Sharon Gaffka’s Love Island to Law Reform | Extraordinary Life Stories

0:15I went in with a sense of confidence. I was like, I know who I am. I know who Sharon Gaffka is. This is what I want to get out of the experience. But the moment you're there, because you're not in control of the storyline that's written for you, the character plot that's given to you, that confidence gets chipped away at week by week. Who is Sharon Gaffka? Who is Sharon Gaffka is different to different types of people. I think the majority of people will know me as a Love Island contestant or a former Love Island contestant and someone who turned into a political activist. People automatically don't assume someone who looks like me, comes from my background.

0:49at the age of 18 is walking around the halls of Westminster but I felt more comfortable there. So much of what you do and what represent now is about helping other people. Literally any single post I put on Instagram whether it was about the shoes I just bought or like a new makeup piece people cared for some reason so I was like right well I'm going to get them to actually care about something that's important and I spoke about my experience of spiking and then my inbox just went bang my emails my instagram my like tiktok there wasn't a single part of my social media or like contact details that didn't just go crazy because even though it was too late to do anything about my experience it's not too late to stop it happening to a different person

1:42welcome thank you for having me looking forward to this yeah i've been looking forward to it as well my um hoping my baby brain doesn't overtake over the conversation absolutely not well you're a pro at this you'd think but i feel like every time i sit in front of a camera it feels like a new nerve-wracking experience and I don't I don't know if it's part of imposter syndrome I haven't quite got over yet so I don't know about you I would say the same isn't there an element of being accountable and almost like slightly nervous that then makes you perform better I don't know because sometimes I feel like if I care too much then I over complicate it in my brain as opposed to if I'm a bit more relaxed and don't care as much than I tend to perform better if that makes sense yeah it does interesting yeah maybe it's just my personality type yeah well let's start with who is Sharon Gaffka?

2:27Who is Sharon Gaffka is different to different types of people. I think the majority of people will know me as a Love Island contestant or a former Love Island contestant and someone who turned into a political activist. Yeah. Which should we start with? Because the Love Island part for me is quite interesting because knowing what I know about you before, striving, academic, very bright girl, it almost doesn't fit in the middle. But I think maybe we should unravel that as the story of how Love Island came to be? I always wanted to strive to be the best. I know as a teenager, I was very hard on myself if I didn't achieve the best of what I thought I could achieve.

3:05And I think that does come from my parents, both of them first, second generation immigrants. It's very traditional in an Asian household. All the stereotypes in that sense are very much true. My mum wanted me to be a doctor. I'm terrible with blood, so that was never going to happen. But I was very sporty, very academic. I wanted to pursue a career in law. um my mum unfortunately got cancer through the early stages of my GCSE so I didn't want to go to university straight away so I took a non-traditional route into the workplace I became an apprentice and I like fell in love with the work that I was doing there and I wanted to be a high achiever there and that was government work it was government work and I think that people automatically don't assume someone who looks like me comes from my background at the age of 18 is walking around the halls of Westminster but I felt more comfortable there even though maybe people didn't think I belonged belong there straight away.

