Finding My Voice

My goal for 2026

When I was younger, I had dreams of becoming a Carrie Bradshaw-esque writer, living in a big city, a walk-in wardrobe filled to the brim with designer goodies.

Upon graduation at the ripe old age of 22, I learned this wasn’t terribly realistic without a rich family or partner to foot the bills, and, not wanting to move back to my small hometown, I took the leap in a different direction and landed in corporate retail. Surrounded by clothes, buyers and designer goods, it felt good enough, and I was, admittedly, pretty good at my job.

Fast forward 8 years and we find ourselves in 2020. A year that sent shockwaves around the world, a seismic shift in action. Starting with the Covid-19 pandemic. Working from home; lockdown; isolation. The way we moved through the world, communicated; lived changed in an instant.

As we were grappling with this, came the murder of Breonna Taylor at the hands of the police, swiftly followed by George Floyd. As a white woman living in Europe, police brutality was something I had been sheltered from, yet this opened mine and countless others’ eyes to what it means to simply be living as a person of colour and the dangers it brings. Social outrage at the injustice and senselessness led to protests, riots and a yet another shift in how I look at the world and move through it.
Less than a year later, still in a form of lockdown, Sarah Everard was murdered by a policeman in London. She was walking home. And yet another wave of outrage, more learning about understanding what it means to be living in a female body and the dangers that brings.

And then suddenly, almost as quickly as it started, Covid-19 was over and life went ‘back to normal’. Although how can this be normal?! Police brutality has notably become even more prominent, with seemingly no consequences. The genocide in Palestine funded by the West has shown that even international law holds no influence when it comes to a select few getting what they want. We are in a new world where every day something that should shock us to our core simply sends a wave of sadness and despair through our exhausted bodies as we scroll on to the next item.

This cannot be normal.

And so here I sit, it’s January 2026 and I have been in the corporate world for 14 years and have felt my voice get quieter and quieter as those years passed by. I am filled with rage: social rage; feminist rage; rage at the state of our world and the disappearance of humanity. But I am also filled with passion: passion for life; that there is something we can still do, passion for something more, something greater. Filled with voices that want to talk about all the feelings I feel, dreams I dream and stories I make up.

So this is my first post, and my promise to myself. That I will no longer succumb to the silence demanded by the world. I will find my voice(s) and maybe someone is inspired to find theirs. Or at least finds themselves resonating with mine, the way I do with so many others.