My story - where I remember I felt very strong about the decisions I made - was actually before coming to the UK. It was the ‘how’ it happened. When I decided I wanted to leave Colombia, I did my research. I wanted to go to a country where I would be treated in a fair way, and out of different options options I found the UK to be the fairest and most meritocratic country. Hence why I chose to come here.

Alright, so that was the first decision, but the second was: how am I going to make it? You need money, you need visas, coming from a developing country, you need a lot of things. I didn’t have either of those. I didn’t have much money and I didn’t have a visa. So, I had to wait for a few years, save, apply for scholarships from the Colombian government. Even with that, when I had to go and apply for visas, that was where I started to find a lot of obstacles.

My family is not well off, where the UK government tend to look for people who are quite well off, so they can maintain themselves here. But I was so determined to go to a beautiful country where I would feel very well treated, and see the world, that I had the UK just so in my mind… I thought: I have to do whatever it takes to make it.

I remember there was this time, after having applied twice to the embassy for the visa and being rejected for the third time. I went up to the top floor of the building of the consulate, in Bogota in Colombia. I decided to hide behind a palm tree. I will never forget this palm tree. I got there at 9am. Stayed there until 12 midday. Hoping to find someone who would look very English and tell him (and beg him) to let me come to his country.

So effectively, around 12 noon, This very tall and very good looking gentleman came out of his office, went into the lift, and I want with him into the lift. It took from the 10th level to the ground floor.

I told him my story and I said: “Look, I’m a good person, I’m an engineer, I want to go and work in your country, I want to make a living in your country! I told all of my story and by the end, when we got to the ground floor, he said: “Just come do the visa application again next Friday”. And I went there. And I got my visa. So, that’s how I ended up here.

I am resilient, because I had to accept many no’s and obstacles on the way. I am persistent and I am determined, once I know where I want to go. So yeah, I think that’s my story.

My husband and I started divorce proceedings about 4 years ago. As it was, I was terrified about moving out of the family home, having to sell up and uproot my daughter. When it approached nearer the time, lockdown happened! So I had nobody that was able to help me.

All these people that were supportive, all the way through, going:
“I’ll help you move”
“I’ll help you sort”
“I’ll move your bits and pieces”

I had a partner who wasn’t able to come and see me because we didn’t live together. Nobody was able to. Not through not wanting to try. It was first lockdown. It was very very strict rules.

So I was able, singlehandedly (it feels singlehandedly) actually sorted the house. Tried to keep it together. Carried on working at home. Sorted out the mortgage because the mortgage offer was coming to an end, but we didn’t know when it was all going to be able to go ahead, and move.

And I did it.

So yes. I am quite proud of myself, because it was something I was dreading generally, without the lockdown being piled on top. I had more determination than I realised I was capable of. I was strong - and I survived it - and I’m really happy now - and I look back and I pat myself on the back.

So my story is not about me as an individual, it’s me in a team. So about: how does a team believe in an objective, and making it happen, and what impact it can have.

I worked in the health service and social care. For a lot of my career I’ve worked with individuals who have been marginalised, who have been pushed away and been locked up in institutions.

We often blame the person for not fitting in, rather than saying ‘we haven’t got the right support around you.’ I worked in a team whose mission it was to get people out of those institutions, to liberate them. Working out: who an individual was; and what the circumstances were of how they got in; and how do we get them out; what needs to be put in place to make it a success to get them out.

So we worked with a man who went into care when he was twelve. He got into trouble when he was in parks in the city, the young lads would egg him on and he would do things to try to get in to that crowd. He had an appalling family background. Domestic violence. Drug and alcohol abuse in the family. Lots of violence. And that’s what he knew. When I first met him he was forty and he’d been in care institutions for all that time, being looked after. He was rebelling against that all the time, and getting depressed about his life, so he’d made many attempts to kill himself - and was violent towards staff, because he was angry with his lot.

