Invisible Yet Indispensable: The Mental Health, Wellbeing and Rights of Adult Carers in the South Asian Community in the UK.

It is 2am. I am sitting at my desk, having taken a while to get the family member I care for settled for the night. I could have chosen to go to sleep. Instead, I chose to write. By this time of night, my eyes are tired and my vision

is beginning to blur, but the need to get my words onto the page feels stronger than my exhaustion.

The only sounds I can hear are the ticking of the kitchen clock, the low hum of the hospital bed, and the heating switching itself on at intervals. There is something about the middle of the night that allows thoughts to rise more clearly. The house is quieter. The demands pause, if only briefly. And in that stillness, I find myself returning to what matters most: truth, expression, and the need to make sense of things as they are.

My previous blog travelled far more widely than I anticipated. To my surprise, it was met with a response that genuinely moved me. I received heartfelt private messages and emails from people who could directly relate to what I am living through now, or who had been through something similar themselves. I also heard from peers in my industry — people who reached out to say they would support me when the time comes for me to return to my work and to making art again. That meant more than I can easily put into words.

It is a vulnerable thing, to tell people that you are struggling. But when real life takes over, when difficult circumstances dominate your days and quietly reshape everything around them, there comes a point where honesty feels like the only truthful response. Speaking openly is a risk, yes — but fortune favours the bold. And in this case, the fortune is not financial. It is something far more valuable: support, understanding, connection, and the reminder that even in the hardest times, you do not have to disappear.

What is storytelling, after all, if not the act of being truthful? Sharing the good, the bad and the ugly, and trusting that in doing so, something real might reach another person.

One of the most important things about telling your own story — and choosing not to hide behind a mask that everything is fine — is that unexpected things begin to happen. Doors open that you did not know existed. New people come into your life. A clearer sense of purpose begins to emerge, quietly, from the honesty you dared to speak.

Shortly after publishing that blog, I received an invitation that I could not have imagined. Baroness Sandy Verma and Amrit S Maan OBE JP FRSA invited me to be a key speaker at a roundtable held at the House of Lords.

I want to sit with that for a moment, because I think it is easy to read a sentence like that and move straight past it. But for me, it carried enormous personal weight. Not long before, I had been sitting exactly where I am now — at my desk, in the quiet of the night, wondering whether speaking out had been the right thing to do. And then, because I had spoken out, I found myself in one of the most significant rooms in this country, being asked to share my story at the highest level of public life.

I spoke about the impact that being a carer has had on my own mental health and wellbeing. I spoke about navigating a system that can feel broken and indifferent. I spoke about the lack of understanding and support I have experienced. And I was there not only as a carer, but as an artist — someone who has built a creative life and found success despite adversity, and who understands the power of storytelling to bring hidden experiences into public view.

When I finished speaking, I felt something I had not expected. A lightness. A release. As though something that had been held tightly for a very long time had finally been allowed to breathe. And in that moment I understood just how much I had been bottling up, carrying quietly and in secret, without even fully realising the weight of it myself. Speaking it out loud, in that room, to people who truly listened — that changed something in me.

The event was chaired by Jay Tatla and focused on a subject that could not have been more urgent or more necessary: Invisible Yet Indispensable: The Mental Health, Wellbeing and Rights of Adult Carers in the South Asian Community in the UK.

What stayed with me was the room itself. Parliamentarians, community leaders, professionals and, most importantly, people with lived experience — all gathered to have a conversation that is still far too rare. We talked about the mental health impact of caring, about stigma within our communities, about carer identity, about rights and entitlements that many people do not even know they have. We talked about the role of trusted community spaces and faith settings in recognising carers and offering support, particularly for those who may not yet even see themselves as carers.

What struck me most was how often women in South Asian families carry the greatest share of care — quietly, consistently and at great personal cost. Careers interrupted. Personal lives paused. Wellbeing sliding steadily down the list. Care work is still too often invisible, too often taken for granted, when in truth it underpins family life and society itself. We need policies that genuinely see carers — and ensure that no woman is left behind simply because she chose to show up for someone else.

For me, the event held a particular significance. It was the first time I had publicly spoken about my experience of being a young carer who became an adult carer. Caring has been part of my life since I was 11 years old. Over the past four years, it has been especially intense. To speak about that openly, in a room where I felt genuinely heard and seen, mattered in a way that is difficult to fully articulate.

I also know, from the inside, what it feels like to carry this role in silence. The isolation is real. The loneliness is real. The lack of support — from systems, from institutions, and sometimes from the people closest to you — is real. For a long time I had no one to turn to, no space in which to say that I was struggling, and very little acknowledgement that what I was doing was even seen. That experience is what drives me now. It is why I feel so strongly about advocating for carers — not from a distance, but from the truth of having lived it. If my voice can help make that experience less invisible for even one other person, then speaking out will always have been worth it.

For a long time, this part of my life remained almost entirely hidden from my professional world. And yet, by choosing to share it, avenues of support opened up that I had no idea existed. New connections formed. And my sense of purpose as an advocate — for carers, and particularly for those within the South Asian community who are still so rarely seen or heard — became clearer and stronger than ever.

More than anything, what the response to my blog and the experience of that day at the House of Lords confirmed was this: speaking out when I did was exactly the right thing to do. Not just for me, but for the conversation itself.

I did say this would be a monthly blog, and I want to acknowledge that it has not been. Life as a carer does not always allow for the plans you make. I have been using this time

purposefully though — building my own toolkit and finding a new way of being in this chapter of my life. The situation is what it is. I have learned that I must adapt in order to cope, mentally, emotionally and physically, and I am doing exactly that.

But perhaps that, too, is part of the story. Sometimes writing does not come when life is neat and manageable. Sometimes it comes at 2am, in the middle of exhaustion, in the middle of responsibility, in the middle of trying to hold everything together. Sometimes that is exactly when it needs to come.