For model Neelam Gill, landing a job on a high-profile campaign when she was a teenager was the start of her stellar career. Now she’s using her life experiences and platform to work with charities and help others suffering from domestic abuse
Words BECKY DONALDSON Photography JACK GRANGE
hf COVERSTORY
W hen model Neelam Gill was last shot for a Hello! Fashion cover in 2017, she was quietly going through personal trauma, trapped in an abusive relationship. “I’m fine to talk about it honestly, I don’t mind,” she says decisively, when we broach the subject.
“And actually, I want to talk about it because it’s kind of a full-circle moment, in the sense that last time I was in the heights of that relationship and it was a really tough time in my life. So, for me to be doing this again now… I would have never imagined my life to have changed in this way.”
Neelam found the strength to leave her ex-boyfriend over five years ago, but it was only relatively recently that she began to come to terms with what happened and to turn her life around.
“It was only as the years went by that I realised this is something I need to accept; this is something that I shouldn’t be ashamed of because, for a long time, I carried around this sense of shame and guilt.
“I was embarrassed and felt it was a reflection on me as a woman, or my inadequacy as a woman. I didn’t feel strong. So it took me a long time to wrap my head around the fact that it wasn’t my fault.”
Neelam speaks softly and eloquently when we meet on Zoom. Full of empathy, what’s clear is that she strives to use her experience to help other people in similar situations. And to break the cycle of abuse and lift the stigma attached to it.
“Even the language that people use without realising,” she tells us. “For example, they’ll ask, ‘Why didn’t you leave sooner?’, ‘Why did you stay?’. Even that is damaging because it puts all the blame on the victim, when really it should be put on the abuser.”
Neelam is now focusing on helping other people that are still “stuck in it”, and she sees this as a personal responsibility. “I think, what about the people that don’t have the privilege I had of having the financial security to be able to leave? What about women who are financially dependent on their abuser or have kids with them, how do they do it? It’s so difficult.”
Neelam is working on a documentary to tell a “passionate and personal” account of her story, she hopes it will facilitate others