We figured out, it had failed in the past, so we needed to do something different. Every time he came back he was always looking for his gang on the park to go back to. We had to get a team of staff who would be street wise and would know what tricks he would get up to and be one step ahead of him - and to try to create his own gang. So we worked with the probation service and found two young men who were in need of a home. They had touched the criminal justice system themselves and needed some support. They wanted to get into a new career, a new path, so we recruited them to live with him.

We got a team of staff around him, as well as those two staff. He was seen, even within our wider team, that this person didn’t deserve all that attention. He was getting a lot of focus. We deliberately decided to go for the most difficult person first, to prove that: if we can do it for that person, then we can do it for everybody. That was the strength of that team.

So we all focused on that mission of trying to get him out of hospital, that was a whole battle in itself. We had MPs and the police saying “Why were we employing criminals to look after him.” We had a deal with the police that if he did slip his support, that he would be treated as a missing person straight away. We found this house - and it worked. He was happy there. He had a good while there. The staff really bonded with him and he bonded with them. He coped that there was a core team around him that were there for him. He knew that they were his mates, because we’ve got that belief in doing the right thing.

That’s the strength really, that focus on that mission. People do need a second chance, or a third, or a fourth chance. We need to support people to enable that growth and for people to have that journey.

I am strong, but we’re stronger as a team.

I can share with you some experience of when I was in University, in my mother land, in China. In my first and second year in university I felt depression, I had some mental health things. It hurt me a lot.

I got a major that I didn’t like and a school I didn’t like, when I came to university. So I drank, I went to the bars, I fell in love with some bad guys… I often wanted to die at that time. I thought life was so boring. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. What major do I want to study? What job do I want to devote myself to, for this life?

I thought everything was so boring, but after a long time, maybe 3 years (I’m not sure how to say the feeling) it’s… complete. One day I think: I want to leave. I want to breathe. After a long long way, I felt better than before. After I’d seen the doctors and communicated better with my friends, or parents, or new boyfriends or girlfriends, whatever.

So I start exercising. Stop drinking. I find something interesting to do. Even though my major was English translation at that time, I started to do some business. It changed a lot. I talked with many people in different social circles and different ages. I went travelling. The money is from me, not from my parents or others. So I feel I am independent. I opened my mind too. I came to the UK now so I can study new things. It’s different. I don’t want to go back to that time.

I control myself.

I am strong now I think.

It was horrible, yeah - but good after that.

I’m from Colombia and I’ve been in the UK for the last 13 years. I became a mum about 4 years ago and he’s lovely. You want to be part of that experience, it’s beautiful - But you don’t realise how hard it is to become a mum, here, on your own. You have to try to do everything on your own. Be independent.

In Colombia, part of my culture is that your family help you through everything, like your kids. They look after your kids. If you have to go to work, the grannies will look after the kids. But then suddenly, you’ve got no people, you don’t have these people close to you. You have friends, I have friends and my husband’s family, but they don’t even live very close.

It’s a little bit difficult, because it’s a little bit lonely. So it’s quite hard really, when you are used to being around people and suddenly you’re pretty much on your own. It’s a little bit hard.

Sometimes it’s good, because it will help you to be stronger - but it’s a little bit difficult when you don’t have family. So I love being a mum, but it’s a little bit hard. I think you just have to live it - and accept it - and be happy. I’m happy. I’ve got my husband. I’ve got my kids with me. I’ve got friends around me. So it’s good.

It’s quite brave actually. It’s really brave, but we do it!

So yeah. I’m very strong. I would say to everyone: whatever happens to you, don’t let anybody (or anything) push you back to be a little bit unstable or unsettled. Just try to keep going. It doesn’t really matter that there are difficult times, just keep doing it. You have to be strong. I am strong.

I can start from my beginning. I was born in London but I am Russian, so my parents came to England to work. When we went back I was about four or five years old and I can not say that I remember a lot of things, but I have a feeling that ‘this is similar’… ‘this is similar’ … ‘I recognise this’… ‘this is something from my childhood’ … Smells and maybe some kind of foods or things, coming to me as my childhood remembrance.

