User:Ruth Billheimer

Ruth Billheimer

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My name is Ruth Billheimer and this is from the "About Me" page on my website. I think it gives a fairly good potted history of my life. I've just gone 60, a proper autobiography or "apologia pro vita sua" (as Latin seems acceptable on this site!)would take up far too much time and space. Maybe one day. So here is the quote from www.virtualbalance.co.uk

I hope I will be able to help you. Let me tell you a little about myself.

I invented the Virtual Balance formula in response to a feeling of being out of control of my own life. Too much was going on, too many worries and too many responsibilites were crowding my life. The Virtual Balance concept, which I am now making available to you, helped in the transformation of my life.

I am a qualified teacher and my professional experience has been in social services, academic life, the civil service and advice work of all kinds. I studied child development and psychology as well as sociology for my qualification, and taught at degree level as a university lecturer in public administration and politics.

I was responsible for the provision of Social Services in a major city and helped in the development of care services and policies both locally and nationally. I have served as a non-executive member on the governing bodies of our local mental health services and our police. This has enabled me to understand the varied perspectives of different professions which deal with troubled people.

I have had personal experience of the kind of pressure a busy life creates. At one time I was holding down three jobs and coping with the responsibilities of family life: my work life balance was decidedly out of kilter at that point! For the last twelve years I have been an advice worker and advocate dealing with people in crisis with a wide variety of problems. I am a mother and grandmother and have lived through crises and triumphs in my own life. I have survived breast cancer due to the skill and care of Britain’s National Health Service, and yet watched helplessly as my mother sank into Alzheimer’s. I have been married more than once and was a single parent when my daughters were children. Our family have experienced tragic bereavement as well as the joy and pride we feel in our youngest generation.

I think and hope I can understand how you feel, whatever stage of life you are at. I am ready to listen and to help.