4:01Love Island actually came as a result of the people that I met along the way they thought it would be funny to sign me up a good idea for me to take that as a bit of a career break. Love Island as a career break is an interesting concept in itself but I just think that I always want to say yes to no experiences and I've done that throughout my entire life so far and so far it's not done me wrong I've not had any regrets made life variable right made it diverse and I think I've done a lot for someone who's only 30 so hopefully for the next 30 years I'll have the same amount of experiences yeah just with Love Island there's there's it's it's a sort of micro climate as an experience that you can't really prepare for so I just want to kind of unravel that where relatively short small part of your life but high impact you know ultimately actually recognizable builds you a whole platform followers but the bit I'm most interested in is that sort of always the confidence element to back yourself to go on it still try and be yourself and then come out and deal with what is ultimately I guess kind of fallout if you like you know there's fame there's a lot to deal with that I would always describe it to people that don't have never been through a similar experience as it's a social experiment you know you have you all your faculties are not yours in a sense like you know your how you'd cope with mental challenges emotional challenges are not there um I'd actually kind of compare it to the COVID lockdown experience but if I took away your access to the internet your one hour walk a day and I put a camera on you 24 hours a day that's very similar in that aspect it's you go in with a set I went in with a sense of confidence I was like I know who I am I know who Sharon Gaffer is this is what I want to get out of the experience but the moment you're there because you're not in control of the storyline that's written for you the character plot that's given to you that confidence gets chipped away at week by week and particularly if you had an experience I had which is that we know that ethnic minority women struggle in Love Island you're not necessarily always picked first that's something that's also really hard as a as an Asian woman just as much as it is for black women but it's probably not talked about as much because there's less of us um and I remember one particular experience where I'd walked out of the villa doors to come down and see all of the other girls and they were all sat around the fire pit and it's not none of their fault but they're all white blonde blue-eyed and it felt like I was back at having a high school experience um and obviously when you get older you've you've deliberately taken yourself away from those kind of like negative experiences that you've had as a younger person so that level of confidence I thought I was going in with I didn't leave with and I definitely didn't have throughout the whole three weeks that I was there um which obviously makes it harder to deal with any backlash you get of course um or like instant rises in fame from the moment you leave because you're having to figure out who is Sharon Gaffka again is Sharon Gaffka the person that is portrayed by producers or is she someone completely different and if she is someone completely different I have to I literally put blood sweat and actual tears into turning that public perception around of of me and even though it's been five years on people if you don't if they don't know you and they don't follow your journey afterwards which majority won't they still think that that is the only version of you that exists and it's even harder when mainstream media puts that like it keeps bringing it back so if I'm talking about domestic abuse and violence against women and girls there'll be some element of love island that's included in the headline that's completely irrelevant which will always bring it back to that version of sharon trading as schwab is now powered by ameritrade bringing you an expanding library of education with even more ways to sharpen your trading skills access new online courses insightful webcasts articles engaging videos and more all curated just for traders Plus, guided learning paths with content designed to fit your unique interests.

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8:42On that, is there any part of you sitting here right now that in any way regrets going on it? If I were to do it again, knowing what I know now, I would definitely do things differently. I think there was a level of naivety that I had that I was going to go in, have this amazing once in a lifetime experience potentially leave with a lifelong partner potentially not and everything would be magical because that's what that's what you hear like when you hear the success stories of the molly mays of the world you you automatically think that's what that's what life's going to be like and it's not so i think that i probably would have looked at it from a business perspective would have hired a professional social media person to do my social medias rather than relied on a friend because that's a lot of work to put on one person particularly if you get loads of hate which I did and I probably wouldn't have I know people thought I was outspoken on the show but I would have probably said a lot more that I didn't say and I was overly cautious about the cameras and you think about it even though you you know they're not there if you are someone like me that's constantly thinking about well how is this decision going to impact the next decision it makes it very hard to operate when you know that the cameras are watching you yeah can i i don't go there if you don't want to but just the hate element because i picked up on you said almost like feeling back to high school you mentioned being in government and you know someone like me wasn't used to people weren't used to seeing someone like that and then you've had this whole kind of racial oppression through your life can you elaborate on some of the comments that you obviously did get and and how you've dealt with them as well because sitting here now is a very resilient person very clear there's a contentment without any arrogance that you know you can own this but you clearly come through a lot a lot of the comments i had were about physical appearances now i don't know what it is about necessarily the east and southeast asian community where we don't talk about the hate that we get i know there was a little bit of it during covid and how asian hate was becoming more prominent but if even now to this day if i tell somebody that a comment you've made about my appearance has racist connotations because it's a feature that is associated to my race they don't see it as that so it feels like you're having to re-educate people on racism in the first place which is an exhausting part in itself so that but that's something that I feel like I've dealt with and I'm not quite at the point yet where I've realized that it's not my job to educate people anymore I would love to know when that point in my life comes but that that's just what it is for now and I think that because we aren't used to seeing southeast and east asian women particularly ones that are vocal um particularly ones that are intelligent not that some people in the public will disagree with that label of me or outspoken or confident or know what they want it's so easy to villainize me to make me look like I'm a bad person um and that I'm arrogant and I'm horrible and I always say to people well if I was that person then if you look at the reaction of people that when I left the villa their reaction and how upset they were that doesn't match no the disconnect yeah so you know and I think that for a lot of people in that moment in time I was like their sounding board their rock and that was taken away from them and I feel like that's that's something that's similar in my life now like I'm like that rock and that place for other people but it's so easy to villainize me because I am that resilient person um but it's something I've had to learn because I've had no choice no and you've had the lived experiences that at the time clearly you would never have wanted but sitting here right now there's that the resilience piece comes with the lived experience of the scars if you like yeah and it's all part of the storytelling I guess as well right I do wish that I mean my parents would have spoken to me about the oppressions they've received throughout their lives um the very different reasons my dad was ginger growing up in school which obviously has its own um had his own things but um they didn't have the sit-down conversation with me that I would have liked to have had and I probably will have my son at some point in his life they tried to shield you yeah you had you had no defense or way of knowing how to deal with that when it came your way well I wonder as well if my mum because my mum is a brown-skinned woman and I'm a bit more white passing than her whether that she thought I wouldn't have it in the same way she did so maybe there was a little bit of naivety on her part um but I think that the lack of preparedness that I had to deal with these issues face on probably made me a bit tougher than I needed to be in the beginning particularly for a young person and it's something like all of my friendship group are women of different races and we were all openly had those conversations that we need to have with our children because we've all shared similar experiences and I think that resilience also comes from the fact that I don't want another Asian woman or Asian girl to look at the TV screen and think oh well I can't do any of these things or you know not see that strong person and not have that understanding or someone they can reach out to to speak to them about it so I think that's probably where it comes from I don't want someone else to feel how I felt.

