PGP / SPD My story:

I Care Because I Know What It Means to Need Support: I Care Because I Know What It Means to Need Support I restarted blogging while I was pregnant, but my instinct to advocate for others started long before that. For most of my life, I have spoken up when something felt unfair, harmful or inaccessible. I have raised awareness of disability, challenged barriers, supported people through difficult situations and tried to use my experiences to create something positive. This collage holds so many chapters of my life. It shows pregnancy and motherhood. It shows disability, mobility aids and moments when simply getting through the day required determination. It shows hospital visits and the years in which I supported my son through Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia. It also shows campaigning, protest, awareness work and the gradual development of the advocate I am today. Behind every photograph is a story. Some are filled with love and joy. Others represent fear, exhaustion, pain and circumstan...

Disabilities Are Not Swearwords. There is something deeply unsettling about watching adults weaponise medical conditions as insults. Recently, in a local Darlington group, children’s behaviour was criticised by throwing around real diagnoses — including Foetal Alcohol Syndrome — as if they were punchlines. As if they were shorthand for “bad”, “feral”, “wrong”. Let me say this plainly: Using conditions like Foetal Alcohol Syndrome as an insult is not commentary. It is dehumanising . It reinforces stigma that real children live with every single day. And when adults model that behaviour publicly, it normalises cruelty . Disabilities are NOT swearwords. Diagnoses are NOT insults. If children behave harmfully, address the behaviour. Call out racism. Call out aggression. Call out misconduct. But do not drag disabled children into it as collateral damage. Because when someone says, “What in the foetal alcohol syndrome…” as shorthand for bad behaviour, what they are really communicating is ...