I never learned to care what people thought of me. This isn’t because I was strong or fearless, it’s because I was grieving.
When I was really little, we were broke. My dad wasn’t home much because he was always working. Then when I was nearly eight, he got cancer. Between the ages of eight and ten, my entire life revolved around him going to and from hospital and my mum caring for him. By the time I was ten, he was gone and my mum was a widow at 31.
From what I understand, that age range is when girls start picking up on external opinions about who they are and what they should be. I wasn’t really aware of that part of society, because I was so consumed by what was happening at home.
I was a goth at school. Until I was about thirteen, I was very good academically — really studious. My ADHD was missed because I was hyperfocused on books. I could read by the time I was four. I mean obsessively: I would walk to school reading, cross the road reading, read till three in the morning under my duvet. I’d read through the entire children’s section of the library and most of the teenage section by the time I was ten.
I had a lot of friends who got bullied, and people tried to bully me too. But I was so consumed with my own grief and trauma that I just didn’t have capacity to give a shit what other people thought. I had so much going on that I didn’t have the space to internalise other people’s opinions. And I don’t think I ever really started doing that. Looking back, I think that was quite a gift, despite how it happened.
The gift came from the grief.
The one thing I did absorb
I might not have absorbed pressure about my looks, but I did absorb the verdict about my future and other people’s expectations of what I was capable of. At sixteen I left school for my own mental wellbeing, and people said: “You’re never going to make anything of your life if you choose to look that way. You’re so smart, you could go to uni. If you don’t change, you’ll never make anything of yourself.”
I didn’t have a single role model around me who was self-employed and successful. Not one. All of my family worked minimum wage jobs. My aunt making £40k a year as an accountant was the pinnacle of success. And because people had said “you will never” — because I’d chosen black hair, tattoos, piercings — I just assumed they were right.
That was the thing I did internalise: I’ll never make anything of myself, because no one will accept me for who I am. And I’m not going to change who I am. That whole “you will never” became a self-fulfilling prophecy. I didn’t try, because I assumed they knew better than me.
I didn’t know I was ambitious. I didn’t know I had skills I could use. I didn’t know what marketing was. I didn’t know that my creativity and the fact that I’m a good writer could work in my favour. It didn’t even register, because I’d never seen what those things could lead to.
It wasn’t until I got on LinkedIn that I started seeing women who had become successful without a degree, with kids, with tattoos. And I thought: I could do that. I just needed those role models.
The reckless years
My twenties were very selfish. I travelled, I partied, I worked hard. I had very little regard for my own safety. I was reckless — really reckless. I never got into any legal trouble, but I was doing things that were high risk.
One particular relationship was very abusive, psychologically, emotionally, verbally, and eventually physically, which is when I left. I’d lost myself in that relationship for two years. I had no sense of who I was anymore. I wasn’t allowed to do things, to wear certain things. I was isolated from my friends and family. After that, I went to Thailand alone for four weeks. No-one knew me. No-one knew what I’d been through. And I started discovering the things that made me truly happy.
I discovered how much I loved to be alone. I discovered that I liked to sit in a café and read a book on my own and watch the world go by. I loved to walk into a bar alone and meet new people, or lie on the beach alone. The discovery that I was very happy in my own company, that felt like power.
When I came back I started a transcription business just to fund more travelling, and decided not to get a flatmate because I liked being on my own. Running that business over the following few years, I realised I genuinely enjoy solitude. I don’t need people around me all the time to feel worthy.
At 29, I fell pregnant. I was doing it on my own. Everyone around me was surprised — are you going to keep it? I was six months clear of still being the person who was out all the time. Everyone was surprised by how hard my maternal instinct kicked in, including me.
My freedom didn’t disappear, it just changed form. But it overcame me with this sense of purpose — the realisation that there was something bigger than me. That was new.
On not feeling shame
I found out later in life that I’m autistic and have ADHD. A lot of things made more sense after that — including the fact that I genuinely don’t experience shame the way most people seem to.
When I moved to New Zealand, I sold my car, gave up my flat, left my job, and told everyone I was never coming back. Then I came back six months later because I didn’t like it. A friend said: “Aren’t you embarrassed?” I genuinely didn’t understand the question. I’d lived abroad. Have you done that?
I don’t feel ashamed of trying things and them not working, or being made a fool of, or something going wrong. I’m proud that I try and I fix things. Shit happens in people’s lives. I nearly lost my business to COVID, and I started again with something new. I got out of an abusive relationship and came out stronger. Backing yourself comes from taking risks and surviving them. You can’t build confidence any other way.
What we don’t call strength
My mum nursed my dad through cancer when she was 29, with two young children at home. By 31 she was a widow. She says she doesn’t know how she raised two such strong women. And I don’t understand how she can’t see it! She showed us. She lived through all of those awful things and she just kept going.
There’s no woman in the world who hasn’t been through something she figured out a solution for and came out stronger. But we don’t like to brag, so we just go: well, that’s what you do, isn’t it? We’re women. We just keep going.