Abigail: That's how it felt to me. Like I was nothing more than the loss of this arm, which felt ridiculous because I'd never lost it. I've never had it. I was a whole person.

Alex: When Abigail was a little girl, she hated wearing her prosthetic arm. It was more of a hindrance than a help.

Abigail: I was a little bit feisty as a kid, as I guess I am as an adult.

Alex: So she found all sorts of other creative uses for it.

Abigail: We’d go down to the beach and use it as a shovel to make sand castles and all sorts of naughty things that you get up to as a kid that age.

Alex: She’d slide it underneath the piano at school…

Abigail: …to make it stick out and look like something out of them the Wizard of Oz

Alex: The arm came in handy in the playground too.

Abigail: In the girls playground, we were expected – you know, this was the 70s, after all – the girls were expected to be a little bit more genteel, a little bit more ladylike, Well, I didn't quite like that idea, I was a little bit more of a tomboy than they expected. So we kind of found a corner of the playground that was less well supervised. And I basically took my arm off, and it's sort of from the hands to about the elbow. And if you held it sort of hand to hand as if you were shaking hands with it, and somebody else snuck a ball into the playground, you basically had a rounded bat and a ball. And you could play rounders.

Alex: One of the girls would act as a lookout to make sure the teacher wasn’t coming.

Abigail: One day the lookout failed us. And the teacher walked around the side of the playground, just as I walloped this ball with the elbow of this false arm, and the ball actually hit the teacher. And I ended up in detention with the arm taken off me.

I was born with one arm and never felt myself particularly different because that was my reality. And you know, it's only a fairly minor disability anyways, isn’t it, let's be fair.

Alex: Abigail came along as the fourth daughter in the family.

Abigail: I was born at home. And the midwife handed me to mum and sort of said, oh, sorry. And Mum said, Well, what do you mean? And I'm not quite sure if she meant sorry, because she's the fourth daughter, or sorry, because of the arm. But Mum, from the get go was ‘no, this is… this is who she is. This is who she's meant to be’.

Alex: Abigail’s mum didn’t feel the need to respond to the midwife.

Abigail: Sometimes resisting that sort of comment is just about not acknowledging it. Because you shouldn't have to have the fight to challenge everything all the time. You'd have to live life as a very angry person sometimes to be doing that. And so sometimes it's about just brushing off these remarks.

Alex: Abigail’s mum, Elizabeth, was not an angry person.

Abigail: She'd give you a hug and just kind of pull you in, and it would just like, you know, you'd feel safe and you'd feel loved.

Alex: Elizabeth is tall; she had long dark hair that fell in waves.

Abigail: She has one blue eye and one brown eye. And it's just a really striking look, you know.

My mum was absolutely beautiful. I've seen pictures of her when she was a teenager, and sort of in the 50s. And, you know, she was an absolute pinup, just beautiful. She never really saw herself that way, I don’t think. It was just… looks were never important to her. She just had this natural beauty and natural confidence, and something about her that was just so wonderful.

Alex: Elizabeth was a full-time teacher, she taught piano in her spare time … she was always busy.

Abigail: My mum is a very strong individual. She would just kind of roll up her sleeves and get on with it, whatever it was, whatever needed doing. She would volunteer for just about anything.

Alex: Abigail and her sisters picked up that attitude.

Abigail: You wouldn't just sit back and let the world happen around you; you're kind of up there grabbing it by the scruff of the throat and saying: right what am I going to make of this? How can I be the change I want to see in the world?

Alex: Abigail was bullied when she was in primary school. It happened every day at lunch time.

Abigail: They were walking around and just highlighting, you know, you only have one arm, this is the failing that we see in you, and this is all we see in you. That's how it felt to me. Like I was nothing more than the loss of this arm, which felt ridiculous because I'd never lost it. I've never had it. I was a whole person.

Alex: This obviously upset Abigail, but she didn’t know what to do, or how to respond. Usually she’d just run away from the boys, hide, or try to escape.

One day though, she'd had enough.

Abigail: This kid started following me and chanting One Armed Bandit. And I just turned to him and shouted, Stop. And he carried on.

