What does being mind-strong mean to you?

I genuinely hate to admit this, but I calm myself very quickly by tidying up my surroundings and pottering about. I’m quite good at knowing what I can control and letting go of what I cannot, but when life feels like it’s slipping from my grip, having a tidy corner in the world makes me feel much safer. Hopefully this doesn’t read like I fall apart when things are a mess—but creating a distraction-free space helps me truly focus. I think bigger when the little errands are out of the way. 

My other go-to method is taking a long walk—and I mean really long. I've been known to walk almost all day: just step out of the door and start walking with a vague destination in mind, though reaching the endpoint isn’t really the goal. It’s about being in motion and stepping outside of my domestic or professional environment. Walking makes me feel free, like things are possible somehow. And it helps me breathe deeply, which in turn feeds every motor I need to power through an important moment. 

Never lying or never gossiping again?

Never gossip. Gossiping as an activity just feels so negative in every sense. Whereas lying is obviously wrong, there are times when a little white lie is excusable: I have no problem telling people I'm busy if I need a quick get-out of a scenario with people I barely know; or thanking someone for a gift I didn’t love if I know it would make them deeply happy. Lying is lying, but I'm cool with it in certain circumstances. But what good does gossiping serve? 

What have you discovered about yourself in the last year?

I'm more sensitive than I thought. I've always found the political apathy in Britain absolutely infuriating, but across the last year or so I’ve found it much more deflating and deeply depressing—depressing in a way I never thought I’d feel. The entire world has changed for me, and it's becoming much harder to feel hope and purpose in a world so crippled by corruption, clowns, and carbon-fuelled destruction. 

I've always felt pretty secure in my ability to find optimism in the everyday, every day, and I must say there were many times throughout 2024 when that was absolutely out of my reach. I need to be mindful of the fact that I need to give myself a little more care, space, and quiet to cope with the maddening world outside. 

If your thoughts made noises, what would they be?

As a newly deaf person, ‘sound’ in general is a very emotional topic for me. I have very little access to hearing without my hearing aids on, so the fact I can hear at all is a technological miracle I think about most days—something I’m extremely grateful for. 

If my thoughts made a noise, I’d like to think they’d feel magical, with moments of sounds like a sparkle. I’m someone who never really knows what their skills are, as what I offer in situations can seem intangible. But when I ask people, they say it’s valuable how I bring people together, how I can connect the dots between ideas, projects, and movements. I have a hundred small eureka moments each day that could change a business’s prospects, or become an exhibition, a collaboration, or a feature. 

So the sound of that would perhaps be something like Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, which was often on the record player when we were kids, as my mum loved it. Or the sound of steel pan drums—one of my most favourite musical instruments—in Jamie xx’s song Obvs. I listen to that song a lot when walking around, and it has the ability to instantly change my perspective from dark to light. 

What change would you want the world to focus on?

Equity. In every sense of the word. That means social, environmental, and political equity, and justice for all. Our focus can’t be siloed if we’re going to achieve true justice around the world. 

It feels like a hopeless prospect a lot of the time, especially as we seem to refuse to learn from the past as a species—but I think we could turn our negative trajectory around very quickly if it was widely understood that we all benefit when our systems are more equitable. All the answers we need are here already; we just need to harness a mass movement of care to get there. Will we? Who knows. But I'll never stop fighting for justice while my heart beats. 

Let me know if you'd like this trimmed for a tighter word count, adapted for tone, or if you're ready for the next one!