I’ve just come back from a team day looking at the proposed ‘Case for Support’ for our charitable organisation.

Its aim is to be a supporting document we can surf over and use when networking, addressing our audience and making a ‘call for action’.

To support the day, Stephen George came to facilitate. This guy is great and I really encourage you to check out any seminars he’s running.

Something Stephen really endorsed which touched home for me, was the reasoning for the use of emotion in your narrative and he asked “Do you know what you do and why”?

I’m a Relationship Manager for The Children’s Society and often engage in public speaking. I say I’m a powerful voice for the most vulnerable young people in England. ‘No Child Should Feel Alone’.

And right now, there are children in England who feel scared, unloved and like they simply don’t matter. It breaks my heart, maybe because I’m a mum and I know how important to love your child is, or because I’m a daughter but missed my mother’s love because she died when I was young.

But when I do speak in public about our cause, the real emotion comes from years of waking every morning and wondering if my youngest daughter is still alive. She suffered such bad depression that she would self-harm and attempt suicide. On the difficult days, I’d rock her to sleep, then have a very broken sleep myself and hesitate for a minute when I woke, hoping the silence was her at last sleeping.

I know what that journey is like, but my daughter has parents who love her unconditionally. Who affirm her daily and know this is an illness.

The journey is a little easier now, but the memories last and when I talk about our work with young people suffering mental health, it sparks the emotion and I talk from a personal level.

How does that child who does not know love and is alone, cope?

The Children’s Society will find and help children who have had traumatic experiences to find the strength they need to cope and carry on.

Together we need to be there for every child that needs us.

Why do I do this job? Because I’m able to speak with authority and emotion and I believe in the cause.

What makes you an emotive speaker - Do you get it?