I was excited and extremely privileged to attend the annual Women Of The Year Awards on Monday last week, held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Park Lane (www.womenoftheyear.co.uk ).  500 women filled the room, all of whom have a story to tell and achievements to celebrate. It was an inspiring lunch, compered with wit and feeling by Sandi Toksvig, and one I will never forget. I shared a table with Claire Lomas who achieved the impossible, completing the London Marathon despite being paralysed; Sally Wilton who set up a not-for-profit organisation in London providing pop up cinemas and founded The Sustainability Institute, an eco village in the heart of Cape Towns Winelands; Camilla Batmanghelidgh of Kids Co, Ebony, a riding stables in Brixton, the Alzheimer’s Society, a recovering addict of 12 years who was a torch bearer…I looked around the room and felt overwhelmed by the number of people I would give my right arm to meet and talk to and I had an hour…not enough!!!

I felt humbled and moved by the extraordinary achievements these women have made, from our Olympians and Para Olympians, to the woman who founded Women for Women with money that was set aside for her honeymoon (a charity dedicated to women in war zones), to Doreen, Stephen Lawrence’s mother, who spoke with emotion of her fight to bring his murderers to justice, to the women who work with the elderly and the disabled to improve their quality of life.

When I left I felt deeply motivated in my commitment to maintain an ethical stance as a priority when working in my small corner of this world where I am dedicated to inspiring addiction recovery, and to challenging the stigma that enables this destructive illness to flourish behind closed doors, and in all postcodes.