Part of me is missing

I’ve always known that my identity is wrapped up in my work. But I didn’t realise until last week quite what I was missing, or that such a gaping hole had opened up inside me.

When my marriage ended, almost eight years ago, I shut down an important part of myself. I didn't allow myself to feel desire for another human. Years of pregnancy and breastfeeding four children had contributed to the sense of disconnect I felt from my body, alongside a disastrous relationship that was fractured and dysfunctional. There was so little room for me to enjoy my body, and I was too scared to trust it with anyone else. I was also falling through the cracks of broken systems whilst caring for a chronically poorly daughter and her three little sisters. The world folded in on itself as Covid crawled around the globe. In some ways it was a convenient time to shut down, turn inwards and interrogate what I done wrong and where I had disappeared to.

In the absence of hot breath on my neck and hungry fingers threaded through my hair, I soaked my skin in freezing saltwater and ran for miles up and down boggy hills. I drenched myself in wilderness me to remind myself I was alive, still connected to the world around me. But back then I still thought I was much too much for anyone else: I hadn’t yet learned that my ability to absorb the world and pour it out as words, tears and voluble chatter was one of the things that made me special. Anyone would be lucky to join me on my wild ride of a life, but it would still be a few years before that felt true, and before I could dare to hand my heart out to someone in the knowledge that it might still easily be broken. I am bold, but I am also fragile. This is something I have learned about myself since being alone with my children.

As my caring responsibilities ramped up and I was abandoned by traditional education and tossed around under-resourced healthcare systems, I also had to shut myself off from the possibility of working outside the home. Before I was single, I wrestled hard with a day or two a week at a special needs school an hour down the motorway. I was determined to cling on to a professional identity, and to ensure my daughters saw me going out to work. My working week shrunk as each new baby arrived, and it became obvious that there was no equity in my marriage. Once I was on my own with the kids, with one child who couldn’t access school in the classroom, I had to become very creative in terms of paid work. Travel was no longer realistic - I couldn’t afford the childcare for that extra time. Instead I combined racing across the park to teach music at a local primary school while I paid a kind friend to support my daughter’s learning at home, with private singing and piano lessons in the house while my children played or slept.

Not long after, everyone was forced to stay inside, as a deadly virus poisoned the air around us. During that first lockdown, while the sun beat down hard on my back lane, where the girls chalked patterns and spread blankets out on the tarmac, I taught music online from my desk on the landing outside the bathroom. I home schooled the four girls too, noticed a new world opening up on my computer, a sense of liberation while most other people were feeling claustrophobic and stifled.

I was itching to work more, hated being reliant on benefits as my main form of income and earning too little to pay tax. People used to tell me I was mad to want to pay tax, but it is part of who I am, this desire to contribute to the state. And now I have been both failed and saved by the state, I feel even more strongly that I want to give something back. You could argue, of course, that the thousands of hours of unpaid care I have done in the absence of appropriate education or health support is giving back enough. But the unpaid care is rarely noticed by the people who should be rewarding it, and it doesn't make much difference to the status quo. Unpaid carers are the silent saviours of the national economy, but our voices are often muted. A couple of months into that balmy lockdown, I signed up to do a Masters in Nature and Travel Writing, hoping it would lead to an opportunity for me to grow my life. I wasn’t especially bothered about Nature or Travel per se, although of course I have written extensively about the landscape around me and my endlessly itchy feet. I wanted to write about life, and this online course was just about the only I could access from my kitchen table whilst raising four lively daughters.

That two-year part time degree changed my life. I won a national writing prize, which led to a publishing deal for my first book, Twelve Moons. I recorded podcasts, did events around the UK, often with my kids in tow, spoke on the radio and made connections with readers from around the world. I was offered a monthly column in Psychologies magazine, and was offered a second publishing deal for my latest memoir, Unschooled. In the few weeks since Unschooled came into the world I have spoken on international radio, national television and been interviewed for various newspapers and magazines. On paper, my life looks hugely successful, and in many ways it is.

But publishing is not a lucrative career for most writers. I cannot support my family on the money I earn from my books or my journalism. But I don’t know how else to work at the moment in the few stolen moments I have each day. If I really think about it, these are the reasons I write:

• I can write in my home, whilst caring for my children

• I write to remember that I am still part of a wider world, even though I frequently feel hidden away

• I write because I have something to say - many things to say. I want to explain to people who live different lives what it means to be an unpaid carer, what it means to be failed by our education system, what it means to parent alone.

• I write because it helps me to unravel my head and make sense of life. In the absence of more opportunity to speak to people in real life, I write to answer questions in my head and work out why I feel the way I feel. The funny thing is that the things I write about frequently chime with others - I never get tired of the way the personal is also so often universal.

So I started writing because it fitted in with my life, and I could earn a little bit of money from it, to top up my benefits. But writing did not manage to take me out of the house regularly and fill myself up with conversation and experiences to the extent it might do for others. I am still solely responsible for the education of two of my kids, so working beyond the kitchen and the bedroom is still out of reach.

But last week three of my daughters went to stay with their father for a few nights. Someone asked me to deliver a workshop to a class of undergraduates on How To Build A Writing Discipline. I bit their hand off. This was something I could do well, that used my teaching experience and my passion for writing. Who knew better than me how to build a writing discipline? asked the someone. And it’s true, I have had to be very disciplined to write two books whilst caring full time for my complex kids.

I set my alarm early. Ran a bath while the sky was still dark outside my window. Made tea and drank it while I dried my hair. Ironed some serious trousers and put gold hoops in my ears. Checked my notes. Filled a tote bag with books. Grabbed a piece of toast, and walked out into the autumn chill. Wedged myself into the metro carriage and inhaled the breath of strangers. Walked into the college with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes and tried to rediscover myself beneath the cobwebs.

The day raced past in a blur of laughter, conversation and questions. Pens scribbling, keys tapping, music playing. It was a total joy to be out in the world, sharing my expertise, discussing different life experiences and talking about the importance of sharing stories, using our voices.

Later that evening I told my boyfriend I did not know how I had managed to stay sane during the years I have been hidden away. He agreed, with a worried look in his eye, and said he did not want to interrogate that thought too much. He knows better than anyone how my ferocious, extrovert energy sometimes pours out of me on a wave of frustration and tears. He knows that the cost of this unplanned life of mine has often been my own identity. And his smile was broader than mine as he understood what it had meant to me to stake my claim in a professional capacity once more.

I am typing this from the city library, where I am simultaneously helping my quiet daughter with her learning. My mind is scattered, as usual, and soon I must hop in the car and collect two more daughters from school, before driving back to check on my oldest, who has been learning from home as usual.

My life is so full. It is so rich with experiences and connection and love. But I didn't realise until last week that part of me was missing. That breathlessness I felt as I walked out of the lecture will stay with me until the next time. I did it once, and soon maybe I’ll do it again.