Cherie Blair

I'm an incurable optimist, and I'm a great believer in never looking back. Life is too short, and new challenges are exciting.

I think I'm one of life's copers. And picking myself up and dusting myself off and starting all over again is one of my mottoes, actually.

I am not Superwoman. The reality of my daily life is that I'm juggling a lot of balls in the air trying to be a good wife and mother, trying to be the prime-ministerial consort at home and abroad, barrister and charity worker, and sometimes one of the balls gets dropped.

For many women, becoming a widow does not just mean the heartache of losing a husband, but often losing everything else as well.

I suppose the first big shift in my life was when, at the age of 8, my father left my mother, leaving her alone with two daughters to bring up. That taught me the importance of women being financially independent. You never know what might happen.

As a Catholic, I am proud of the social mission of the church and its concerns for the poor and dispossessed, but I still personally would support women priests.

I don't want to give this impression that I grew up in Liverpool in a cardboard box in abject poverty, but that didn't mean there weren't anxieties in my childhood about money.

You hear these yummy mummies talk about being the best possible mother, and they put all their effort into their children. I also want to be the best possible mother, but I know that my job as a mother includes bringing my children up so, actually, they can live without me.

We need to empower all women, both financially and socially, to give them the tools to support themselves and their families. We need to start seeing them as contributors to society, as assets, not as objects of pity or, even worse, objects of shame.

Do I have any advice for someone new to No. 10? Never open the door in your nightie. And that everybody has to adjust to it in a way that's right for their family.

Like every mother, it's my children; that's the first thing that makes me really proud. For my own part, it would be when I became a Queen's Counsel in 1995. I was the 76th woman ever to become a Queen's Counsel, so it was still a pretty rare thing.

Yes, people need food and education. But one of the cornerstones of any society is a well-functioning legal system.