Yomi Ṣode

So with, for me, I've grown up witnessing types of violence and I wanted to create room to have a conversation to some people that might deem to be, if it's uncomfortable to have, right?

And I can't speak to everybody's experiences, but it is a way to highlight

There's a way that I wanted to highlight a loss as this is just part of the process.

There are losses that are quite shocking.

There are losses that are emotional.

And there are losses that, to some degree, it might make people want to steer clear and run away.

But that's still my lived experience.

And there should still be room for my lived experience to be talked about.

Because I still work with young people who talk to me about their day-to-day life and what they're going through.

And some of that life is so rough that we have to make room to hear them because if we don't make room to hear them, who's going to give that space for them to be talking about it, you know?

So it's really important to highlight the violence, to highlight points of violence for specific people in lived experiences because it's a way for them to kind of talk about it, to know how to process as they're growing up as well.

It's a struggle.

It's a struggle, even though I could, as much as I would love to, just write full-time.

I've been doing this.

I've been working with young people, families.

I now work with children in need and looked after children.

I've been doing this since I was 16.

But I've been doing it in such a way that this is really the fabric of the work I do as well.

There's nothing, you know, just last week, I'm trying to get a 14-year-old to go back to school.

He lost his granddad in December.