Mick Hartley

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now:

Last Friday, Sandy Brindley, the chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland, was collecting her daughter from primary school when a journalist rang to ask if she would comment on JK Rowling’s demand for her resignation. By the time the reporter hung up, Brindley was in tears.

“I’m never upset in front of my daughter. She said, ‘What’s wrong?’” Brindley recalls. “I said, ‘Someone’s calling for my resignation’. She asked: ‘Who?’ I told her: ‘JK Rowling.’”

Brindley’s little girl looked up at her and said: “That’s one of my favourite authors, Mummy.”

By now Brindley’s eyes are twinkling as she recounts the incident….

“I feel like this is where I am just now, that space of complete vulnerability,” Brindley says. “It’s not something that I can do long term. I can acknowledge the personal cost: it impacts my daughter, it impacts my family.”

A comment: "Reframe your trauma, Brindley. You're not the victim here."