What areas do you focus on?

I have always found that to change-make is a calling - you sometimes have no idea where it will go, where it will end up, and it is often highly responsive to the situations around you. You can only spread yourself so thin - it's really important to ration your energy and not spend all your energy on the 'smaller fights' and yet you cannot separate yourself from the work, because it is never-ending and it is part of you. In the words of di Prima: "you are an appendage of the work, the work stems from, hangs from the heaven you create"

​

However, I absolutely focus on areas of my own lived experience when it comes to speaking out, and when it's a struggle that doesn't directly impact me, I try to hold space for others and be a supportive rather than a leading influence. Therefore, the areas that draw me most are disability, mental health, and care experience. If my life, especially my stories around family, were an EastEnders episode: I think it would get complaints to Ofcom for being too out there. I mean - who gets sectioned and then bitten by a snake, right? That is just one of many parts where I have lived in between - what everyone heralds as the truth, and then the truth of dirt on your palms and systems that are held together with Sellotape. 

​

All that said: here are the principles of my change-making approach.

​

Injustice is everywhere - and those who don't want us to see it are the ones who benefit.

Believing survivors should not be a difficult task, and yet it is. It is my principle that we should speak out when we see injustice regardless of its form, and when people tell us that they have been harmed, we believe them unless we have a genuinely good reason not to.

​

The truth is often subjective: I'm far more interested in experiential truth than proven truth.

It's really easy when things go wrong to focus on fact-finding and investigation. While that has its place, I definitely am not the right person to be investigating. When you tell me how you feel, it is my responsibility as a human being to take that in good faith.

​

Lead with heart, passion, curiosity, and connection: the rest will follow.
A heart-led and peer-led approach is, in my opinion, the way forward. This is informed by my spiritual beliefs, but also just from experience. What are often referred to as 'complex needs' are actually very simple: the need to feel and be safe, to be cared about, to be respected, and to experience being listened to, understood, and believed. Alongside all of this is a desire that can drive us to all sorts of precarious places: to belong. A thwarted sense of belongingness is identified as a key in multiple models of suicidology. Community saves lives - and if we were all able to live with kindness in our actions without expectation of acclaim or reciprocity, the world would be a much better place. 

​

I have worked with healthcare services for over 10 years now - I know these systems inside and out. All the grisly and horrible parts, but also the endless examples of genuine, shining kindness and compassion they hold. For me, I try to live in rebellious hope that they can be better and they want to be.