About Us

We are Margaret McGregor and Catherine Cowell and we met through the world of adoption 14 years ago. We both have children with additional needs and have lots of experience of travelling through what can be the very choppy waters of special needs parenting. 

We put together the And Breathe... course to fill some of the gaps we'd seen in other parenting courses. We are both Christians and we realised that there wasn't a course that combined the principles of therapeutic parenting and spirituality. So we thought we ought to write one. 

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We both worked for the NHS before we began our additional needs parenting journey. Catherine was a Speech and Language Therapist for 20 years. Margaret was working with children and families as a Health Visitor and Infant Feeding Specialist. Over the years, we have attended courses, read books, gained wisdom from other parents and acquired an awful lot of what is sometimes referred to as ‘lived experience’. 

For many years, we have both been supporting other parents in various ways. Margaret runs groups for adoptive parents and Catherine holds a coffee morning for local parents of  children with additional needs. Margaret is a qualified therapeutic mentor and Catherine supports parents both as a coach and a spiritual director. We understand the challenges of being an additional needs family who are Christian and the complications of combining those challenges with being part of a local church. When our children were younger, together we created Bouncy Church, a worship gathering for additional needs families who were struggling to find anywhere else they could do church together as a family. 

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Margaret works for a local fostering agency and serves on adoption panels locally. Catherine is studying for a PhD at the University of Staffordshire, researching spirituality and additional needs parenting. She also hosts the Loved Called Gifted podcast. 

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Oh. And we both like open water swimming. That's us at our favourite lake. 

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