13/10/2026
I've never been someone to leave anyone out. I do my best to be as inclusive as I can.
Friendships, yes. Cliques, no.
Growing up, I knew exactly what it felt like to be on the outside looking in. Not always through anything I did, sometimes it was just someone deciding who they thought I was, then treating that decision like it was fact, and that still happens now, well into adulthood.
So I've spent a lot of energy making sure people around me never feel that, or at least I do what's humanly possible of me. I like to bring everyone on the journey, hoping that people leave a conversation feeling better than they arrived.
Doesn't always work in your favour, mind. I've spent a fair bit of my life wondering whether or not I'm liked or whether people talk behind my back, but it's brought me to a place in my 30s where I've been able to make peace with the fact that not everybody will necessarily gravitate towards you, for whatever reason.
You notice it in the small things. A tone that shifts. A pattern that repeats. You clock it even when nobody says a word or when habits change. And the moment I do get the gist, I tend to switch off from said energy. Not dramatically, I tend to quietly pull back to save the energy for where it's needed or wanted.
What keeps me steady through that is simple: Family, friendships and the people who actually put trust in me. Others become noise.
It's a small, personal thing. But it's also not just mine.
Growing up brown, Muslim, Pakistani and British, you get an early education in being spoken about before you're ever spoken to. So when I see that same instinct play out on a much bigger scale, whether it's people being written out of the conversation entirely, or someone like Ms Rachel getting dragged just for saying children in Gaza deserve to be seen, it lands differently for me.
It's the same impulse I grew up trying to fight. Deciding who gets included, who gets heard, and who gets left standing outside the group.
I don't think you fix that by shouting louder than everyone else nor excluding them just because they don't fit the mould.
You fix it by being the person who holds the door open.
Every time.
