twenty

“To make a future, shared storytelling was needed. I read what she had to say about the healing power of writing. That we needed to tell the tales of the past to better shape the future. Jane had opened up a vital literary space. I sat up straight, my mind clear. There was nothing wrong with my head, I knew; it was my circumstances I had got so spectacularly back to front. Pills were not going to heal me. What I needed was work. Real work.

twenty-six

“Determined to do everything myself, I turned independence into a weapon. I thought of it as a strength, but it was a faultline along which I fractured. I resisted taking other things too – love, advice, knowledge – even if it was good for me, even if I wanted it. Like my troubled relationship with food, which always felt like too little or too much, this refusal – a fear that merging with another would result in the loss of my hard-won self – was old and it ran deep.

Chapter 6: Pursuing a True Partnership

“My dad has always said: Run toward what you want, as opposed to away from what you don’t want. So he asked me straight-out: “What’s your dream job?

Chapter 7: Out of Fire, New Life: 1977

“The world around my mother as I grew in her womb was one of violence and repression. Yet she and my family had created another reality, filled with tenderness and care. That I had made it into the world was a testimony to their efforts. Snowy returned me to my mother’s arms, my head having been gently kneaded from a conical shape back to round once more. As I lay there, my mum marvelled at the embodiment of a love so hard fought for.

PART TWO: Chapter 10: The Wilderness Years: Exile

“Nevertheless, the feeling that my parents had a greater mission that took priority over me became the dominant narrative in my mind, pushing out the many ways in which my mum and dad tried to be present and available. I edited out so many of the ways in which they showed up for me and loved me, my own bias shaping the story I told myself for years.

Writing this book has required me to both collect and re-examine all of the evidence at my disposal, not just that which is most easily accessible in my head. The realisation that I had erased so much of their efforts is hard to sit with.