto damage I haven’t released. Helping others restore relationships whilst neglecting repair in my own life. Diagnosing everyone else’s dysfunction whilst avoiding my own. Something that needs addressing if I’m going to hold space for others to repair effectively.

I’m not too proud to admit he’s right. I’m a recovering corporate M&A lawyer turned mediator, painstakingly building a business repair practice, helping organisations fix catastrophic breakdowns. I’m writing Repair: a practical guide to putting things right because I keep seeing the same patterns: people who know what needs repair but refuse to commit to a process. Teams holding onto grievances that poison the atmosphere. Leaders keeping score instead of offering reconciliation. Organisations nursing wounds that should have been exposed and healed years ago.

And yet, I am no different when it comes to my relationship with myself. The leak is best defined as the gap between the vulnerability I think I’m showing and the vulnerabilities I’m concealing.

Vulnerability in repair

I first discovered Brené Brown’s TED talk in 2018 on recommendation from my trauma counsellor, then read Daring Greatly and everything else she wrote or published thereafter. Her podcasts accompanied me as pounded the pavement during the global pandemic.

When I thought I understood what she meant about vulnerability, I was wrong. As Brown writes, “using vulnerability is not the same thing as being vulnerable; it’s the opposite — it’s armor.” I fell straight into that trap, first in 2018 and again in 2026. I regularly convince myself that talking about hard things in my work counts as being vulnerable. I’m not alone in sharing carefully curated “struggle stories”; in disclosing just enough to seem authentic whilst maintaining complete control. But using vulnerability in client work doesn’t give me what Americans call a “hall pass” on actually being vulnerable myself.

I didn’t, and possibly still don’t, know how to be the kind of vulnerable repair of self requires. I’ve used protective armour as permanent signage: “keep out”. Totally self-defeating for repair work. My subconscious allowed this armour to keep me from having to do the work on myself. Perhaps I’m being far too kind to myself. Because refusing to face what needs repairing in me opens me up to a hypocrisy that makes me uncomfortable.

The leak my coach identified isn’t about sharing too much or too little. It’s about the gap between the vulnerability I perform and the vulnerability I’m actually avoiding. You can’t help others release harm whilst clutching your own. You can’t teach repair from a place of unhealed damage without it seeping through everything you do.

Why we cling to what’s broken

I think we hold onto the damage we desperately need to release because letting go feels like minimising whatever hurt caused the armour in the first place. We allow our damage to become our identity. Holding onto harm gives us control, or the illusion of it. We’d rather stay broken in familiar ways than risk the uncertainty of healing. While there, we rehearse old hurts, replay conversations that went wrong, return obsessively to moments we can’t change, because we are familiar with the measure of that pain.

This Substack mirrors the journey I’m on to repair self and offers an invitation for you to come on a similar journey. Not because I’ve arrived, but because I’m willing to be honest about the work I still need to do. It will also share regular lessons from stories that show us how to repair, what it looks and feels like, and when to know it’s impossible.

This is where I share the rough edges of my work: the thinking, the teaching, the growth, and the vulnerability and fragility of the practice of repair.

What you’ll find here

Each week, I offer insights on the work of repair in manageable doses:

• Repair: SELF identifying what needs repair in your relationship with yourself so you can experience repair with others

• Repair in Literature lessons from stories that show us how

• The Fixer straightforward advice for fixing broken relationships and messy situations without therapising

I’m not promising overnight transformation or grand promises. Just weekly wisdom for people willing to do the actual work of restoration.

I’m Leah Brown FRSA, the UK’s leading harm repair specialist, and someone still learning how to practise what I teach.

So, welcome. I’ll show you my work if you show me yours. Reply and tell me what brought you here. I always read the comments.