13:50I love that and when we I want to say I love that. I love how you frame that. Careful how I say that. But my point being, when we had the chance to speak on the phone before today, so much of what you do and what represent now is about helping other people to not necessarily go through what you've gone through. And of course, you brought in a wider community there, but of course, to be the best mum you can be. Because when's your due date? 17th of July. That's not long. No. You're a man here now, right? That's ticking down. So I guess there's a maturity that's coming. and a perspective that's again now you know much bigger than just you about someone coming into the world where forewarned yes advice which is a big part of the conversation that this I like to have where there's I suppose I'd say that you're a role model in this moment I don't know if you feel like that I always feel like it's really big-headed to like give yourself that label people say it to me and I just think no I just I'm just someone who's trying to do their bit and that's how I always consider myself I can't fix everyone's problems I can't even fix all of my own but I just think if I do a little bit that makes it the world a little bit better and everybody contributed in the same way we probably would be in a lot nicer place.

15:02I'm smiling because there's plenty of people out there that seem to be very noisy and have an opinion that isn't worth listening to and then I'm listening to you and you speak so much sense and there's so much to learn from from good and bad experiences and just to finish with Love Island, one of the things that slightly bothers me, and I don't know if you know if this has changed or not, it feels like you were left alone to deal with a lot there. Was there no safeguarding? Was there no one, because you wish you'd been warned about stuff. Yeah. And then when you came out, you had to kind of work that all out for yourself.

15:32Would you say that anything's changed there for the next group that goes in where perhaps some of the lessons learned, these guys can have a bit more safeguarding around them? It was very mixed, safeguarding's a very mixed experience that I had anyway um I was given a therapist um and it was covered for by ITV up to a certain amount of sessions I think they could extend it if you needed to and they would approve it she was amazing she was not part I don't think she's hired by ITV I think she's external but she was she was there for my pre-screening all the way up to the to where I felt like I was in a good place um and I couldn't fault her um and she actually helped me deal with things weren't even love island related yeah that at that moment in time so i wouldn't fault her i think there are some things that i went to the aftercare team for support with um that i'm i don't necessarily want to go into but they they just said it's not it's not our place rather than actually like taking the time to listen and understand and seeing what they could actually do because i would never have gone to them if i didn't think it was their place um so they just were like sorry it's not ours so i I cut contact with ITV aftercare for quite quickly after the show.

