Anna Vaught's Blog, page 10

An A-Z of Mental Health. C is for…

Hello again.

A mixture of things for you once more. For C, let’s try…(and I have a timer set for half an hour, which is why I always ask you to forgive some ragged edges)…

Cats. Or chinchillas. Or whichever furry creature. Hugely soothing: beg, borrow, rescue. Volunteer as a cat cuddler if you have an animal sanctuary. I can honestly say that having our brood of creatures at home has got me out of a lot of scrapes, or soothed me after them, and provides immense comfort to my children. Recommended. Unless you hate them, obviously; people do.
Counselling. I am not going to be glib and trot out the old ‘Help is Out There’ adage because we all know that it’s not that easy. But if you are struggling, it all starts with a conversation with a friend, a sympathetic person, a phone call, online. It may be that you can access CBT (which didn’t touch the sides for me, but it might be what YOU need) through self referral, but persist with your GP – if need be take someone with you to make you feel supported or, if need be, to help advocate for you. If you do not have a GP who is receptive to mental health needs, ask to see a different GP. And you may think that I am being simplistic by listing counselling here – it is a HUGE topic that I cannot begin to do justice to – but people feel ashamed and need not. If someone makes you feel that way, ignore them. We must support each other and make that conversation easier.
Caring. In my case, if I get too involved in too many things; if I have too many people and things to care about and take care of, then things do not go well. Perhaps I have less room in my head or fewer resources than some others, but sometimes I have to retreat and calm my focus on some things and even, for a while, some people. Because I don’t have the energy. I know someone wants me to come round and talk something through with them tonight, but I have had to say I cannot:  I feel spent because of the battling – it really does feel like battling!- over the past three days: I am trying to get appropriate SEN provision for one of my lads and meeting rebuttal, denial and getting talked down to. I don’t think anyone means any harm at all, I really do not, but I don’t have room for a lot else this evening. It is important to pick and choose sometimes because we are not indefatigable.
CAMHS. Ah, this is child and adolescent mental health. I wanted to say to you all, from the bottom of my heart, that if you have an offspring under CAMHS; if you have an offspring who is experiencing mental health problems; if you are caring and then some, then this is when you need to step up your own self care, even if you think you do not have time. And also, to put this bluntly, if your child is in a hole, do not get in that hole with them. I speak from hard-won experience. Having a child in distress is the hardest thing that has ever happened to me; I felt sick to my core sometimes. Learn from me here: practise self care as and when you can. Just a little time out; some relaxation techniques; saying some bloody good things to yourself. Promise?
Cake. Or whatever it might be. Make something; eat something lovely, just because. Or light some candles. Or just a little something. You might think these details, these fripperies, do not impact on your mental health. I beg to disagree. I think it’s about the self care again; a simple act of making or being.
Community. Every time. Look about you. Speak to people. Make small talk. It is, above all, community that helps to keep me, Mr Bookworm, two businesses and two other careers, physical and mental health problems, and three kids afloat. And I try every day to give that back in spades. It is one of the greatest joys of your life, Remember that your community can be online. If you cannot access other stuff, go here – and don’t you let anyone scoff: there is vitality, love and companionship here, too and I won’t be dissuaded from that!
Oooh this is controversial. I want to say church, because I am a Jesus fan, you know. I don’t actually have a church now but I hope that one day I will. And yet consider your church, your temple, your spiritual life, your beliefs: give yourself time to reflect, to be still, to think about some difficult things because maybe one has to; talk about them to someone whom you trust. I feel that I want to write more about this topic, partly because in all the counselling I have experienced and in everything I read, it is the spiritual dimension that is entirely missing. You might find huge comfort from talking to someone within a religious community. Let me tell you that I am always cheered by knowing that in a place not too far away, there is a community of Benedictines who remember me in their prayers. I love that.
CAT. I am back with counselling. This – cognitive analytic therapy – is the one that saved me, my bravehearts. The best bits of CBT with clear and sustained observance of roots of behaviour and patterns. Changed my life, this.  Maybe I should say change: change is possible. When you are utterly laid low, it could well feel that you will never get better. If this is you now, know that you are in my thoughts and that I hope for and long for the change that you need to live a better, happier life for you.
Colour. It’s true: colour has a wonderful effect on me; putting it around me, wearing it, but mostly being in the natural world and really looking at plants and trees; at insects. It’s that absorption in the myriad beautiful things about us and the boost to our system that can occur with a shot of turquoise or cerise. Or whatever you especially like.
Comedy. Sounds obvious, but find things to laugh at. It’s so good for you, and I don’t know about you, but like a dullard I forget this when I get low. If something is funny enough, you will laugh. Go look for it.

