08/11/2025
In the Summer I went to Wales on holiday and sat in a cafe by the sea, working on an idea for a new book about relational violence. I was feeling ‘at sea’ with the way the material was affecting me and my writing, and so joined a weekly online writing session hosted by .stroud called Write with Me for her paid Substack subscribers. The quiet communion of these sessions held my confusion and quandary while I wrote pages of notes and questions in my journal. I began to see a way through this material, not a solution exactly, but a different frame for it started to emerge. Reaching this point also freed me up to turn my attention to and write the first three chapters of my other book project, the third book in my trilogy about loss and change for bereaved children. The Invisible Backpack of Grief will be published by in 2026. Writing about loss has meant that I’ve had to find better ways of taking care of my own losses, and last week I published my first essay on Substack, a personal reflective piece about how crochet has helped me to stay sane, and stitch my life back together after traumatic events. The crochet story came out of a question Clover asked - how do we take care of ourselves when we are in free fall? This question equally applies to anyone who has suffered a loss. For me, these sessions are about so much more than just writing. Yes, I’m showing up on the page, but I’m also feeling emboldened and accountable, deepening my writing discipline, all while hanging out with a community of writers. I am so grateful to Clover for starting these sessions, and highly recommend them. My Substack is in my bio link.
