Now, imagine being an intersection of the two.

It’s been a hard week of difficult but necessary conversations. I think we all expected Meghan and Harry’s interview with Oprah Winfrey broadcast on CBS on Sunday 7^th March and on ITV the next night, to be explosive but I don’t think anyone could anticipate the revelations that we heard. I stayed up to watch the interview as it went out in the wee hours of Monday morning and my jaw dropped a few times. The statements that there were concerns over what colour their baby Archie would be when he was born and Meghan saying that there was a point when she “didn’t want to be alive anymore” shocked me, and I knew the headlines would be pretty sensational the next morning.

By Monday morning my phone was ringing off the hook. It was the first day back to school for my nine-year-old daughter Naima and I’m really glad it was! I spoke to Victoria Derbyshire on BBC News at the top of the hour at 9am, and after that the requests started rolling in from other BBC subsidiaries around the UK as well as Channel 5, CBS, The Morning Show Canada and ARISE News. I ended up taking my daughter with me to Buckingham Palace to do a live shot, which she absolutely loved and was a high point in an intense day.

Tuesday wasn’t as busy but I ended up on Piers Morgan’s last ever show on Good Morning Britain in a heated debate around the issues of race, as well as Times Radio, STV news and BBC Radio. By this time the UK had seen the interview and the conversations around race were fierce, not only around the conversations that palace staff had about the colour of Archie’s skin but also around racism in the media industry, not just about the way that people of colour are written about in the press but the racism that people of colour face working in the industry. It’s real and prevalent and happens every day. Did you know that 69% of Black British men working in the media say they have been bullied at work? The Society of Editors claims that the UK media industry isn’t racist just don’t wash with me, and that became a real part of the discussions this week.

By Wednesday, Buckingham Palace had issued their statement so the conversation moved on to their 61-word reaction, especially the problematic (in my opinion) line ‘recollections may vary’ when it comes to the conversations around the colour of Archie’s skin. I spoke to BBC World News, ARISE News, The Morning Show Canada and Scotland Tonight about the Palace’s reaction as well as the issues of racism in the media industry.

Thursday thankfully was a much quieter day, which was great because I was delivering a keynote speech to telecommunications company Inmarsat in the afternoon. It was around the themes of Choose to Challenge, which is this year’s International Women’s Day theme and to be honest, after this week, it couldn’t be more appropriate. It felt really cathartic, as a keynote speaker,  sharing my experiences with the audience and challenging them to call out sexism and racism everywhere.

It’s not lost on me, that this week where we’ve had International Women’s Day, I’ve spent most of the week defending a Black woman’s experiences of racism and mental health struggles. The work is intense, it can be hard physically and mentally but it is so necessary. It’s imperative to me that I use my voice to call out racism and sexism and discuss the issues that Black people in the UK face.

This week, it’s been hard to hear a Black woman’s experiences doubted and ripped apart, for her to be called a liar and an attention-seeker. I’ve experienced the kind of racism that Meghan Markle has, the low-level, subtle racism that leaves you wondering if it ever happened. That is just as damaging as more obvious overt, types of racism. Both need to be called out at every single step.

This is also the week that we have talked a lot about women’s safety on our streets due to the murder of Sarah Everard.

The conversations that should be centering women have turned into ‘not all men’ and again this has been hard to stomach. A peaceful vigil to ‘reclaim the streets’ in support of women, ended up with women being man-handled by police. Like I said, what a week to be a woman.

So what has this week taught me? Well, to keep going, keep speaking up when things are wrong and keep calm under pressure (doing live TV with Piers Morgan you need to keep your cool!) As a mum, I want my daughter to know that when voices needed to be raised, when injustices needed to be highlighted, I used my voice in the right way and I was on the right side of history.

My parents blazed the trail for me and I will continue to do the same thing, on screen and in print.