“I love nature,” says Esther Ghey as she gazes out of the window at the duck pond opposite her home. “When Brianna was taken from us, my daughter Alisha, partner Wes, the dogs and I would go for walks every evening.” Noticing the different flowers blooming on those early spring walks became a coping mechanism for a family coming to terms with a callous and very public loss.
On 11 February 2023, Ghey’s 16-year-old daughter Brianna was murdered, the victim of an abhorrent premeditated attack by two fellow school pupils – partly motivated by her transgender identity. “We had so many pink skies around that time,” Ghey says. “During dark times, it’s important to take time to slow down and really appreciate that there is beauty in the world and that it isn’t all bad.”
Seven months later, Ghey, along with the Warrington Guardian, set up Peace in Mind, a campaign to bring mindfulness practices into schools and help kids channel negative emotions and thoughts into something more positive. The programme is running in every school in Warrington and Ghey plans to roll it out nationally. At the time of writing, the campaign has already raised £88,600.
Ghey has since appeared on Newsnight and taken her campaigning to the House of Commons, and she is now at the centre of the debate around banning phones in schools. With her soft, cheery Cheshire lilt, Ghey has captured the nation’s heart and attention – not least when she agreed to meet the mother of one of her daughter’s killers and renounced her of any blame.
She is quick to acknowledge how “amazing the trans community has been from the start”, and agrees with her local MP and friend Charlotte Nichols that her daughter’s murder has helped to humanise the trans debate. But gender identity has very little bearing on the campaigns Ghey is now putting her soul into. “It’s the circumstances I’ve found myself in,” she says. “I am just doing what feels right as a parent.”
GQ: Is there such a thing as having enough time to grieve a loss like yours?
Esther Ghey: When everything first happened, I took a lot of time to process my grief. It doesn’t feel like it was a very long time until I actually did start campaigning, but I put that down to the fact I was in such a good place mentally to begin with. I use the phrase “mental fitness”.
In the months following Brianna’s death, how did you deal with those particularly tough moments?
There were times when I would find myself thinking, What if I’d done something different? What if I’d not shouted at her at this particular point? In the past, I may have beaten myself up about it, but because I had a level of self-compassion, I was able to think of something more productive and positive. We’re all going to have tough times – it’s inevitable. The way you deal with those times is down to the state of mind that you’re in at that point.
Did being able to forgive surprise you?
I can be quite selfish about forgiveness in that I won’t let myself hold onto hate because it is only going to damage me. And to want to have revenge and all this stuff, is so damaging to yourself, whereas the perpetrators are completely unaware of the way that I’m feeling.
Are you regretful that the ban on phones in schools couldn’t have happened sooner?
It’s important to focus on what is happening now and what will happen in the future. The other campaign that I’m running is to make mobile phone companies more responsible for children’s welfare. I’d like to see better parental controls at point of purchase. Banning phones in schools is a really good starting point, but it’s not going to prevent all of the welfare and mental health issues that happen outside of schools.
How important is it that parents practise mindfulness at home?
Almost 300,000 children are currently on the waiting list for CAMHS [Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services]. When I saw that figure, I thought, We don’t need to pump more money into CAMHS. We need to find out why they are struggling. To get mindfulness into schools as a prevention rather than dealing with something when it’s already at crisis point is really important to me.
Is your hope that the Peace in Mind campaign will always maintain your daughter’s legacy?
Every single day, I think of Brianna, but it helps to focus on trying to make a change for other young people who are suffering the way she did. Everything I do is for Brianna, so she will be with me forever.
See Esther Ghey at GQ Heroes in Oxfordshire, from 3-5 July, in association with BMW UK. For more information and tickets, visit GQHeroes.com.
Photograph by Christopher Thomond