Hello, I’m Maria.
I’m based in Worcestershire, mid-40s, and if you looked at my working life on paper you’d wonder what the plan was. There wasn’t one. I started out in hairdressing nearly 26 years ago and still run my own salon. Somewhere along the way I also did office work and delivered apprenticeships, and now I run a recruitment business alongside the salon too. People ask how it all connects. Honestly, the connection is people, listening to them, working with them, and trying to keep several plates spinning without dropping the important ones.
So when I say I have a busy head and a busy life, I’m not being poetic. That’s just Tuesday.
A normal Tuesday, for context
On a typical day I might be doing a colour service in the salon, sorting a candidate for a client in between, replying to messages I should have answered yesterday, and trying to remember if I’ve eaten since breakfast. My head is not quiet. My diary is not quiet. There’s a small background hum of “have I forgotten something” that never fully switches off.
People sometimes assume that if you’re into mindfulness, you must have a calm life. Tidy diary, tidy mind, an essential oil diffuser going somewhere in the background. I can tell you now, that is not my life.
Where mindfulness actually fits in
Mindfulness isn’t a trend I’ve picked up. It’s been part of my own life quietly, in the background, for years, long before it became fashionable. A few minutes of noticing my breathing before a difficult conversation. Actually tasting my lunch instead of inhaling it at my desk. Walking somewhere without my phone glued to my hand, which still feels oddly rebellious. Small things, nothing that looked impressive from the outside, but they helped.
In 2026 I decided to take it further and started training to teach mindfulness and meditation properly. Partly for me, and partly because I wished someone had made it feel accessible to me years earlier. Not as a serious, cross-legged, empty-your-mind kind of thing. Just something ordinary people could actually use.
What I’m not trying to be
I’m not a guru. I haven’t got life figured out. I still lose my temper, forget things, and occasionally eat crisps for dinner because I can’t face cooking. I’m also aware that a lot of traditional meditation spaces don’t feel like they’re “for” ordinary women juggling ordinary chaos. That was never going to be my starting point, and it doesn’t need to be yours either.
What Quietly Grounded is
A space built around practical mindfulness. Breathing, grounding, noticing what’s around you, slowing down even briefly. Short meditations, a few stories and poems, small practices you can actually use in real life, not just on a retreat somewhere lovely.
Nothing here is “you must.” It’s all “you’re welcome to try this if it helps.” Take what works, leave what doesn’t. I’m especially drawn to creating space for women at busy or changing stages of life, when everything can feel like a lot at once and there isn’t always a space that feels like it’s for you.
For now this is a small, meaningful thing I’m building alongside my other work. Longer term I’d love it to grow into small groups, women’s circles, courses, online sessions, maybe retreats. But it’ll grow at its own pace, which feels appropriately on-brand.
Why “quietly”
Because I’m not making a big noisy statement about wellness, overhauling my life, or running off to live in a yurt. This is quieter than that. Small, steady adjustments, made in the middle of a full and normal life, not instead of it.
I haven’t stepped away from real life to figure this out on a mountain somewhere. I’m right in the middle of normal, messy, busy life, same as you, and I’ve found mindfulness genuinely useful within it. That’s really all Quietly Grounded is.
If that sounds like your kind of thing, you’re very welcome here. Pull up a chair. Or don’t, honestly, sitting isn’t compulsory.
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