As a child I wanted to be an actor, but things were difficult at home when I was growing up. I became a tearaway and, before I knew it, I was 16 and pregnant. My parents nearly had a heart attack. I’d done my GCSEs and wanted to do my A-levels. For support, I joined a local young mums’ group, but when I mentioned I wanted to keep studying, the midwife told me: “There’s no way you’ll be able to do it. If you want to go into education you should do a cooking course and then one day you’ll make a good wife to a divorcee.”
It really riled me up. It was like a red rag to a bull. I was like: that’s it, I’m doing this. That moment set me on my long journey into education. I got a flat for me and my daughter. I couldn’t afford the internet or a computer, but it was quiet and I was able to work without any drama. It was tough. I would have a one-year-old on one arm and be studying using the other. It was a half-hour drive to college and then a half-hour walk because I couldn’t afford to park nearby. But the thing that kept me going was when I returned home every day and I could see what my daughter’s future might look like. That made me get up every day and go.
I was shocked when I managed to get AAB in my A-levels, so I decided to study law and politics at Sussex University. When I turned up, the parent accommodation was horrendous – a single, mouldy, tiny room with no windows. I could have cried. They had a nursery, but the opening hours didn’t always fit with my classes, so I would have to bring my daughter into lectures and bribe her with sweets and colouring books to keep her quiet. She became a bit of a celebrity on campus.
In the second year, I moved out into rented accommodation, but in my third year the landlord wanted the property back a month before my exams ended. I tried to find a property that would let you rent for a month but they didn’t exist, so I went to the council and they put me in homeless accommodation. But the only homeless accommodation they had was for men.
It was a horrible little room. My daughter had to limit her possessions to a single box as we had to put all our stuff in storage. There was no phone signal or access to the internet, and there were a lot of people with drug and alcohol problems. One night, a guy tried to kick down my door. That was terrifying, but also another moment where I just thought: study and get out.
I graduated and moved to London to do a course to become a trained solicitor. It cost £12,000, so I worked as a waitress to pay this huge loan off, while doing unpaid work experience. But I was constantly applying for paid jobs, and I probably applied for about 100 before I found a legal job at a media company.
A few years later, when my daughter was 11, she started getting pains and said she couldn’t walk or feel her legs. It turned out she had a spinal condition, and the hospital put her in emergency surgery that night. Doctors said they didn’t know if she would ever walk again. She was in hospital for a year and a half, and I had to do all my final exams and training at a really tough law firm while sleeping in the hospital.
The hospital wanted me around more, and so did my job, so I felt as if I was failing at everything. I thought: I just hope I’ve not fucked her up through doing all of this. There was a point where I was so exhausted that I fainted and fell down some stairs and broke my foot. Doctors said I should quit work, but I had no option – if I did that, we would be homeless when she came out of hospital.
She eventually recovered and, despite missing so much school, did so well in her exams that she got a place at Durham University, where she’s currently studying psychology. Our bond is so close and we talk every day. I feel really happy, settled, and lucky it has worked out like this. Now I’ve got a bit more time for myself, and I’ve even started doing some acting classes in the evening. My career also blossomed, and today I have my dream role as a director at Sony Pictures Television, working as a solicitor in the business affairs team.
Looking back, maybe it was a good thing that I encountered that discouraging midwife. Perhaps I wouldn’t have been as tenacious otherwise. But I achieved all these things because of my daughter. She inspired me and gave me a reason to keep fighting – and for that I am forever grateful.
