Humans of Frome-by Ciara Nolan-Tori Allison

Mental health problems are a growing concern.

They are prevalent not just in the UK – where one in four people are thought to experience a mental health problem in any given year.  New studies are showing a worrying rise in mental health problems in teenagers in the UK.  According to the Department of Education, which spoke to 30,000 pupils aged 14-15, more than three teen girls suffer from anxiety and depression.  Pressure and issues around body image are a large contributing factor in this.

With a 10 year old daughter of my own, this increasing trend weighs on my mind. I was delighted to bump into Tori Allison recently, a fellow Fromie who is someone who has embraced the empowering world of burlesque to help deal with any body image issues she might have had following a painful divorce.   I’ve known of Tori’s burlesque life and her penchant for dressing up at any given opportunity (and trust me this lady can dress up) but, what I never knew before was that Tori had spent most of her life dressed in an altogether different style, a much more macho style – she spent over a decade in army fatigues, and no, not in a 90s’ ‘All Saints’ fashion statement, but actually as an army officer.

I was fascinated to chat with her about her army life (something she is about to return to) and how someone who lived that life could emerge into the world of burlesque so seamlessly.  Tori assures me that it was an easy transition and the more we chatted, the more I understood why this might have been so for her.

When most little girls are dreaming of their future it wouldn’t be unusual to see visions of international fame as a singer or actor, or a high powered city job or a doctor perhaps, but it’s rare to meet a 14 year old girl dead set on joining the army…..and yet, this was Tori’s singular dream/goal from that very age.

Tori grew up in Troon, Scotland – her summer holidays spent on the Isle of Muck and Cape Wrath, hiking, climbing, mountaineering and generally participa- ting in any outdoor pursuits that the wilds of a remote Scottish Highlands dared to offer up to an adventurous child, ready to conquer the world.   When she wasn’t roaming the hills during her summer breaks she was firmly rooted in the family-run hotel business, where she pulled together with her parents and her siblings to help deliver up an A1 service to their lucky customers.  Her lunch breaks were taken on the beach.  School was a positive experience for her and so too was her participation in a fiddle orchestra which took her out of Scotland and out into the wider world, where they toured extensively.   

At the age of 17, she embarked on the long journey from Troon to Westbury for her first interview with the army. At the interview she told them of her long-held ambition to join their ranks as an officer.  Sadly, her dreams were dashed when they sent her away with the advice that she needed to go out into the world and gain more experience first.   She saw the advice as a challenge and set about experiencing as much of life as she could, in as short an amount of time as possible.  She chose to study hotel catering management at Strathclyde University, and also undertook her officer training corps at the same time.   A year in industry was a requirement of her course and she, unsurprisingly chose to spend it in the army.  She spent a year travelling the world cooking on exercises and in that time, she cooked on an exercise in Cyprus for Gurkhas, and officers in Germany amongst other places.

Her year in the army prompted a change of direction with her studies and she switched to an outdoor pursuits course which was more her. She was accepted for Sandhurst at the age of 23. There she joined the one platoon of 35 women (there were 250 men). At the end of the year there were 21 women left, 21 women who undertook the same training as the men, and carried the same kit amongst their smaller platoon numbers.   After a year at Sandhurst, Tori went on to spend nine and half years in the army.  As troop commander in the Logistics Corps, she had responsibility for 35-40 people and large vehicles. She describes driving around on a tank in Bosnia in minus 30 degrees, with frozen eyelashes, as ‘great fun’.  I ask her if she ever felt discriminated against for being a woman she says no, she says that once you were doing a good job, that you were accepted like anyone else.  She does however tell me that she was referred to as a ‘lumpy jumper’ by one of her bosses, but that she chose her battles carefully and learned a way of deflecting such comments, so that they didn’t bother her too much.

Now a single mother of two, (her first pregnancy spent on an operation tour in Northern Ireland where she visited her troops, dressed in plain clothes with a gun attached to her belt), Tori plans to return to the army this month. She explains that the past decade spent out of the army has left her with some gaps in her knowledge and skills, but that she’s set for the challenge, and besides she has some others to bring to the table now.

It’s rare to meet an individual who has achieved so much in their lifetime – have I mentioned that she climbed Kilimanjaro, or that she has run the Bath Half Marathon five times, or that she has raised huge sums of money for Wessex MS Therapy, an organisation that she has been fundraiser for during the past six years? After Tori dashed off to her next meeting, I was left pondering this rare creature who had so confidently regaled me with her wild, brave and adventurous tales and I couldn’t help but think that central to everything that she does in life is a strong sense of self, her esteem not measured by how others see her, or by how she looks to the world (thus her ability to change so frequently), but by her own sense of achievement and fulfilment in the challenges that she has set herself, mastered and conquered.

Chatting to Tori is a reminder of the importance of building self-esteem through team activities, through building skills that are independent of appearance, through finding your inner strength through challenging yourself to do things that you could never have imagined yourself doing and through believing in yourself.

Thanks Tori, you’re a great role model.  I’ve learned a lot from our chat- and I’ll be reading this interview to my daughter tonight.