WHY I CREATED WHAT’S THE POINT?

I was born in London, and I have spent much of my life appearing to be someone who can cope.

And, for the most part, I can.

I am independent, resourceful and resilient. I have built businesses, created things from nothing, started again more than once and learnt how to find a way through when the obvious route has disappeared.

But one of the more important things I have learnt is that being strong and being human are not opposites.

Sometimes being human means not coping particularly well at all.

I have been sober and in recovery for more than twenty years, a day at a time, and recovery has given me an education in how to live. Not in a grand or enlightened sense - I certainly haven’t mastered it - but in the practical business of accepting the things I cannot control, changing the things I can, asking for help and learning that my thoughts are not always facts.

Over the years, people have shared simple pieces of wisdom with me:

Keep it in the day. Ask for help. Find one thing to be grateful for. Do the next right thing. Remember that however unbearable something feels in this moment, the moment will change.

And then life tested all of it.

During Covid, several parts of my life seemed to collapse at once. A relationship that should have been safe had become frightening and destructive. The world closed down and my business had to close with it. Certainties disappeared almost overnight.

I struggled.

So I went back to the things I knew. Small things.

Gratitude when I didn’t feel particularly grateful. Hope when I couldn’t see very far ahead. Other people when my own thinking wasn’t helping me. Trying to find something positive without pretending that everything was positive.

And reminding myself that storms pass.

The question that kept coming back

The real seed for What’s The Point? came later.

Over a relatively short period, three of my closest friends died - one through suicide, one through an overdose and one through cancer.

Different lives. Different circumstances. Different endings.

But at various points I had sat with them, listened to their fear and desperation and heard versions of the same question:

What’s the point?

What’s the point in fighting? What’s the point in trying again? What’s the point when this hurts so much? What’s the point when I can’t see how things are ever going to get better?

I knew that question because I had asked it too.

During the sadness of 2025, I found myself wishing I could somehow hand over everything that had been handed to me.

Not answers. I don’t have those.

Wisdom, perhaps. Tools. Perspective.

The little things that had kept me going when life became very small and very dark. I wished I could put them into someone’s hand and say:

Here. Try this today.

And somewhere in that thought, What’s The Point? was born.

Something small that might help

These books were never intended to tell anybody how to live.

I would be spectacularly unqualified for that job.

They aren’t written from a mountaintop by somebody who has worked everything out. They’re written from somewhere much more ordinary:

Beside you.

By somebody who has been incredibly happy and desperately sad. Who has succeeded and failed. Loved and lost. Been brave and been frightened. Made good decisions and some truly terrible ones.

In other words, by a human being.

That’s what I hope What’s The Point? can be.

A reminder.

Something you can turn to when your head is noisy. Something that might help you reconnect with gratitude, faith, connection, kindness, perspective — or simply yourself.

Not an instruction manual for life. Not therapy. Not a promise that everything will be wonderful.

Just a small something to help steer you when you need it.

Because sometimes we don’t need somebody to solve our lives. Sometimes we just need something to help us find our way back to centre.

And perhaps that, ultimately, is the point.

— Heidi Cook