In 1995, I discovered I had two brain tumours. The process of having them removed went on for about three years. It was a long and drawn-out time, wondering whether or not I was going to die.

I was on a cliff in Dartmoor, doing a Royal Marine abseil. I fell upside down and thought, “I’m going to die here.”

I’m closer today than I was yesterday.

So, when many years later I really was near death as a result of a haemorrhage after a miscarriage, and heard a doctor saying “She’s very near collapse – call the lab and tell him to run” and understood that the “him” was the person fetching the blood they were going to pump into me, I was not in the least alarmed as I dimly wondered if I had the strength left to think some suitable Last Thought, concluded that I hadn’t, and said to myself the words: “Oh well, if I die I die.” I was sure, then, that nothingness was just that.

To strangers. Living in New York, I see individuals every day who are invisible to so many. I want to say sorry that so many of us think their pain and suffering is not our own.

A midwife named Jennie Joseph. She is a tireless activist for women, family health and equal access to quality maternity care.

As someone who didn’t waste a minute.

The fact that at least 300,000 women die every year from pregnancy and childbirth-related issues that are largely preventable.

Before kids, when I was 13 or so, on the back of my horse, running at full speed in an open pasture. Post kids, happiness happens often, but in more subtle ways. I now prefer the word “content”.

My father’s death before my marriage and motherhood.