Lucy McCarraher is a work-life balance expert, writer and coach.
Annabel Shaw is a social psychologist and radiotherapist.
Togther they are the authors of
The Real Secret
self help book and programme.
Annabel Shaw is a social psychologist, radiotherapist and inventor of the Lifescape method of visualising life history which enables people to literally picture their whole life as a basis for analysing and changing it. Annabel developed Lifescape when working as a research psychologist researching the lives of homeless women.
She was born in South Africa and came to England with her family in the late 1960s. Annabel studied African history at Sussex University and settled in Brighton. In between trips to Africa and South East Asia, she worked as a teacher, ran an art gallery and brought up two children.
In the late 1980s Annabel returned to Sussex University to train as a social psychologist and later taught psychology there and at the Open University. In the 1990s she began the research that led to Lifescape. Her article on “The Experience of Homeless Women” was published in Housing Studies and excerpted in the Open University textbook, Social Science in Question. The interview schedule has been used by researchers working with and recording the lives of cared-for children. Annabel also worked for Brighton and Hove Social Services, providing a safe house for abused children and teenagers.
More recently, Annabel retrained as a radiotherapist and has worked with cancer patients at the Sussex Cancer Centre.
Annabel has grown up children and is the hub of a large extended family.
Together, Lucy and Annabel wrote A Simpler Life, the inaugural audio book in audio-publishers, Creative Content’s new imprint, “The Lifestyle Lowdown”. It was published in 2009.
Her expertise in Work-Life Balance grew out of research and writing about family, parenting and children’s issues for organisations such as the NSPCC, National Parenting Forum, Thomas Coram Foundation and Working Families.
Before this she was part of the media team that produced the first self-help videos – childcare with Penelope Leach, cookery with Prue Leith, gardening with Alan Titchmarsh; and the very successful Lovers Guide video series and books. Lucy also developed the videos and wrote the book for The Y-Plan fitness series, worked with Desmond Morris on Babywatching and Keith Floyd’s cooking programmes.
Lucy has also written several fiction titles. Herfirst novel, Blood and Water, was published by Macmillan in September 2006; its sequel, Kindred Spirits in December 2008 and latterly Mr Mikey’s Ladies in 2009. She has given numerous talks, radio and tv interviews and featured in magazine and newspaper articles here and in Australia – where she has worked as a magazine and book editor, print and screen journalist and television presenter. Lucy with novelist Cate Sweeney on Ready Steady Cook
Lucy is Commissioning Editor for www.bookshaker.com. She also teaches Creative Writing, is an advocate for intercountry adoption (her two daughters were adopted from Russia) and is a director of a sheltered accommodation charity. She has two adult sons and lives in Norfolk with her husband and daughters.
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