16:41Yeah, I can understand that. There's a part to you that's the authenticity is backed up by integrity. Yeah. And I think that's probably a key part of, you know, sort of post Love Island, the campaigning. And again, bringing the fact that so much of what you do now is beyond your own experience. But should we just cover the exposure you've had through campaigning and what led to that? yeah um I when I left Love Island it goes back to having that not knowing who Sharon Gaffer is that but loss of identity for that brief period of time and then I remember that Freshers Week was coming out and lots of young women particularly in the area that I live in like so um I live in South Oxfordshire there's lots of universities around lots of women and freshers ages were saying that they were having experiences with spiking they didn't feel safe when they were going out and I was like in awe of the strength to be able to say that that's something they're going through and what that they wanted to do something about it and I actually turned around to my publicist Jen and Ash at the time and said well that's actually something that happened to me last summer and they were like if do you feel comfortable talking about it and I was like oh I don't I don't know but I think my experience of having worked in government knowing how policy is formed knowing how politicians actually care about things or why they should care about things and it's because it's public pressure and conversations in media and knowing at that moment in time anything I did like literally any single post I put on Instagram whether it was about the shoes I just bought or like a new makeup piece people cared for some reason so I was like right well I'm going to get them to actually care about something that's important so I wrote my second piece for Grazia I think I was the first Love Islander to write in print for them as a publication and this was my second article and I spoke about my experiences of spiking and then my inbox just went bang my emails my instagrams my like tiktok there wasn't a single part of my social media or like contact details that didn't just go crazy and it wasn't it was with predominantly women but it wasn't a single group demographic of people that were saying they experienced this so I just emailed my mp they were kind of fobbing me off a little bit and i was like i've tried i've i've written these emails myself i've tried every excuse under the sun i'm coming in whether you like it or not so i i took my publicist with me and we had we had a conversation i put that on instagram that went crazy and sparked a lot more people and then i caught wind that the home affairs select committee were doing um like a report on it so i'd actually submitted um my own report that i'd written out of 1500 instagram dms and emails that i'd received that i read on my own because i didn't want anyone else to reread some of the things i was being sent um and sent it to them and then it kind of it was an accident um i didn't intend on i mean i didn't know what path i wanted to take but i didn't intend on going this way i think some people maybe get a little bit of a nudge from their teams but this was just my team saying i think you should just do it and then see what happens.

