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Me Time
1. I was raised by a mum and dad who split the labour of child care equally. My parents always modeled equality in the home by working as a team in all areas of their lives. Most notably in the labour of caring for children. I’m really grateful to have had this upbringing and acknowledge that this sadly isn’t the norm.
2. My first love was photography. When I was 10 I got my first digital SLR. I became obsessed with photography and in my final year of school I did three art subjects. This led to me winning some awards and then studying photography at University.
3. I was told every day by my mum that I could do anything I set my mind to. I believe it was this messaging that gave me my determined spirit. This spirit has seen me travel the world on my own and climb mountains.
4. I was bullied during my first few years of high school. For a long time I denied this experience as having a negative impact on me but now I embrace that it did. The experience of bullying has allowed me to empathise with young people in both my role as a social worker and an author.
5. I’ve spent a lot of my life after school unlearning harmful social narratives. When you are growing up you internalise messaging from peers, the media, teachers, parents. Some of the messages we receive are untrue, limiting, and at worse incredibly damaging. As a 27 year old, I still find myself picking apart which stories are true and which are not.
6. I am incredibly passionate about preventative education. It’s a lot easier to learn correctly the first time round than it is to unlearn later in life. I want to support educators and parents to challenge their own unconscious bias so they don’t pass it on to the children they support.
7. My favourite thing to do at the moment is tend to my vegetable garden. Like a lot of people, I got into the vegetable patch during lockdown. I’m really enjoying having a hobby that requires me to be present and that rewards my labour with delicious food!
RELATED: Publishing a bestselling novel during the pandemic with three children by AJ Campbell
2020 was a rollercoaster ride like something out of an amusement park for me. A Spinball Whizzer of highs and lows with twists and turns that had me out of bed at five am every morning and still at my desk gone midnight most days of the week. You see, in January last year, I decided 2020 was the year I would get my debut novel Leave Well Alone into the hands of my readers. Heck, I’d been working on it for five years, surely it was time? What I didn’t anticipate, though, was achieving this goal during a global pandemic and having my children at home for nearly six months. Not to mention starting my son on the scoliosis assessment programme to prepare him for spinal surgery and supporting my husband through triple heart bypass surgery and two subsequent heart attacks. But by March, when the first lockdown started, before all my family’s trials had even began, it was too late to back down. I felt it was a story that needed telling, and I didn’t want to look back at 2020 with regrets... to read more click HERE
