Since our inaugural Disruptors Festival on Friday, May 8th 2026, I’ve found myself replaying so many of the moments in my head.

Not just the conversations on stage, but the quieter ones underneath them. The honesty. The emotion. The things said out loud, and the things that sat silently between the words.

What struck me most, listening to these women, was how much every one of them had carried. How many had quietly rebuilt themselves while still showing up for everyone else.

At several points during the day, I kept thinking about that speech from Barbie, the one that landed because it finally said the quiet part out loud. All the contradictions women are asked to hold at once. To be soft and strong. Confident but never intimidating. Successful but never too loud about it. Create change, but tiptoe around the truth.

Then, during Girlfriends Live, Chimmy asked me a question I wasn’t expecting:

“What are you apologising for?”

It stopped me.

Because the truth was, I realised how much of my life had still been shaped by trying to soften myself for other people’s comfort. Trying not to be too loud. Too outspoken. Too much.

And in that moment I realised something else.

I don’t want to apologise anymore.

Not for having a voice.

Not for taking up space.

And definitely not for being a woman.

Storytelling and supporting other people through their own has become one of the deepest passions of my life. Not because I have it all figured out, but because I know what it is to move through something hard and wonder whether anyone else really understands.

My resilience didn’t arrive fully formed. It was built slowly, through experiences I wouldn’t have chosen but that shaped me anyway, and by the women who came before me, my mother among them.

And if I’m honest, I don’t think I could stand in this space now without both parts of my world holding me there. There’s the platform Sophia built, and the place she’s made for me in it: to speak, to write, to help amplify women’s voices. And there’s Creative Pause, which has grounded me, helping me make sense not just of what I’ve been through, but of who I’ve become because of it.

Because what we’ve built inside Violet Simon isn’t just a media company. It’s a village. A space shaped by the women and men who came before it, including Sophia’s grandmother, Violet, and her father, Simon, whose names it carries.

What I saw on that Friday wasn’t competition, and it wasn’t performance. It was women holding space for one another. Listening. Telling the truth. Sharing the things so many of us have spent years trying to shrink around.

And honestly, that’s where change begins. Not in perfection, or in pretending we’re fearless, but in deciding we no longer need to apologise for who we are.

If you joined us on Friday, 8th May, thank you for being there.

And if any of this spoke to you, maybe it’s because you’ve been carrying some of it too.