20:16business owners game day isn't just another shift it's your biggest opportunity what you show on your screens decides where fans stay everpass brings premium live sports together in one streaming platform built for businesses so you can deliver the games your customers want without the hassle reliable easy to manage and designed for your venue make your place the one fans choose visit everpass.com to learn more and then what happened because this is fascinating because you obviously opened up a can of worms right yeah you weren't expecting no um i remember days i think there was one day in particular where i probably did about 18 hours of media rounds there's a hell of a lot of work that's gone into this right yeah yeah so um i think there wasn't a single news outlet that wasn't interested in covering it and i'd lost my voice by the end of the week because i'd spoken to so many people um and then different mps and government ministers were interested in having these conversations because they not to say they were out of touch but they just didn't know what was happening or they felt like that it was only happening to a certain group of people at a certain place and I was like well actually it's a lot bigger problem than you think it is and there will probably be women or men walking these particular halls that have also experienced it but they're too scared to talk to you about it because you've got issues with policing you've got issues with reporting and it felt like the more I was talking about it the more issues I was opening up about it and then the public backlash as well but it's my fault I probably did something I probably drank too much I and it opened a lot of like victim blaming that I knew existed but because I didn't talk about it I'd like put it in a box somewhere else and that was something I wanted to tackle because even though it was too late to do anything about my experience it's not too late to stop it happening to a different person or you know have giving them the tools to be able to get a criminal conviction and stop perpetrators thinking that they can just do what they want and get away with it yeah because you know there's an element there um where people coming to you and saying that you know the victim mindset if you like and stop moaning you know a lesser resilient person would have shrunk away and gone oh this is this is clearly you know almost started to doubt themselves yeah did that make you stronger did that actually give you more of a purpose to be actually this is this is someone's trying to sweep this under the carpet maybe not even deliberately just people seem to look at things the wrong way when actually this needs to be amplified this needs to be campaigned this something needs to be brought in here to change what's happening here well i thought about well i know what happened to me i know what i experienced i was there they weren't um they were my friends were there as well so they watched it happen and they were the ones that had that sit down conversation with me and told me that this is what they saw so that led us to believe this is what happened they will never be there and touch wood they never experience it but when you look at all the legislative changes in history that benefit women in some way they were all victim blamed or shamed or told that they were not worthy of having this not women weren't worthy of having the vote at one point but it was women that were basically like well actually we are and we are worthy of being safe and protected that actually led to all those changes so you know if all the women before me were strong enough to keep going then all the women like me and the women that come after me should be as well because otherwise it's just going to keep happening and it was the I think in particular I had a message from someone who was still in school she was 14 years old when it happened to her and I just thought that's it I've had enough because you know you can say what you want about an 18 year old going clubbing and being irresponsible but a 14 year old child that that's somebody that should be protected no matter what and even if they were at the park drinking it's not their fault that's somebody we should listen to and I don't want to hear about 14 year old girls being assaulted I don't want that in my inbox and to know that that 14 year old has only ever told me and for some some bizarre reason has only felt comfortable telling me that's I would say a privilege in itself yeah and i can't just sit on that no i mean i'm a dad to a 14 year old and a 16 year old girl so that hits home yeah uh and i'm gonna that role model piece that i hope you almost felt uncomfortable earlier that girl reached out to you from a relatability point of view whatever you put out she felt it was safe to be able to you must acknowledge that that's powerful what needs to happen next where are you in this campaign what have you achieved what are you trying to to you?

24:48So there has been reclassification of certain drugs so date rape drugs have been reclassified from class C to class B so if you're caught in possession you'll get harsher prison sentence that's even without actually doing anything with it and my problem was with spiking laws that it fit in different pieces of legislation it wasn't just in one black and white piece we know spiking is illegal but to try and find out where what happened to you fits is too complicated and even police officers were saying that to me so we had that changed so now it is a single standalone offence now looking at the different ways in which people spike because we automatically assume it's a date break drug when actually we now know it's it's included in vapes it's in food um I didn't know that yeah it can happen in vape spiking and I actually met a woman who was a paramedic and who went to a festival and there's a culture of sharing vapes she was spiked that way and technically that wasn't covered or the police didn't know like how to investigate it so the police have now brought out new technology where they can test vapes then and there it takes about 15 seconds I watched it changed the way that police are involved in not involved but can be spoken to in regards to like freshers so police being able to check certain things and actually telling people what they can and cannot do to protect themselves so with me I was my drink was spiked while it might leave my body quickly because of my metabolism it never leaves the glass so if I knew that in that moment in time someone could have taken the glass and I could have taken that to the police so I wouldn't have had to undergo invasive testing and that's something that now I'm telling people you know if you're with somebody and you believe that that's the drink take the glass um because you're more likely to to be able to get solid evidence because it will never leave so i think that that as well and how we how we treat survivors um i went to a sark center for the first time a few years ago and looked at how survivors of sexual assault get treated by non not people that aren't in the police to help people feel more comfortable going forward and getting the help they need yeah have you built a tribe around you with this outpouring and people that have felt comfortable being able to share their scenario with you or other people that have ultimately gathered around?