Much love, do look at A is for…and B is for…on this blog.

Much love,

Anna xxx

And,always,… [image error] xxxxx

 

An A-Z of Mental Health. B is for…

[image error]So, in A, I wrote a little about anxiety. B is going to be a pick and mix for you. A range of bs. I will touch on the wonders of Professor Brian Cox (who’s the new physicist in my life), buns (not Brian Cox’s, although I am sure they are very nice, it’s just that I am more focused on particle physics here) and blame. I will add in some other things, too. Here we go… Do look back at Anxiety, too – and maybe the post that came before it, which gives you an idea of why I am doing this now. Each of these blog posts is written in thirty minutes with a timer. Stay with me if there are rough edges. x

B IS FOR.

Brian Cox. I am a bit late to the party on this one. What am I on about here? I am currently watching The Planets on i-player. What is this doing for me? Well I find anything to do with astronomy or astrophysics or particle physics really soothing. It’s something to do with reveling in the logal, deduction, neat arguments and damned sexy hypotheticals. And scale. It helps me to see myself and us, our world, as something tiny. For my birthday, I had a telescope and such pleasure it has brought me. There’s something in the unimaginable vastness that is stilling and comforting. I watch Brian Cox in bed and leave instructions that I am not to be disturbed. My older kids might think I am watching porno, but no: I am listening to Professor Dreamy talking about the late heavy bombardment and why Jupiter is the godfather. The irony of this is that these programmes have a narcotic, even hypnotic effect on me. At the risk of sounding feckless, I was exactly the same with Neil de Grasse Tyson on Cosmos (could we have this back on Netflix please?) And, while I love the topics and listening to Neil say ‘Come with Me’ with sexy astrophysical hauteur and Brian smiling because he just loves it all and also doing his beguiling hand movements – both of these men are, I swear, the most brilliant natural teachers – the fact is they also put me to sleep because I am so soothed. For anxiety, an overwrought brain, to settle panic, FIND YOUR BRIAN. [image error]
Buns. This is a general thing. If my mood dips substantially, I need to find ways to orient so that things do not spiral. I still have flashbacks and dissociative episodes and I won’t sugar coat (although I might the buns; I know: I am THAT funny) things and say that my daft techniques always work, but I know they help me. So, if I have time, I will cook something mindfully. Possibly buns of some sort. Careful with comfort eating, but you don’t need me to tell you that depression and the myriad mental health conditions which you may be navigating lead you to the need for comfort and sometimes that tips over into something destructive. I’ve done this too. If the cooking worries you, pick another thing. But do it in the moment and mindfully to still your mind and give yourself a rest. I make things and plant things, too. And my writing is hugely absorbing. As with exercise (see A is for Anxiety), I regard this time as time off. And maybe you can extend that bit of time off in increments?
Blame. Oh. I have spent years blaming myself for things. Terrible things that have happened in my life. Because my parents and older sibling (and a few others) convinced me from the ground up that I was an appalling person, it didn’t actually occur to me until I had really effective therapy following a breakdown after my third baby…that they might be wrong. I held myself responsible for my parents’ illnesses and felt I had a considerable hand in their deaths: when you are repeatedly told such things with no-one there to correct the balance, it may be ingested. In my case, it was. I often felt terribly guilty. I got it into my head that people who had died in adulthood with whom I had been friends in early childhood had in some way been harmed by me. Heavy stuff, huh? Took a psychologist and – I am not joking – a GP with facts and no arguments to sort this one out. I was half the weight after it all. On the floor. For a while I could not get up. But then, I floated up, like a feather. That is what I want for you. If you have been led to blame yourself by others, I am not suggesting that you don’t reflect on how you might have done and might do things better, but forgive yourself and let it go. I wasted years of joy on this. Years, my bravehearts.
Bubbles. Or anything trivial. I don’t mind. Go blow them. Be childish. Child-like. Play. Does this sound naff? Well not everything has to have a purpose that is immediately discernible. Some things are pure joy. Also, if someone stole your childhood, go make some new bits now. Early bereavement, trauma and abuse make a kid way too aware and heavy in heart. No child should have to live with that. I did, and I had it very easy compared with many. [image error]
Bollocks. Yup. Or we could have, ‘Bugger off’. The voice in your head which says, ‘You are shit.’ ‘You are worthless.’ Whose voice is that? Is it your voice? Try to work that one out. If it’s your voice, think about how you wouldn’t be saying these things to another person, so don’t say them to yourself because it’s mean and destructive. Tell them to bugger off. Or say, ‘Bollocks’ – which I do when my mother pops up to have a carp at me about something or other in the middle of the night, cresting a dream and then feeling a cold wash of fear, back in childhood. BOLLOCKS.
Breathe. This is so very simple but it’s easily forgotten, too. In through the mouth, out through the nose, 4 and 7, say. It is harder to feel anxious if you are focused on your breathing. While you are doing that, check what your back is doing. In my case rounding and shoulders have gone up in a stress, anxiety or fear response. Shake it out.
Brevity. You may have  to excise people from your life to cope with your lot; if you want to and cannot – by which I mean that you will have to continue to see people who routinely upset you or are mean – then, brevity. Keep it short and look for a reason to be on your way or somewhere else in the room. Also you can be saying, ‘Bollocks’ and ‘Bugger off’ while you do it. Mitigate the influence of those who are no good for you when you cannot excise them completely.
Bed. Rest. No-one’s looking. Managing mental health problems is hard on the body as well as the mind. I have historically been hopeless at this. But the fact is that my health has worsened and I’ve had a telling off from the practice nurse. Take a rest where and when you reasonably can. [image error]
Bonanza. The High Chaparral, Murder She Wrote, Quincy. I think you know what I am talking about here. This is quality soothing telly right here.
BOOKS.  This is going to come up again and again. Reading has always been the backbone of my life. With books, you can build and rebuild your mind. I know I have done and that I may do again. Reading is a way into another world, other lives and horizons and ideas. And beauty, in finely-wrought language: I can bask in that. I personally feel that plot is a bit overrated, but don’t get me started on that now. And with books, try new things, don’t assume something is too difficult for you. And – bearing in mind that I am a writer as well as an English teacher – try books from all times, all countries, from diverse backgrounds, in translation; if you find you cannot manage a novel, try poetry or a novella. Or a play? But experiment! [image error]
 MUCH LOVE, Anna xxx

