Christine Griffey
Meet Christine, a business owner living and working in St Neots Cambridgeshire.
Above you can watch and listen to her interview and below you can find the video transcript.
Start Date:
Project Info
493 Days. A Story of Women's Resilience
Category:
Documentary & Photography
Themes:
Overcoming, strength through diversity and sharing experiences
Introduce yourself
My name’s Christine Griffey and I’m a business owner.
Think back to the summer of 2019, what were you doing?
In 2019 life was quite chaotic. I was running a couple of businesses.
What was life like for you?
Life was pretty good, myself and my partner had been engaged for… It was coming up five years in the summer of 2019.
And we decided that was probably long enough to be engaged, so decided that we wanted to start thinking about the wedding.
Did you have any important plans or milestones in the near future?
In terms of other big plans for the future, I was 28 at the time and had a big plan to be a millionaire by the time I was 30.
So yeah, a millionaire by the time I was 30, luxury holiday and start planning the wedding were our big plans for the near future.
Do you remember what your day was like on the 23rd of March 2020?
When it first started getting very real, that COVID was coming. I think we had the same thought as everyone else for quite a while.
It’s not gonna affect us. It’ll be fine. They’re never gonna lock down the UK. Like that’s ridiculous.
How did you feel the moment we were all told to stay at home?
The moment we were all told to stay at home was a mixed emotion.
I didn’t know exactly what it meant, but there was a sense of relief on one side, but then a sense of how long is this going to last for?
And how long is that support going to be in place?
We are all told that we cannot leave our houses now, this is insane.
This is not something that any of us had ever experienced.
What personality qualities did you draw on to keep going?
The personality qualities that I drew on I think, resilience has to be the main one.
I think again, having suffered from anxiety in the past, and I’m terrible for struggling with imposter syndrome, I don’t often think that I’m capable or very able to deal with difficult situations.
However, I think that period of time and whilst I still don’t remind myself of it as much as I probably should. I’m a lot more resilient than I thought I would be.
I didn’t get back whilst there might have been days where I was quite anxious and worried about what this all meant and what was gonna happen.
I didn’t get back to that really dark place I was at when my anxiety was at its peak a few years earlier.
Were there any added complications you had to deal with – and how did you deal with them?
I think something that hit me quite hard was January this year.
So January 2021, My auntie was diagnosed with a…[Crying] Sorry, you’ve got me.
My auntie was diagnosed with a brain tumor
An incurable brain tumor.
It was nothing at all that they could do. She passed away a couple of months later.
And I think for me, that hit me because whilst the past 18 months have been really hard to realise that that was your last year, your last 12 months was quite difficult.
And it certainly put all of the challenges that we’ve been through in the past 18 months. All of the stuff that we’ve had to face, definitely put things into perspective for me.
What have you learned about yourself in the last 18 months?
In the last 18 months, I have learned that I can make an impact. Taking the little wins is necessary, reminding myself of when the bigger wins have been.
And what I contributed to that, I do add value.
I add value to our businesses.
I add value to the relationships that we have.
I don’t tell myself it very much, but I do. And I’ve got a lot more strength and resilience than I’ve ever thought I had.
Do you think you’re a different person from 18 months ago?
I do think I’m a different person from 18 months ago.
I think I’m still developing on that person and what those differences are, And I’ve still probably got a long way to go.
So yes, I think I’m stronger than I was before. And I think I’m much better at expressing that emotion.
How are you feeling about the next 18 months?
I’m really excited for the next 18 months to come because we’re hopefully gonna be like just on an upward trajectory now of, coming out of this. And we’re not going to go backward.
I’m excited about the direction that our businesses are going in now. We can go all-in on what we think is right to have that control of our own destiny
It’s pretty powerful.
So Yeah, I’m very excited for the next 18 months and the direction that we’re taking our businesses in.
And hopefully, they’ll be a wedding!
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