“I know that one day I’ll kill myself, because I don’t know how to stop feeling this way but it won’t be today. In the meantime I’m going to do the best I can to enjoy every single day and then on the day that I die, in many, many years time, I’ll look back and realise that I didn’t get around to doing it.
“With this simple revelation I found a way to live. It may not have slain my demons completely but it significantly reduced their power to hurt me.”
HAVING spent a lifetime hating herself and struggling with post traumatic stress, her gender identity, self harm and suicide, RAF veteran and former motorbike racer, newspaper editor, Premier League football and rock photographer, Sophie Cook was at breaking point when she transitioned in 2015.
“I’d reached the point where I had to either change my life or end it.” Sophie says as she sips her coffee and looks wistfully out to sea.
Since that point she has been busy and it’s breathtaking what she’s managed to pack in these last three years.
She became the first transgender woman to work in football’s Premier League as club photographer for AFC Bournemouth following her transition, and was Europe’s first trans TV newscaster with Brighton’s Latest TV where she also presented her own chat show. She now has a show on RadioReverb.
Sophie has also been flying the flag for diversity and inclusion as well as forcing the discussion about mental health awareness onto the national agenda, as an in-demand public speaker, delivering keynote talks and LGBT workshops across the UK for high profile organisations including the TUC, Kick It Out and Stonewall.
In April 2017 Sophie was selected by the Labour Party to contest the East Worthing and Shoreham seat in the General Election where against all the odds, she increased the Labour vote by 114% and narrowly missed out on becoming the UK’s first transgender MP.
“Everything that I’ve done since my transition has been about trying to raise awareness and help others, whether it’s mental health, hate crime, trans inclusion or breaking down the walls of prejudice. Politics felt like the ultimate way in which I could try to make a difference.”
Sophie’s autobiography Not Today: How I chose life has just been published and the book charts her personal journey from despair to redemption and is designed to act as a self-help book for anyone struggling with their mental health or identity.
From her childhood and her first suicide attempt at the age of 12, through post traumatic stress after saving a colleague’s life following an explosion whilst in the RAF, Sophie explores and examines her self harming and depression, ultimately finding redemption, awareness and self-love.
“Over the past three years I’ve spoken to thousands of people about my journey and how I overcame my demons and this, in turn, has helped them with their mental health and now it’s time to tell my full story for the first time.”
Poignant and heart-rending, yet at the same time inspiring and uplifting, Not Today traces a journey from private torment to personal triumph. Told with honesty and candour – and written with warmth and intimacy, outlining the huge emotional and social toll of gender dysphoria and chronicling a voyage towards truth, validation and authenticity.
Sophie’s compelling story portrays the fragility and fortitude of human emotions, demonstrating how – by conquering fear and summoning strength – a person is capable of making the progression from loathing themselves to loving themselves.
But Not Today isn’t just a memoir.
“Not everyone has the opportunity to change the world with a single act but we can all make incremental changes, by being nicer to people, by helping them, by standing up to hate or by respecting those that we meet.
“If we want to change the world we first need to look within ourselves and find the strength, compassion and love that fuels the human spirit. By loving ourselves we can learn to love others, by being kind to others we can learn to be kind to ourselves, unfortunately so many of us fall down on loving ourselves.”
‘Not Today: How I chose life’ is available as a paperback or eBook from www.sophiecook.me.uk/book