I was born Clare Bessey, the second child in my family. We moved to the north when I was five and my sisters and I were sent to Stanwix Kindergarten, Beulah Primary and to the Carlisle and County High School. Afterwards I chose to go to the Architectural Association, London to train as an architect.

In my twenties I was married to Geoffrey MacEwan, we have a son and two grandchildren. In my thirties I was married to John Julien and we have a daughter and three grandsons. My architectural career spanned 1974-94. In 1988 I realised that I had mistakenly focussed on order and space in the external world and that my real vocation was to work with inner order and space - psychologically. I retrained first as a psychodynamic therapist at Westminster Pastoral Foundation. I later trained as as an analytical psychologist at the Association of Jungian Analysts in London where I am now a professional member, a training supervisor and sometime seminar leader on their JATQP course.

Since I came to live in Birmingham I have become a training analyst for both the Birmingham Trust for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy & West Midlands Institute of Psychotherapy.