And I’d turned around to this boy that had been bullying me. And I hit him. And I mean, I was only sort of seven or eight. It wasn't exactly a knockout punch. But I’d stood up myself.

He just sort of ran away, probably the shock of me standing up for myself. But I was quite shocked by my behaviour. Because it kind of made me think, wow, I don't have to put up with this.

Alex: At home that evening, Abigail was convinced she’d gotten away with the slap. She went off to her room to play with her teddy bears.

Abigail: I was aware that the front doorbell had gone and I looked out the window and there on my doorstep is my headmaster.

Alex: In his hand, the headmaster was holding Abigail’s prosthetic arm. She must have left it under the school piano again. He had a stern look on his face.

Abigail: He was a lovely man. But if you crossed him, you knew about it. And I could hear the tone in his voice, you know, he was very unhappy. And I was a little bit sort of cowering, thinking, right that's it, I'm for it now.

Alex: Abigail crept on to the landing and peered over the bannister so she could eavesdrop on what the headmaster was telling her mum.

Abigail: I was really straining to hear what was going on. And the headmaster basically said, Look, this isn't good enough, and telling my mum that I'd hit this boy.

Alex: Abigail froze. She was going to be in big trouble. She had visions of having to eat dinner alone in her room.

Abigail: I'm really expecting my mum to flare up. That's just not the sort of way that we were taught to behave. And she really surprised me by just reaching out, taking the arm off the headmaster and just saying to him in the mum voice: “then stop the bullies. Just stop the bullies.” And just took the arm, and shut the door on his face!

Alex: Ah yes. The “mum voice”.

Abigail: The mum voice is the voice that puts the fear of God into anybody

It's that sort of, I'm so angry, I'm not going to be noisy with you now, I am just disappointed, you know, is that sort of that dark, dark, terrifying voice, and generally accompanied by eyebrows quite big and a bit of nodding.

Alex: Of course Abigail and her sisters had regularly been on the receiving end of the “mum voice”.

Abigail: It was the first time I'd ever heard mum use the mum voice on anybody but her kids. And you just absolutely felt like: she's got your back in this moment.

And … it was just disbelief! I couldn't imagine a world in which the headmaster turns up at the door to make a complaint about a kid. And he's turned away with his tail between his legs. But that was how my mom was, she was just absolutely feisty. She still is.

Alex: Abigail let out a little yelp of surprise and sprung away from the bannister.

Abigail: And I sort of ran back to my bedroom thinking oh my god, I got away with it you know and nothing more was said.

Alex: Seeing her mum stand up to someone so calmly yet forcefully – the headmaster no less! – it was thrilling. It left an impression.

Fast forward a few years, to when Abigail was 14. It was the late 1980s. Abigail and her mum were going to a routine appointment at the local limb clinic. The doctor wanted to check she was wearing those hated prosthetic arms.

Abigail: So, in we went through the open doors, and because it was a limb centre, there were just limbs everywhere, obviously. And you'd go in and there sort of be a whole bunch of legs that have been returned by the front door and then another pile of sort of arms here.

Alex: Abigail and her mum sat on plastic-covered chairs in the waiting room, leafing through magazines that were years out of date. Staring at the clock ticking slowly.

Abigail: I hated it. It was always a chore to go to those places, I would much rather have been back in school and playing hockey with my friends or, you know, on the Netball pitch or whatever.

Alex: Abigail thought about her little sister too, who had been diagnosed with diabetes.

Abigail: So I was also very grateful that I wasn't there for kind of a serious health issue, you know, that kind of touched the family as well. So this was just, you know, stuff and nonsense really wasn't it?

Alex: Eventually they were called into a beige room – a stale, musty smell hung in the air.

Abigail: There was this big kind of dark wood table in the middle in the centre of the room. And the orderlies and the technicians were expected to go and stand at the back of the room. And it was almost like this entourage spread around. And you'd have to sit in front of a desk, then: mum one side, me the other in front of this doctor. And I remember, as a, as a child, and as a teenager looking at him and thinking you're quite unpleasant. And I can often remember he'd be saying, whatever you were saying, and the orderlies and technicians behind him would be sort of, you know, rolling their eyes or kind of giving us a bit of solidarity as we were in the room.

