For years and years, I convinced myself that I was unbreakable, an animal with an animal strength or something not human at all. Me, I told people, I take damage like a wall, a brick wall that never falls down, never feels anything, never flinches or remembers. I am one woman but I carry in my body all the stories I have ever been told, women I have known, women who have taken damage until they tell themselves they can feel no pain at all.

I'll fight, till from my bones my flesh be hacked.

When you flip anything, you really you just have to have the courage of your convictions.

With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

I wouldn't have had a sporting career if it hadn't been for the volunteers who agreed to coach me, as a teenager, growing up in south Wales, at a time when others were telling me that wheelchair racing wasn't really athletics.

I have never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. Never. What's to be ashamed of? I went through a really rough time and I am quite proud that I got out of that.