Episode Summary

A deeply moving Christmas-season conversation about love, hope, and the power of never giving up.

How one mother, Kate Markland, transformed just one hour a week with her son into stories that are now changing children’s lives around the world.

Two days before Christmas, this episode feels like a gift.

A reminder that even in the hardest moments, love finds a way to express itself, sometimesthrough stories, sometimes through courage, and sometimes through an unexpectedhug.

In this episode of This Is What I’m Here For, Lisa sits down with Kate Markland, mother, storyteller and creator of StoryQuest™, to share a story that is both deeply personal and profoundly important. For 23 months, Kate was allowed just one hour a week of contact with her son Gabriel, via FaceTime. What could have broken them instead became their lifeline.

Together, they told stories. Those stories grew into The Adventures of Gabriel, a #1 Amazon bestselling children’s book series, and into a storytelling methodology now used in schools across the UK and beyond, achieving 100 percent engagement across hundreds of children.

At the heart of this conversation is a mother’s unwavering love for her child, and a refusal to give up even when the system feels immovable. Kate speaks with extraordinary honesty about the moment her son was taken, the daily discipline it took to keep going, and the choice she made not to become a victim, but tocreate something meaningful from pain.

Just days before this recording, Kate and Gabriel unexpectedly crossed paths and shared a long, warm hug. A moment that carries the spirit of Christmas so powerfully. A reminder that hope does not disappear, even when it has been waiting a longtime.

As the conversation unfolds, Kate shares how their private storytelling ritual became StoryQuest™, a framework that gives children a voice, removes fear of getting things wrong, and allows imagination, confidence and collaboration to flourish.From inner-city Bradford classrooms to international interest across Europe, North America and Asia, this work shows what becomes possible when children are invited to be creators, not consumers.

This episode is about love. About trust. About never giving up on your child or yourself. And about the quiet, determined belief that stories can change lives, and sometimes systems too.

This episode contains references to family separation and may be tender for some listeners. Please take care while listening.

Connect with Lisa

Lisa is an intuitive strategist, coach and mentor supporting women and values-led leaders to reconnect with purpose, self-worth and impact, and find the power of their voice, especially during moments of transition.

If this episode resonated with you and you’d like to explore Lisa’s work further:

🌍 Website: ⁠⁠https://lisabirtles.com⁠⁠

📸 Instagram: ⁠⁠https://instagram.com/lisabirtles⁠

💼 LinkedIn: ⁠⁠https://linkedin.com/in/lisabirtles⁠⁠

Connect with Kate Markland

You can learn more about Kate and Gabriel’s work, explore their books, and discover StoryQuest™ here:

🌍 Website: ⁠https://theadventuresofgabriel.com⁠

📚 The Adventures of Gabriel (available via Amazon and the website)

🎓 StoryQuest™: Resources and information for schools, educators and communities

Sharing Kate and Gabriel’s story helps amplify work that is already changing children’s lives and giving voice to those who are too often unheard.

Episode Summary

There is a moment in almost every purpose journey when you realise that the direction you feel drawn toward makes no sense on paper. It does not match your childhood conditioning or the career path you once imagined or the expectations you absorbed from the people around you. And yet, something in you knows it is the next true step.

In this episode I sit down with NLP pioneer Fran Burgess, who grew up in a deeply scientific family and was expected to follow a familiar, logical route into the world of academia. Instead, she found herself pulled toward the study of people, perception and meaning, which eventually led her to become one of the most respected figures in NLP modelling and therapeutic transformation.

Fran shares how curiosity became her compass, how intuition gently challenged her early assumptions and how spirit began to weave itself quietly into her work long before she fully recognised it. We explore the difference between a life shaped by expectation and a life shaped by inner truth, and how purpose often grows slowly, revealing itself through lived experience rather than a single defining moment.

Inside this conversation we explore:

• The expectations that shaped Fran’s early life and the moment she realised her true path lay elsewhere

• How curiosity opened the doorway to NLP, human modelling and a deeper understanding of behaviour

• The gradual and powerful emergence of spirit within her work

• Why purpose is rarely linear and instead unfolds through resonance, experience and intuition

• What it feels like to follow a call that does not look sensible to others but feels unmistakably right to you

This episode is perfect for anyone who senses they are being guided somewhere new and needs reassurance that purpose often arrives quietly, grows slowly and becomes clearest when we stop trying to control it.

Listen Now

Press play to hear how Fran followed the call that made little sense to the outside world yet became the truest foundation of her life’s work.

Connect with Lisa Birtles:
Website: lisabirtles.com
Instagram: @lisabthecoach

Buy Fran's Books on Amazon:

The Bumper Book of Modelling by Fran Burgess;

https://amzn.eu/d/3KHnoRR

So many of us overlook the very gifts that make us who we are. In this episode Lisa shares how our unique brilliance reveals itself in the simplest moments and why we so often miss it. A gentle, grounding reminder that you already carry somethingextraordinary.

Episode Summary

Have you ever felt that there must be something more for you, yet you can't quite name what that is? In this episode Lisa explores the truth of unique brilliance and why the qualities that come most naturally to us are often the ones we undervalue.

Through stories from her early career and her journey of finding her way forward in impossible situations, she reflects on how gifts that seem ordinary to us can be life changing for others. She also speaks honestly about the shadow side of brilliance, where over-giving, proving, and blurred boundaries begin to drain the very energy that makes us shine.

In this episode Lisa explores:• How your natural strengths reveal themselves long before you notice• Why your brilliance is separate from job titles and qualifications• The shadow side of your gift and how it can lead to burnout• What shifts when you reclaim your brilliance and let it guide you

This episode is perfect for anyone who senses a quiet nudge that they are ready for something truer and more fulfilling.