At school, I endured bullying, experienced traumatic events, struggled with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and I battled mental health challenges. Instead of meaningful support, I was labelled and heavily medicated straight away. This made my situation so much harder. I’m lucky that I survived it. Today I talk about my experiences openly to break the silence for other young women and girls because I don’t want anyone to feel isolated, dismissed, or labelled the way I was.

There is a national mental health crisis for young people, and where I live, in Blackpool and the Fylde, it is deep-rooted. As a youth worker, I’ve grieved the loss of girls as young as fourteen; my mentees are grieving their best friends. I hope to make a serious, long-term and systemic change with my new project Her-izons. 

If things are going to change, we need young people's voices and their experiences to shape the way we support them. Make support relevant to Gen Z and A and help them navigate their childhoods in the new world of tech, screens, and AI.

Through listening, mentoring, group sessions, school talks, and community workshops, I’m on a mission to help young women and girls build emotional literacy, resilience, and mental fitness skills for life. Skills I had to personally develop for lasting change. I want young people struggling to make lasting progress rather than ‘fix the symptoms’ much like the way our society does these days. 

I then want to take my insights and everything I gather from this project to the higher powers and places of influence. To speak on behalf of my generation and share how our youth feel. 

People often ask me how I stay hopeful, and I always tell them that it is the people in the Streetwise community centre who give me hope. It’s the young person who once felt suicidal and is now rebuilding their lives. It's the teen girl who wouldn't talk or lift her head and is now taking the register and running sessions. It’s seeing that when we work holistically and attentively, we can do more than manage the symptoms or give labels but make lasting change happen.

We can all create change. I started my initiative at 17 with nothing but lived experience and anger. My message to young women who want to make things better is don’t wait until you’ve got a perfect idea. You don’t need it all figured out. 

Just start. Be a do-er. 

Focus on why you started wanting to make change, and lead with your heart. I’m not some special changemaker with superpowers. I’m simply doing what humans have done since time began, I’m caring about the people in my community, and I am acting on that.

I believe we can all turn our suffering into a superpower, we can create connection, build strength, and lift each other up. Imagine if many more of us believed this and took action today.