Alex: The prosthetic arm she was supposed to be wearing had been sitting at the back of Abigail’s cupboard. It was clear the arm hadn’t been used.

Abigail: This prompted a bit of a telling off from this doctor, and, you know, at 13 or 14, I'm sitting there, and I'm just thinking, Oh, come on, get me out of here now, I got better things to do.

And the sage advice that this doctor gives me is to look me straight in the eye and say, you know, if you don't wear this arm, you're never gonna get a husband.

Alex: Imagine it – a doctor telling a young girl: “You’re never going to get a husband”.

Anger, confusion, hurt, panic – most teenagers would experience any one of those, and more.

Abigail was not most teenagers.

Abigail: That really for me was the moment where I realised that, you know, my role models had been all around me and I hadn't really noticed. I realised that the strength of my mum was something I needed in that moment. And, you know, the determination of my sister who'd been so ill and just pulled through all of that. And it was almost like we all came together in this one moment, and I just looked at this doctor and thought, you know what, if having a husband relies upon me wearing this arm, then the man who needs that from me is not the man I wish to marry. So you can forget it. This is a blind threat to me, and it means nothing.

Alex: At the same time, Abigail also had the clarity of mind to see that she wasn’t going to follow in anyone else’s footsteps.

Abigail: I knew that I wanted to be me. I, I couldn't, I couldn't be my sister, I couldn't be my mum– those parts in life had already been taken, you know, and I was on this journey of what am I who am I? You know, what do I bring to the equation here.

I was singing in choirs, I was playing in orchestras I was, you know, captain of the netball team, I'd, you know, I was I was doing the things I wanted to do. And there was no way I was going to settle for anything less.

I was quite happy, quite comfortable in my own skin. I always very much sort of ‘right, what am I going to make this life’ and ready to go in and grab it. So the idea that I had to change the way I appeared to people to be worthy enough, then of somebody's attention was just a nonsense.

Alex: In the clinic, behind the big wooden desk – Abigail realised all of this in a second.

But she didn’t respond to the doctor. She didn’t need to.

Abigail: I raised an eyebrow at him. And, and that was kind of as far as I dared to go really, I mean, you know, we've been brought up to be very polite. This was an authority figure sitting in front of me, you know, he was a doctor, he was, he was entitled to his opinion, I guess. He was certainly entitled to think of me in any way he wished. But I didn't have to sign up to that. And so, you know, I was able to kind of make a decision then and there that that was it. I wasn't wearing these arms anymore. I wasn't buying into this nonsense. But that didn't mean I had to have a row with him.

Alex: Abigail doesn’t remember her mum’s reaction to the doctor.

Abigail: But I do remember that we left that appointment fairly swiftly.

It was just out we go walk down the corridor, out we went. And it was almost as if a line had been drawn. That was enough of that. And it was right Okay, now what are we having for tea?

Alex: Abigail never wore a prosthetic arm again.

Throughout her life, Abigail has been guided by strong-willed women who confront authority figures. What she learned at a young age was that resistance doesn’t have to be violent or confrontational to be effective.

Abigail: There are other ways of protesting that things aren't right and of just doing things the way that you know that they need to be done.

Being able to subtly stand up to that power, be it the doctor with the white coat syndrome, who you kind of fear a little bit, or the headmaster who's got that power to kind of keep you in detention or not. If you know what's right, then stand up for it and find those other people who do the same.

Alex: Be the change. That’s what Abigail does now through an organisation called Celtic Capability Sailing.

Abigail: We offer sailing opportunities for people with or without disabilities as a really inclusive community.

A group of people who were like minded – men and women – came together and were able to build something that changes people's lives. And, you know, that for me is … what more can you do? That really is an important part of my life, and it's a result of all of these people who've touched it.

Alex: Abigail has patently refused to conform to societal expectations. And this would appear to be born from an inner-confidence with her own identity. Abigail demonstrates a strong sense of self, something which has evidently been present from an early age. Part of this inner-confidence would seem to have derived from the inspiration of her mum, who has acted as a role model. Abigail’s decision to choose authenticity over appearance is something which makes her the person she is. One thing that she makes clear is that she is not waiting for people to accept her. She has shown the conviction and determination to be the person she wants to be, whatever other people’s opinions might be.