27:11Is there now more of a movement? Is there a momentum, if you like? Or do you feel still quite alone with this? Because, you know, I'm trying to work out, you know, particularly with baby on the way and energy levels and so on, because this is important work. It's me learning professionally about vapes that in any way can transmit, you know yeah this whole thing is an education piece that needs to be amplified and I'm just wondering how much help you've got with that because I feel like you're quite alone uh I wouldn't say there's necessarily a tribe but I have noticed the trend in people that have had happened to them feeling like they can talk about it because they don't feel like they're the only person out there so I get sent messages but from people I get tagged in photos or posts that people have done saying this is what's happened to me this is the place it's happened to so I feel like even though there's not loads of us there are more people that aren't scared to talk about it anymore and I think that has an effect on people that maybe I don't know that have started speaking about it um have spoken about it or gone to the police so yeah in the sense I'm alone in a sense I'm not and that that that um girl that was super aspirational to do the apprenticeship go into to the kind of academic route yeah um do you still aspire to that because I'm just curious with with motherhood impending but with an element of intellect that you want to be using and have used in a number of different ways is that now is the campaigning for this your number one thing to do or are you kind of doing other things as well um unfortunately as much as people's uh trolls on the internet would say that i'm making money out of women's pain and grief i don't get paid to be a campaigner i don't get i was wondering how you i didn't feel there's a monetization no there is if there was money to be made in it i would probably be on the love island rich list but unfortunately nowhere near the top 10 um so no all of this is completely voluntary it's it's love of wanting to make the world a better place wanting to listen to people and do more with so this is purpose yeah it's purpose driven so obviously i have to make money elsewhere so there is an element of influencer work so i do have to okay that's that was my question and so yeah is that is that the number one route from a monetization point of view it is but it can make it more challenging you I have limited the amount of brands I can work with because of the messaging I put out you don't want to ruin the campaigning work by working with brands that go completely against that messaging yeah um and you don't want to like certain brands won't touch political people so I've already cut off probably about 50 percent of potential earning capacity by just saying no to those brands or those brands saying no to me so it does make it hard to earn as much money as some of the other people and sometimes you do look at it and you go this is really shit like um because I am a good person in my brain anyway whether people believe or not I'm a good person why should this like why should it be so much harder but actually the relationships I've built with the brands I work with it's their purpose driven as well so I don't there's good alignment there yeah it's just it's just been limited by circumstance yeah so i don't feel like when i put an ad out there that i'm perpetuating or contributing to the cycle of negative images online so i it's exhausting to constantly think about how does this make somebody feel am i going to make someone feel bad when i post this am i going to and matthews my fiance is probably driven up the ball by me constantly overthinking every single thing i do online and i'm more tired being an influencer than know I'm being a civil servant as a result of it so it's hard work isn't it I mean I mean most you know um most kids growing up now want to be an influencer yeah without necessarily knowing what it entails yeah because there's a lot of graft there's there's there's a lot of exposure isn't there's a lot of judgment yeah I um I still do a lot of work with secondary schools in my local area I go back to my secondary school a lot because I want to see more young women entering the world of politics and a lot of the time when I speak to them they're like oh I want I want to be an influencer and I said but what do you want to influence because there are the influencer market is so saturated now and it's great because we know it's predominantly women that are earning incomes from this um and it's more flexible and you know if you have children that flexibility is gold but there needs to be a niche behind it now to even be somebody in that in that industry every successful influencer I know has a niche in some way whether that be like um I know Emily the the nutritionist emily english she kind of like exploded out of nowhere but that's because she built like this really niche style of content and you know what she's influencing is trying to get people to be healthy you need to have that you can't just wake up one day and say i'm going to post pretty pictures because that doesn't get the attention anymore doesn't gauge the algorithm um and it's there's a lot of numbers involved and i'm not really a numbers girly um so all of that stuff makes me really stressed out we have to deal with all the numbers and stuff and all the client meetings and all the potential no's and all the potential like doors closing in your face that you have to be really resilient to do that yeah facing rejection dealing with it a lot of rejection i think and it's not even like rejection from brands or potential people that you could be working with it's also rejection from the public because pre-love island when i said i was i knew who sharon was and i was really confident now my confidence feels like i need validation from people I don't know because that's what brands want they want people that they want to work with people that are obsessed people are obsessed with so now I have to my monetary value comes from external validation which is a really bizarre cycle because it's nothing to do with my capability or my intelligence my skill set it's to do with whether people like me in that moment or not and that is something that's really challenging to deal with yeah I mean external validation and you know I know different people in acting and so on and you know they could do something incredible but if for whatever reason the audience doesn't go and see it and so on they take it because you know you're looking at people that have liked it people that have commented and if that's low they take that personally right yeah and you do it's hard not to yeah um but what do you do to effectively manage your mental health with that you know so what's the process you go through where for whatever reason something that hasn't gone how you wanted it you know what's the what's your process for yeah sort of managing your own mental fitness do you know what I think it just comes out from being like doing normal people things like I've got two dogs um and grounded yeah like just going outside with them trying to not be on my phone all the time sounds like really silly things to do but that's that's the only way I can keep myself sane um I remember like in the beginning definitely the post-leaving love I was glued to my phone I wanted to know what everybody was saying about me everything and anything and that probably made it harder for me to just be like actually no if this something if something goes badly it's not a reflection of me or my skill set you know there's lots of different elements at play just leave it and move on because it's done now there's nothing I can do about it whereas that version of me would have picked it apart and picked it apart and picked myself apart to the point where I probably wouldn't get up out of bed for days so I think it's just having to try and remember that Sharon Gaffer on the internet versus Sharon Gaffer in real life are two separate entities and two separate people which goes back to the first question you asked me when it's when you said who is Sharon Gaffer and I said it depends on who you ask no I get that clarifies it now yeah yeah deliberate mindset and talking about two separate people come July being a mum and I'm just conscious of our time it's gone far too quick but just to you know I feel really privileged to have the chance to speak to you before going into another chapter of your life you know what what are the feelings there what are the uh the thoughts it was a bit of a weird one I think that people that have watched me on love island probably remembered me as the person that was like I don't really want children and it's not necessarily something that I was like must have must do um until I probably met Matthew and then I was like actually if it happens it happens if it doesn't it doesn't completely by accident like both of us were very very shocked and all the old wives tales kind of semi-pointed that I was having a girl so at one point I was making I was dealing with that in my head that I thought maybe it'd be easier for me to raise a girl as a forward campaigner because I know there's things I wish I was told or how to deal with certain things I was like right that'd be easier for me and then finding out that I'm having a boy I was like oh my god I have to now look at everything in a different way or do I feel more pressure now to raise a good man a good boy someone that's going to treat women well because of what I do so I feel like I'm not nervous necessarily for the giving birth aspect which is what lots of people freak out about I'm more conscious about making sure this is a good person yeah um so I think that that's the bit that I'm more scared of than than anything else but I feel like every parent feels like that well i'm 14 16 years old in uh to being a dad um i think you know you you've got the makings of an absolutely brilliant mum with all the lived experience and the the empathy um and the things you've lived through you know it sets you up really well i wish you all well with that but making time to film today when you were already busy and had a appointment earlier today thank you for making time to come in no thank you for having me before Before we started talking, I know you do your own pod.

