My Book
I wasn’t only trying to recover my past. I was trying to rebuild a person.
I’m writing an autobiography about identity, brain injury and what it means to reconstruct a life when your own memories no longer feel like they belong to you.
My story begins long before my injury. It follows the curious, fiercely independent child I was, my early diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes, my education in fashion design and the career that eventually took me from London to Hong Kong.
It then arrives at the moment everything changed.
The life I built
Before my brain injury, I had created a life defined by curiosity, creativity and independence.
I studied fashion design at the London College of Fashion and developed a particular interest in the relationship between clothing, psychology and technology. My career gave me experience with organisations including Victoria Beckham, CuteCircuit and Li & Fung, and ultimately took me to Hong Kong.
Fashion taught me that design is never only about appearance. It is also about bodies, behaviour, manufacturing, economics and the way people express who they are.
At the time, I did not know how important that understanding would become.
The moment everything changed
While travelling in Vietnam, I experienced a traumatic brain injury.
In an instant, the life I had constructed became largely inaccessible to me. My memory had gone. I had lost my ability to speak, read, write and walk independently. Even my understanding of my own relationships and personal history had to be reconstructed through photographs, documents and the memories of other people.
My family and friends became the keepers of a life I had lived but could no longer fully remember.
I was transported between hospitals across several countries before eventually returning to Edinburgh. What followed was a long and repetitive process of rehabilitation.
Walking became a particular obsession.
We rarely think about walking until it becomes difficult. Yet the way we stand, move and enter a room quietly becomes part of who we are. When I lost that ability, I did not only lose a physical function. I lost part of the way I recognised myself.
I wasn’t simply learning how to walk again. I was learning how to become myself again.
Recovery was not a return
For a long time, recovery appeared to mean finding my way back to the person I had been before the injury.
Gradually, I realised that rebuilding did not have to mean returning.
My memories came back in fragments, but parts of my identity had survived without them. My humour, instincts, values and curiosity were still present. I could recognise myself before I could always remember myself.
I also had to reconsider what independence meant. Accepting support, using accessibility tools and adapting how I communicated did not make me less capable. Technology became a second brain, helping me read, write, remember and navigate everyday life while I continued to recover.
Eventually, education, design and experimentation gave me ways to move forward rather than simply looking backwards.
The story I’m telling
The book follows three connected stages of my life.
The original me
I explore my childhood, family, Type 1 diabetes, education and career in fashion and wearable technology. This is the life I created before the injury and the person other people would later help me rediscover.
How I rebuilt myself
I recount the accident, its immediate aftermath and the long process of rehabilitation. I explore the physical reality of relearning everyday skills alongside the more complicated task of grieving a former life and rebuilding an identity.
Adapting to a new me
I examine what happened when survival and rehabilitation gave way to the challenge of living again. I write about memory, disability, technology, education and the discovery that recovery could become a source of purpose.
I’m still writing what comes next
This is not a perfectly resolved story about overcoming adversity. Recovery remains part of my life, and the process of writing has involved returning to experiences I cannot always remember for myself.
The book is currently in development. As it progresses, I’ll share selected ideas and updates through my journal and LinkedIn.
Rebuilding didn’t mean returning. It meant discovering what had survived and deciding what I wanted to create next.