QuietStrength didn’t start as an app. It started as a moment. One I didn’t expect and one I didn’t realise I needed.
Just before I began building it, life had become overwhelmingly loud. I’d been made redundant, the job search felt endless and every scroll through LinkedIn made my stomach tighten. I didn’t know where I fit anymore. Everything that used to feel steady suddenly felt unstable.
In the middle of all that stress, I wanted something simple that I could control without it controlling me.
So I decided I wanted to take weekly body photos. Not for aesthetics. Not for Instagram. Not because I suddenly fancied myself as a fitness influencer. Just to prove to myself that I was still moving forward, even in tiny, quiet ways.
Not because I looked different, but because I felt different. I stood a little taller, moved a little differently, and that small spark of progress gave me room to breathe again.
But then came a problem. A hilarious, unexpected problem. Where do you put weekly photos of your half-dressed body?
I absolutely did not want them popping up in my camera roll next to holiday pictures or my hundreds of screenshots I seem to take. The thought of someone scrolling through my gallery and suddenly landing on “Monday Me, Side View” was… no.
Every app I found was subscription -based. I didn’t want to pay £5.99 a month just to store pictures of myself and who knows where they’d end up.
I’m British. I’d rather suffer in silence.
So I thought:
Why don’t I just make my own?
So I did and the photos really helped. I put the first and most basic version of QuietStrength together in a single weekend.
The next thing I noticed was my mind. Some days I was calm, other days scattered, tense, flat, overwhelmed. Tracking it helped me understand my emotional rhythm instead of feeling like I was fighting myself all the time.
Then I heard that brown noise could help loud minds switch off at night. So I looked for an app… only to find endless subscriptions, ads that explode into life at 3am, or “seamless loops” that very much weren’t seamless and jolted me awake.
So I built my own white, pink and brown noise filters, fully generated on your device, no data needed, perfect for getting some sleep on planes or hotels with paper thin walls and neighbours who believe 3am is a great time to blast out Sade’s Smooth Operator (yes, this actually happened to me).
Then, after a day at the local spa, I realised how much thermal therapy helped. The warmth that slows the world down, the cold that sharpens it. And grounding surprised me too. Stepping outside barefoot when going to our hot tub, feeling different surfaces. Something I once dismissed as woo-woo was suddenly something that made me feel genuinely here again.
That’s when everything connected:
- Body
- Mind
- Ground
Three simple pillars that helped me steady myself when everything else felt like it was slipping out of my hands.
So I built QuietStrength. Initially just for me, a quiet, private space to track how I was doing without judgement or noise.
No calories.
No comparisons.
No endless charts telling me I’m failing.
Just awareness and gentle progress.
I never planned to release it. This was something just for me. No sharing. No posting. No turning progress into performance. Just a quiet place to check in with myself, without the pressure of an audience or the need to explain anything to anyone else.
But the more it helped me, the more I realised it could help other people too, especially those of us who feel things deeply, who get overwhelmed easily, who need clarity rather than perfection. Not another feed. Not another comparison. Just something that’s yours.
QuietStrength exists because sometimes life gets unbearably loud and you need somewhere soft and silent to come back to yourself.
And now you can use it too.
My hope is that it gives you the same sense of calm, clarity, and groundedness that it gave me when I needed it most.
The app that came out of this thinking is here.
