How I got here
The short version.
- At 17 My sister was killed. What followed was severe depression and anxiety, and a social anxiety so crippling that some days, speaking to one person was more than I could manage.
- Soon after The obvious way in closed. My parents were divorcing. University stopped being possible. For a long stretch it was my mother and me, holding things together.
- The turn There was a question I was not asking. I tried what everyone tries: gurus, books, counselling, courses. None of it moved me, so I started wondering whether the question was wrong.
- What helped Understanding it changed nothing. I could explain my situation perfectly and still not move. What shifted things was someone asking, every week, what I had actually done.
- Along the way Two things I carry. A degenerative eye condition left me blind in my right eye. And my father and I repaired part of a fractured relationship before he died of colon cancer.
- Now A decade of rooms. More than 300 organisations later, the same thing keeps happening: someone waits until the room empties and tells me something they have never said out loud.
Then
