A friend once said to me the act of creation signalled the end of creativity. The bone-crunching tiredness that hangs over you, day in, day out. The almost constant anxiety of something disastrous happening, meaning rational thoughts are driven out, let alone anything more creative than the daily grind. The endless, repetitive hours of unedifying…
Finding my voice as a mother living with birth trauma and chronic invisible illnesses – and helping you find yours Opening up about anything remotely “taboo” is automatically “oversharing”, right? At least that’s what society has conditioned us to believe – as with anything, boundaries and professional help absolutely have their place here. There’s been…
The best and worst bits of being a mother are one and the same for me. It’s having the ultimate responsibility: nowhere to hide, nowhere to run to, no calling in sick, no emigrating, no emptying the bank account and doing a runner, no not-tonight-dear-i’ve-got-a-headache, no scrapping what you’ve done and starting again from scratch,…
I don’t think you could ever tell the ‘truth’ – it wouldn’t be fair. I remember walking along the sea front in the early months pushing a pram. I could catch the eye of any other mother and we would smile knowingly. It was almost like a secret club. Only you and they knew what…
When I gave birth to my first child in 2004 I remember feeling like I wasn’t in the room, but stuck in a big tunnel, cocooned from reality by the effects of the epidural. The midwife said, ‘Let’s get Mum up to the ward’ and I thought, ‘my Mum’s not here, is she?’ I couldn’t…
