Book Sarah Withers
A Speaker with a Difference
I’ve lived it
I’ve worked it
I’ve overcome it
I built a method to teach it.
Why Sarah?
Most speakers on these topics are either professionals who have studied them or survivors who have lived them. I am both. That combination is not common. It is what makes the difference between a talk or training that informs and one that shifts something in the room.
I have been the child criminal exploitation case missed by safeguarding. The patient the NHS dismissed. The mother the system tried to blame. The woman who survived coercive control and then fought family court. I have also been the specialist teacher, the school governor, the ward panel chair, and the professional sitting on the other side of the table making the decisions.
I know what it looks like from all directions. That multiple-perspective is where the Duck’s Back Method™ came from – the framework underneath every talk I give, and it’s what I bring to every room.
I am also an NLP Master Practitioner, an international speaker, and the founder of myHomeEdPlan, a personalised home education platform I built for neurodivergent children after living the gap between what families need and what systems actually offer.
My talks and workshops don’t just tell stories. They give audiences a framework – the same one I use to work with individuals, workplaces, and schools, for understanding what those stories reveal about human behaviour, institutional failure, and what actually creates the conditions for change. My talks and workshops are designed to leave audiences shifted, not just informed. Not moved and then forgotten, but moved and then equipped.
If you are looking for a speaker who will fill a slot, I am probably not your person. If you are looking for a speaker who will change the temperature of a room, let’s talk.
Speaking enquiries: info@lifeitornot.com
Formats
Keynotes: 20-45 minutes. The story, the framework, and enough of the method for a room to start applying it immediately.
Interactive Talks: 30-60 minutes, with participation woven into the talk itself.
Workshops: Half-day or 60-90 minute sessions. Smaller groups, hands-on application.
Training: For organisations wanting The Duck’s Back Method™ embedded properly. See Workplaces →
Panels: Discussion and Q&A participation on resilience, neuroinclusion, SEND, and safeguarding/CCE.
If you have a specific need, get in touch and we’ll find the right fit.
Signature Talks
I WAS TOLD TO WRITE MY WILL. I WROTE MY BUCKET LIST INSTEAD.
Individuals – Resilience
You can’t build a life if you’re always waiting to feel ready.
At thirty I was a newly single mother of a three-month-old when a doctor told me my heart was failing and I should get my affairs in order.
I now have nine medical diagnoses, including heart failure, functional neurological disorder, and osteoarthritis. I have an ICD in my chest, and a passport full of stamps. I have kayaked around Dubrovnik, meditated in Japanese temples, climbed Gaztelugatxe, stargazed above the clouds from an active volcano in Tenerife, and swum in hidden caves – all with that ICD in my chest, many with my daughter beside me. I’ve also spent days unable to get off the sofa.
Both are my reality. This is not the inspirational highlight reel. It’s the honest account of what you can build when you stop waiting for your circumstances to change before you start living.
Audiences leave with:
- Practical reframing tools they can use immediately
- A different relationship to fear and their own limitations
- The unique energy of knowing they can live a life they never thought possible
UNMASKED: The Duck’s Back Method™ FOR RESILIENCE WITHOUT LOSING YOURSELF
Individuals, Workplaces & Schools – Resilience & Neuroinclusion
Adapts in depth and focus for neurodivergence-specific audiences (ADHD/autism events, schools) or general resilience audiences (corporate, workplace, networking).
You were never too much. You were just too hidden.
“You’ve been too strong for too long, and now your body is paying for it.” Two doctors said those exact words to me, a decade apart.
I spent three decades wearing masks – the Good Girl, the Naughty Girl, the Strong Woman, to survive rooms that were never built for who I actually was. This talk gives audiences the Duck’s Back Method™: a powerfully simple process for staying yourself under real pressure, not just enduring it.
Using NLP and lived experience, I take audiences through the specific psychological and physical cost of masking, and what it actually looks like to live and lead authentically – at home, at school, or at work.
