The Day I Started Feeling Like Myself Again

In February 2024 I broke my shoulder. Two major surgeries followed, and then Ramsay Hunt syndrome; viral condition that caused facial paralysis on one side. For months my body felt foreign to me. My face was wonky. My shoulder would not lift. People would turn away when they saw me. In January this year I had a shoulder replacement. It was only this summer, two and a half years after the accident, that I finally called Deborah Grossman.

Debs is a great friend with enormous style who works as a costume buyer. Since my first book in 2017 she has helped me feel more confident in what I wear to book festivals, television appearances and events. She understands something important: when we feel good in what we wear, we are freer to be ourselves.

As Trinny Woodall and Liz Earle have both said, in different ways, how we look is often an inside job expressed outwardly. Clothes are never only clothes. They sit right at the intersection between identity, confidence, sexuality, age, self worth and shame. They are the visible expression of how we feel about ourselves, even when we are not fully conscious of it.

I have always minded what I look like. I am not a great fashionista. I do not spend hours on trends or obsess about labels. Yet style matters to me. I do not want to feel irrelevant or invisible. What I realised rather late in life is that if I truly felt good in what I wore, I enjoyed myself more. I felt more relaxed, more present in my skin.