17/03/2022
INTRODUCING....ARIANNE JONES💞! Hear a bit from her below;
Kia Ora everyone! My name is Ari Jones, I am a 19-year-old Medical Student in London, England. However, I grew up in Aotearoa with my family. I moved to the UK when I was 16 to go to boarding school which was a rather intense, fantastic, and somewhat traumatic experience. All the good and the bad mixed together, a fairly common occurrence in this world. In amongst my studies, which take up a lot of time, I play competitive basketball, read, paint/draw, and write – creatively and for the incredible Aspen and Steel!! I often deal with hardships and trauma through creativity, and I would really strongly encourage this. I am also currently a volunteer at the charity Dorset Mind, where I speak to participants who are struggling with mental illness but cannot afford to get private therapy – an issue many people face.
I have always been a person with a lot of opinions, and beliefs. In my last year of school, I was given the opportunity to write for my school paper, which I did with an article about or***ms and sexual safety. It was refused to print due to the fact that parents would not like it… despite the fact that many students were facing sexual issues and received PSRE (health class/sexual education). This very much angered me, so when I saw that Aspen and Steel were looking for writers, I posed my pitch. The openness of Aspen & Steel definitely inspires me to explore more topic areas, especially less talked about ones that are deemed inappropriate. My own life inspires me also, the things I have gone through, the issues my friends face, and how the medical world treats people – with special mention of racism, fatphobia, and sexism. The quality of care is not equal. All of this makes me angry. Perhaps it is this anger that inspires and fuels my writing. Since I have written some articles, I have had friends, or people that follow me on Instagram, come up to me and discuss the issues I have written about, and how interesting, important, and even inspiring it was for them – all of which melted my heart of course. But this feedback aids this inspiration as I am sure it does for many or even majority of writers.
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