I’m proud of who I am,
No more monsters, I can breathe again,
And you said that I was done,
Well, you were wrong and now, the best is yet to come
Ke$ha - Praying
After BBC Radio Newcastle, confirmed I could announce my live appearance on their Anna Foster show, I instantly wondered how I could share the announcement and so, I’ve chosen to answer a few AI-created (by Chat GPT) questions. If you want to hear more about my mental health journey, trauma recovery, and the growth of my Influencer career and pet bereavement project; Gracie’s Way (www.graciesway.co.uk or @GraciesWayUK on Instagram), then you can listen in live…
21.07.2026 at 11am: Radio Newcastle - Listen Live - BBC Sounds
How did the opportunity to be interviewed by BBC Radio Newcastle come about?
After meeting Author of Fox Under the Moon; Stacey McNeill at a Christmas Market last year, we put a collaboration together and published it in January on my blog: RELATING TO MY TWO FAVOURITE PAGES | IN COLLABORATION WITH STACEY MCNEILL, AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR OF FOX UNDER THE MOON | NATIONAL READING DAY 2026 | I'm NOT Disordered and then we created another as an article for Gracie’s Way: How Fox Under the Moon Got Pet Bereavement So Right | In Collaboration with Illustrator & Author; Stacey McNeill of Fox Under the Moon | Love Your Pet Day 2026 | Gracie's Way. Off the back of the partnership and after hearing more about my journey, the creation of Gracie’s Way, and I’m NOT Disordered’s success and popularity, Stacey connected me with a lovely BBC Radio Newcastle Broadcast Journalist. She promptly said I sounded ‘fascinating’ and asked if I’d be ‘up for something live!’
Having gone through some really terrible moments in my mental health journey and trauma recovery, moments that have been as low as to being on life support after a suicide attempt and being sectioned for over two and a half years to a hospital over 100 miles away from home; I’ve come to have an eagerness and drive to take on as many opportunities as I’m offered! Admittedly, a huge learning curve with this was adjusting to having sort of regulation on how much I took on at once and how I planned and managed my workloads too. Something I’ve always said since my first few years as a Blogger, was that there’s often a few months of a lull in awareness dates, meetings, and events etc. And then, everything will come up at once so I’ve had to learn how to use the downtime to both chill and make the most of it, build up my energy for the full-on months, and create any content and do any work I can that will lessen the workload for those more jam-packed occasions.
What exactly will you be talking about during the interview?
I’ve actually asked the Broadcast Journalist about this because I was unsure – until her email today! (July 8th) – whether I was just given a bit of a comment or something and had to talk off that, or if they were going to set some questions. So, she said they tend to set some just as a loose guide, a day or two before the interview and she did boost me with a sentence that the Interviewer; Anna Foster, is ‘fantastic at listening and responding naturally’ but I’m still planning on doing some research into other interviews she’s done to set some reasonable expectations for myself of who I’m meeting and talking to.
At the end of today’s email, there was also a bit that read ‘Should we just concentrate on the borderline blog, or would you like to touch on the pet’s bereavement project also?’ Now, I thought this was really lovely because, in my head, it was something I’d thought on too – especially after hearing they don’t put the questions together until a day or two before the interview!
So, I’d asked myself what the main topics are that I’d like to highlight and talk about… And I’m going to say trauma (not particularly CSA unless it specifically comes up, more general), suicide, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), self-harm, Therapy (namely Dialectical Behaviour Therapy – DBT), recovery, blogging, pet bereavement. I think that’s a lot of key topics or words I want to mention but they all feed so well into each other that I think they’ll almost naturally just lead to the next one or another one.
Now, the reason I love that they asked about the blog and pet bereavement was because I can fully – and I actually put it in my email back to them – appreciate that my blog is the main topic because that’s the largest, oldest, and most popular achievement of my recovery and mental health journey generally too! So, I was a bit worried that I’d have to fight to mention Gracie’s Way and have to supply reasons as to why it was a deserving topic and a project that’s worthy of being mentioned by a BBC Radio Presenter! And the fact that I now know I don’t’ have to do that is not only a relief but also fills me with more confidence for talking to people who are this nice and thoughtful, kind, and considerate.