36:42Did you enjoy being on the other end of questions? Oh, do you know what? I do and I don't. I thought I'd ask you now, right at the end. If you asked my teachers, they probably would have told you that I love the sound of my own voice because I was very chatty at school. So in that aspect, you would probably think I'd say yes. Sure. But actually, I'm naturally a very inquisitive person. And I was saying to you pre-recording, I let the other person do all the talking because I've noticed a trend that when I speak to certain people about traumatic experiences they've been through because I've made it a comfortable space even though this is the first time I've met this person they just let it all out and I've had quite a few people cry on my sofa not by me not intentionally anyway but like I think so in that aspect I probably prefer being on your side but I know there's a lot more work being on your side so I'm grateful for the bit of the break yeah It's a pleasure for me because I'm just naturally curious, but I think there's an element of you're a really good listener.

37:39So that's what you're saying. You naturally would almost settle back and then let someone else feel comfortable being able to talk to you and then therefore open up a lot more than perhaps other people because you're not in any hurry to come back in and speak. Yeah. I mean, it's like it's my podcast, but the people are listening to the guests, right? So it's about them telling their story. That's exactly how I feel. So thank you again for coming in and telling us your story now. Thank you for having me. Thank you, Sharon. We all want to know what makes people tick, how will they make decisions, handle feedback and work as a team.

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