When we went back to Russia it was still Soviet Union and my parents thought I would never go back and would just forget about it. My parents were advised to change my certificate of birth, that it shouldn’t be London but should be changed to Moscow - so that it will be easier for me in the Soviet Union, to live with a different place of birth. But my mum she was “Oh, maybe another time.”

In 1996 Gorbachov started to rule and things started to get better - and I was dreaming all this time - I was dreaming that I would come back here. My parents were saying “It will not happen, don’t worry. Yes you can dream, but it will not happen.” Then when the Soviet Union collapsed, I came to England several times as a language exchange. I stayed with families for a month in the summer. Then I went to study photography in 2003 - but living in London it was very hard, because it was so expensive, and I thought ‘no, I don’t want to stay here anymore’. It was quite depressing because people were not very friendly, maybe because it’s a big city. So then I went back [to Russia], then I moved to Germany and lived there for some time. But still, even in Germany, I was trying to find things which reminded me of England. So I still missed something.

I visited my friend, my Russian friend, who married an English man and moved to Winchester. I really loved this place and I though ‘I want to live in Winchester’. In 2016 I decided that we were going here and my son started school here.

When you move to another place, sometimes it can be very difficult. When I moved to Berlin, it was very difficult. When I studied in London, it was very difficult. But when I moved to Winchester, I don’t know why, but everything was so easy! I already had some friends and everybody was so friendly. I even found a job very easily - I just thought ‘what shall I do? Well I will just go and volunteer in the charity shop’. Then in a couple of months they said “Don’t you want to be the manager?” And I said “Well of course!”

So it was very easy. I don’t know, maybe it’s just because it was my destiny to stay here…. I’m sure that all people have these points of weakness where they think ‘I can not do this’ or ‘I’m not strong’ or something. But the thing is that if you want to achieve something, you will find the strength. A drive… You know, a will for fun. I get this feeling, for example, when I dance or when I drive a car with my favourite music, or something like that. And we moved here and within a couple of months puzzles and choices started to work out. And that’s it.

We had one tiny baby, and he was really cute, and I was going really well. I had all the energy that I had built up, I just gave him everything.

Nobody warned me that when your baby is six months old you might feel broody, but that you should ignore that, with every part of you, because you’ll get over it. I started to see newborns and be like ‘oh… he’s not that tiny baby anymore.’ So I got a bit broody and, I don’t know, had sex once - and then got pregnant.

My son was seven months old and we were pregnant. I told my husband and the weight of that decision… crushed us. We looked at each other and said basically ‘Bye. Goodbye. I’ll see you on the other side’.

We knew that I’d already faded slightly. To be pregnant, all of your vitality and all of your energy goes into your job [of growing the baby]. So we just said basically ‘See you on the other side’. We thought that the other side was 9 months… a year… a year and a half later. But the other side was, like, four years later.

I was going to have the baby, that didn’t feel like a choice. I went through all the pregnancy and I remember my ability to parent my son just disappeared, because I was so tired. I became not fun. I had been holding myself to a high standard - so for that standard to drop, for me, is something that I’ve had to learn. Just to drop your standards slightly, in general throughout your whole life. So that was very difficult.

Then when the baby was born we called her Greta and she is a force! So she chose to come when she came - and it was the wrong time for me, but it was the right tome for her, and that’s fine. She’s pretty sensational.

But that’s not quite where the struggle ended, because it was hard for me to have two children under two. I went to a very dark place and really lost myself. I was just really tired, for a long time. Really tired… and the more tired you get, the less you can sleep… and I didn’t slow down or stop in any way, I just sped up.

It wasn’t until they were in school and being big, eating their own food and putting on their own shoes, that I started to work again. My identity is tied up in work. Then I found my feet a little bit more and started to breathe. Then my husband and I could reconnect and be like ‘Oh I remember you!’ and ‘Oh yeah, you’re so funny’. Now we just plod along (and every now and then have meltdowns).