Audiences leave with:
- A working introduction to the Duck’s Back Method’s three stages
- A practical tool for the exact moment pressure builds
- A genuinely different relationship to performing “fine”
Specialist Talks
Built for specific professional and parent audiences – full talks, available on request.
BOTH SIDES OF THE TALE: WHAT FAMILIES ARE LIVING THAT YOUR STATISTICS DON’T SHOW
Schools & Youth Work / Workplaces – Systems & Neuroinclusion
I’ve sat on all sides of every system I address – as the specialist teacher, the governor, the ward panel chair, as the child and then mother the system dismissed and failed, and as the patient the NHS excluded. This talk is a specific, evidenced invitation to see what the gap between policy and practice costs the families caught inside it.
WHEN THE SYSTEM DOESN’T FIT THE CHILD
Schools & Youth Work – Neuroinclusion & Advocacy
For the parent who’s been told they’re overreacting, and knows they’re not. The parent who may be considering alternative education or different ways of working with the school to better support their child. Drawing on my professional experience within education, home educating my AuDHD daughter, and my own struggles at school as an ADHDer, this talk gives parents the language, confidence, and practical understanding to advocate effectively. I am also the founder of myHomeEdPlan – the personalised education platform for neurodivergent children aged 5-11.
REWIRE THE REACTION: AN NLP TOOLKIT FOR STAFF AND PARENTS SUPPORTING NEURODIVERGENT CHILDREN.
Schools & Youth Work – Practical NLP
What to actually do, mid-meltdown – not just why it’s happening. A method-focused toolkit for teachers, TAs, and parents, drawn from over a decade working with neurodivergent children and a lifetime of lived experience.
I THOUGHT THEY WERE MY FRIENDS
Youth Organisations / Schools – Lived Experience Safeguarding
An interactive, lived-experience session for 16-18 year olds (can be adapted for 14+) covering how grooming begins, how relationships are used to build control, why exploitation is hard to recognise from inside it, and how to safely seek help. Includes small-group activities, realistic scenario work, and full signposting.
Workshops
DESIGNING THE NEUROINCLUSIVE CLASSROOM
Schools – Workshop| Half-day, or two one-hour sessions
Rewire the Reaction gives you the tool for the moment of dysregulation. This is the classroom that needs it less often.
Most neuroinclusion training for schools focuses on how to respond once a child is already struggling. This workshop goes further upstream – a structured, hands-on session for teaching staff and SENCOs on designing the classroom environment, routines, and teaching approach so neurodivergent pupils need fewer interventions in the first place, not just better-handled ones
Built on over a decade in both mainstream and specialist SEND education, this is staff-only and classroom-specific – not a general awareness session, so the conversation can go as practically detailed as an actual staffroom needs it to.
Audiences leave with:
- Concrete environmental and routine adjustments specific to their classroom or setting
- A framework for designing lessons that reduce dysregulation rather than just managing it
- A shared staff-team approach, not one teacher’s private workarounds
MEETING YOUNG PEOPLE WHERE THEY ARE: NEUROINCLUSION BEYOND THE CLASSROOM
Youth Organisations – Workshop | Half-day, or two one-hour sessions
A youth club or youth service is not a classroom, and neither are the tools that work in them.
Youth workers, mentors, and staff at organisations working with young people outside formal education face a different set of demands to classroom teachers – less structure to lean on, shorter relationships to build trust within, and often the young people most let down by the systems already covered in this talk list. Generic neuroinclusion training, built for classrooms, doesn’t transfer cleanly.
This workshop is built specifically for that setting: practical approaches to communication, trust-building, and support for neurodivergent young people in youth clubs, mentoring programmes, and informal education settings – drawing on the same professional and lived experience as everything else here, adapted for a context with different rules.
Audiences leave with:
- Communication and engagement approaches specific to informal, low-structure settings
- A framework for building trust quickly with young people who’ve often been let down by formal systems
- Practical adjustments that don’t rely on classroom-style structure to work
