I am a coach, GP and writer. I have been a doctor for thirty years, including twenty-five years in East London as a GP. I have experience of working in the start-up and humanitarian sectors – including in leadership – as well as in India, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Living in Ethiopia has been transformative for me — seeing how the differing values of another culture can bring other possibilities to the self, and witnessing how a culture owns its own identity. In more recent years I have become a parent by transracial adoption. Each of these parts of my life have come to inform my way of thinking about the world, and how I interact with you.

In my journey through life, I have overcome and learned from a period of ill health with autoimmune disease, burnout, and bereavement. Being a patient, and separately, the journey into the beginning of motherhood, both brought an identity crisis of their own — and the realisation of who I was outside of my medical identity. Although this was an especially painful time, facing my difficulties was part of how I grew into who I am today.

As a doctor, I have had the privilege of witnessing most aspects of the human experience, from asylum seekers to public figures. Very often, people know their own solutions to life’s problems, as long as they have someone willing to listen and offer the right tools as catalysts.

Lately, I have been interested in how creative writing helps us bear witness to ourselves and our experiences, and leads to a sense of flourishing, growth, and a fuller identity than medicine alone has had room for.