But it feels like - now I’ve got the kids and I’ve done it. Now we’re the other side of it.

Yes I’m strong… and adaptable (when pushed, when I have to be, when I really have to be). Yes I’m strong… and I can be relied upon. I can be really patient for really long periods of time… and that is a strength as well.

So I had an amazing mother. Really amazing woman. She was a teacher. Full of energy when she could be. Then in her early fifties she developed a very rare form of cancer, a blood cancer, and they just didn’t know how long she would live. I was in my twenties and living in Japan. I came back and my mum looked alright so I thought, well that’s fine… We rallied round and then she had a lot of blood transfusions, but in between she was just my mum, she was just normal.

Then I moved up north, we lived down south, but I moved up north. She deteriorated and she came to see me when I was about 3 month pregnant. I was really really sick, just morning sickness, but she wanted me to come up to Scotland. I just wasn’t well enough. So she went up and came to see me on the way back. I could see she’d really deteriorated but she put on a really brave face. When I was at work during the day, I worked out that she slept all the time, and was there bright in the evening.

About a month later, so I was nearly four months pregnant, I went to see her. She was at home, but she was really really poorly, and all she said to me was “I know it’s going to be alright. I just know everything will be alright.” The next day she went into hospital and she deteriorated really quickly and she died four days later.

It was really hard not having my mum, who was such proper mum, not there. She’d worked out her transfusions so that she would be around when my baby was born - and she wasn’t there. That was really hard. I’d moved to Winchester by then and I knew nobody. Obviously you couldn’t go “Hello. I’m having a baby and I’ve just lost my mum.” But actually I found that everybody is so friendly. My one criteria was that I had to be able to walk into town. I had to be able to cope on my own, because I felt quite alone. I was able to cope really well, but I’d kind of set it up… I suppose that’s where the strength was, that I’d planned everything.

It was really hard when she was born and not to be able to show my mum, because it would have been my mum’s dream come true. She would have been an amazing amazing grandma. And my daughter’s never known her.

When she was seven I ended up on my own, so history felt like it’s repeated itself. I think I’m strong because my mother showed me I could do it, and I never imagined I would have to… but actually, she did it with energy, grace, enthusiasm and was a true mum. So even if I did it in a lesser extent, I knew I could do it. I just felt that somehow I would get through it. And you say “Well of course you are going to get through it” but it’s HOW you get through it that’s important. I can’t say I’ve been an amazing mum, but I’ve definitely been there for her. I think the strength comes from feeling that part of my mum, because my mum did it for me.

While I would have loved my daughter to have had the classic ‘happy family’… the things we’ve done! Before we went to America for holidays, we’d do all these different things. But when I ended up on my own, we went camping, we did lots of very inventive things for not a lot of money… and actually, those are far greater memories. I think the strength I’ve got from it is: it’s all about the experiences together. It’s not about the money to take children and do different things with them, it’s actually spending time with them.

She’s almost fleeing the nest and then this week we got engaged. We’ve been together for five years and it feels like ‘onwards and upwards’.

I suppose I look back and I always thought “Why am I having all these hard times? I lost my mum, I was high risk, then my marriage sadly failed - and everyone else seems to be swimming along having a great time and I’m really struggling.” Then you realise that in everyone’s life, everybody has ups and downs - and it’s just different stages of your life. I’m just fortunate that it this stage we’re having an amazing time, we’re really lucky… and I think: well actually, it almost feels better because I’ve gone through the pain, and now I’m having all the gain.

I grew up in a very privileged, very materialistic family. At the age of 19 when I was at university, out of the blue I had a brain haemorrhage. I ended up in hospital, half paralysed.

I got myself back home, after a couple of months in hospital, and then realised I couldn’t see. I had lost half my sight completely (from the nose to the left). The movement on the left side of my body did come back but the eyesight has never come back - and my arm doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to me, it’s got it’s own mind completely.