Has your previous speaking opportunities prepared you for this?
That last bit goes perfectly into this, doesn’t it, because I was literally just mentioning confidence in talking to the Presenter etc?!
I’ll never forget my public speaking opportunity in 2015 when I was asked to give the closing speech for Time to Talk (a mental health campaign which lost funding a number of years ago)’s Story Camp event in London (I blogged about it: Story Camp with Time To Change | 'Ad' | I'm NOT Disordered). I remember ringing my Mum in tears, convinced that I couldn’t do it, but my Mum is the best at making what some may deem ‘tough love’ into caring, motivational, and validating support and encouragement.
She also helped me to recognise that it was such an amazing opportunity that could very well be a once-in-a-lifetime instance because how was I to know that my blog would not only reach the level of popularity it has (over 3.1 million readers) but also, that it would still be going for an additional ten years that would mean a ton of similar opportunities?! But it was good that I confronted it in that very first instance because if I’d kept putting it off, I may have never felt ready to do it.
In addition to my public speeches, I think another helpful element for me that will be beneficial in this radio appearance, is that I have also featured in numerous media outlets before too – so many and they’re obviously each in different blog posts, so if you search ‘media’ in the search bar on the right-hand side of the blog, it should bring up the most relevant ones, or you can just click here: I'm NOT Disordered: Search results for media.
One of these appearances though, but which is on my YouTube and not I’m NOT Disordered, was actually on BBC Radio Newcastle seven years ago (you can listen to it: (129) BBC Radio Newcastle - YouTube) when they invited me on to give my thoughts in relation to the new government budget announcements regarding mental health services. But my appearance was actually more of a general talk about my journey and inpatient experience with one or two questions on my thoughts of where improvements were really necessary and required (I said crisis services, medical hospitals/A&E, and emergency services). What was nice about listening to it was that I mentioned having half a million readers, so it actually feels even more, really special to be going back on there, seven years later, with three million – well 3.1 million – readers this time/now!
Does having such a large audience create more pressure when opportunities like this come along?
Once again, that last bit leads very nicely into my answer to this question too…
I’d absolutely agree that my blog’s forever-increasing popularity has resulted in a new-found sense of pressure that feels mostly linked to expectation. I feel that expectations of me and my blog are constantly being heightened and that there is so much more expected of me in media appearances now than there was in my very first one in my local newspaper (the Chronicle: Blyth suicide survivor Aimee Wilson tells how she came back from the brink - Chronicle Live). And part of that is about the number of appearances I’ve made/had and the fact that when a media outlet hears you’ve done media before, they often breathe a sigh of relief and express some sort of thought or opinion around the concept of: ‘she’ll know what she’s doing, then.’ And I think that in addition to believing I’m more knowledgeable than I might actually be because of the amount of appearances I’ve done, there’s also the matter of confidence in that people are typically expecting me to be so much more confident and less nervous because I’ve ‘done it all before!’
And I think another expectation that leads to pressure around my numerous appearances, is related to my actual work and the content I create. More specifically, the standard and quality of it. And this can mean a ton of different qualities e.g. the creativity, the uniqueness, the honesty, the effectiveness… I’ll openly admit that I struggle massively to sell my own content in terms of singing its praises. I recognise the impact it has had on its readers – absolutely! Massively recognise that. But if someone asked me to describe my content; I’d struggle to provide some positive descriptions.
What do you hope the interview could lead to for I’m NOT Disordered?
Of course, the most obvious impact my BBC Radio Newcastle appearance will likely have will be an increase in readers on I’m NOT Disordered and this makes me uneasy because I don’t want people to think ‘she’s so greedy – she’s on over three million and is still doing things to get more?!’ I never want for someone to think that I’m not satisfied or happy with the level of readers my blog has, but I appreciate that if I’m continuing to do things that will gain more, it may appear that I am unsatisfied or unhappy. But actually, I’m trying to help more people. In so many ways – all the different ways I’ve been told by readers, I’m NOT Disordered’s content has helped them in. I realise it’s not solely about therapeutic advice or how to stay safe from self-harm or suicide attempts. It’s also about providing learning opportunities for professionals and services too.
21.07.2026 at 11am: Radio Newcastle - Listen Live - BBC Sounds