Truth & Advocacy By Calvin-Lee Hardie – Inverness

When I first started this blog, I didn’t call it advocacy.

I called it survival.

I called it clarity.

I called it reclaiming what was taken from me — my name, my voice, my ability to exist online without being reduced to a version of myself that didn’t belong to me.

But over time, I’ve realised that what I’m doing here — this quiet, consistent, uncomfortable truth-telling — is a form of advocacy.

Not because I have a platform.

Not because I’m trying to go viral.

But because I’m still here.

And for some people, just refusing to disappear is a radical act.

You see, when someone misrepresents you online, the damage isn’t just in what’s said.

It’s in the echo.

The shares.

The silence from people who once stood beside you.

The fact that you can search your name and find a version of yourself you don’t even recognise — and that version speaks louder than anything you’ve ever said for yourself.

They want you to shrink.

They want you to stop.

They want you to move on quietly and never ask for the space to tell your side.

But advocacy starts the moment you decide that you won’t give them that silence.

Some people think advocacy means shouting.

They think it means confrontation, anger, disruption.

But for people like me — people who’ve already been cast as the villain in someone else’s story — advocacy is something quieter.

It’s a daily decision.

To show up with the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable.

To keep speaking, even when you’re mocked for it.

To tell your story — not to win, but to live freely.

That’s what this blog is.

It’s not a campaign. It’s not a brand.

It’s a refusal to let my digital self be hijacked forever.

I didn’t ask to become an advocate.

But the moment someone else used my name to tell a story that wasn’t mine — I didn’t have a choice.

And if my voice shakes the assumptions people have about me… good.

If my words make someone pause before they share the next headline about a stranger… good.

If my story helps someone else realise they’re not alone in being misjudged by a system that profits off shame… then this is bigger than me.

So no — I don’t post for attention.

I don’t write because I need sympathy.

I do it because advocacy isn’t about being loud.

It’s about being present.

It’s about standing where you were told not to stand, and speaking when they said nothing more needed to be said.

I speak for myself.

But I keep speaking for every person who’s been made into a search result they never wrote.

If you’re reading this and you’ve ever been misrepresented — if you’ve ever felt erased, sidelined, or labelled before you even had a chance to explain — know this:

You are not the story they told.

You are not the headline.

And you are not alone.

You don’t need a platform to be heard.

You just need the courage to start.

I started here.

And I’ll keep going — not because it’s easy, but because it matters.

— Calvin-Lee Hardie