The struggle is multiple really. In that, after 6 months off university, I went back and because I looked completely ‘normal’, because everybody expected me to be ‘normal’ (in quotes) I was normal. I buried the grief and the loss. I just carried on and somehow I managed to graduate. Became a teacher. Carried on. Never really linking and connecting to the grief and the loss. Just thinking “I’ve got to be normal.”

Over the years I’ve had to deal with this incredible loss of everybody thinking I’m normal, but inside I have a damaged brain. Very few things are automatic now. I have to work out how I’m sitting in relation to other people. I have to work out which are the safest ways to cross roads. I can’t concentrate as well. My reading has gone. I can’t read any more, I listen to audiobooks only, which on occasions makes me feel completely stupid. I have an English degree but I struggle with forms. I struggle with computer screens. I struggle with certain things… It’s almost like I’m a conventional stove in a microwave world.

And I’m the only one who knows how hard I’m struggling, just to be ‘normal.’

Because there are no callipers, no obvious sign of disability, people expect me to cope as normal - and it is so hard. I’ve had to dig so deep into my inner strength. I’ve had to go into this deep deep deep journey, of finding out who I am at core. That’s been really hard in terms of bringing up children, in terms of how I live my life, the choices I make… Coming to terms with my own disability and thinking: on one hand I’m a disabled person (incredible self pity sometimes), then other times I look at people and think ‘God I am lucky. I am so lucky.’

That’s part of the struggle. Having to deal with your emotions and deal with your mind, and deal with your thinking. You could wallow in self pity. On the other hand you could shut it all off and go into denial. But it’s that middle area, of knowing how much you struggle and saying “I am still a worthwhile person.”

I go through times every now and then of thinking that I’m worthless, that I can’t do anything… but I think the thing that this has taught me is compassion. In that I feel incredibly lucky. There are people who walk around like cardboard cutout figures. I have to live with my pain, and my loss, and I think that makes me fully human. I’ve had to cultivate the most intense strength because of that. Learning how to live with pain and loss - and disappointment I suppose, because that wasn’t the life I planned for myself. I don’t always feel strong, but I guess I am… strong enough.

My journey has been ongoing for many many decades. I’ve been working towards, not just dealing with the situation through real mental strength, but actually freeing my own spirit. That’s taken a lot of strength as well, and a resilience, to grow through the journey.

So it begins three or four decades ago, observing behaviour from people close to me that was… not right. I say ‘not right’ because that’s all I thought of when I was a child, I had no complicated words for it. That feeling of being surrounded by these people but having the strength to ‘put up and shut up’ and to have to keep going back to these people when this was happening was where the real strength was. So I think I’m strong now, which is 40 years on, but actually, as a child I showed the potential of the extraordinary strength I’ve become.

The journey was about observing, listening, resisting - having the resilience to stand up to it - but then also to understand myself better. So in that hell of a journey, I grew stronger while I was dealing with things and handling things better and better - they were little revelations of power, and standing in your own power.

I was also secretively planning what my life would look like and how my life would be. Behaving in the way I wanted to behave, where I couldn’t with this group of people. It was really planning an escape. Both mentally in my head, to detach from the emotional side of being attached to these people, but also the logistics of how I’m going to set myself free. It took years and years and years - and then when I actually got physically away from the situation, that’s when I realised that ‘I haven’t done any work yet, because this is where the work now begins’.

To survive. To build a life. To build my mental strength. To build my boundaries. To understand not being taken advantage of by other people, because of that previous experience. Understanding the rules in life. Understanding how to respect myself. Understanding when to say no and then not feel guilty about it afterwards. Those kinds of things are real strengths, because without those qualities that you need to work on - as well as get yourself away from a bad situation - you’re not going to survive.

I’m now in my fifties. I’m almost completely liberated both spiritually, mentally and logistically from that situation - but the journey and the strength I’ve had to have has been a developed thing over time. Every encounter has taught me to protect myself first now, and to love myself first, and to respect myself.

Doing that work on myself has made me feel like I can handle whatever is thrown at me now. I feel like I’ve been training for the gold at the olympics and now I’ve finally won the gold.