AN A-Z OF MENTAL HEALTH

A IS FOR…ANXIETY

[image error]

The first in a series of short posts on mental health themes as I see them and have experienced them.

My experience of anxiety is that, at its lowest pitch, it’s a low and quite natural rumble. Like stress, you cannot remove it entirely from your life, so it’s a question of degree. For me, getting beyond this low rumble takes me into areas where I feel unsafe and I revisit a low, cold feeling known since early childhood: it’s best described as a feeling that I am about to annihilated.

What experience of life would have been like for me had I had often been terrified at an early age, I cannot say. I try, instead, to work with what I have, cure what I can – we are not there yet – and even to curate something of practical value, even beauty from what there is.

These are intended to be short posts, so you don’t need to know more about me. Anyway, you’ll be able to read about the details in articles I have coming up and to glimpse it, I think, through my next books. If you can find a copy of my first book, Killing Hapless Ally (currently between publishers; watch this space), you can see the back story and very curious it all is. For now, here is what I do – when I begin to feel wretched; when anxiety levels are troubling. Some may sound quite twee – stay with me, here. And I want these to be free and as easy to do as possible.See this image? I know that, time and again, I have felt isolated like this, knowing yet that I am not. Cold floor; care feet: foetal and retreating.  Read on. x

[image error]Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Exercise. However you do it: even if you still have some horrid anxiety after it, consider the period of exercise some time off. Walking is great. Oh you know all this! I walk, do pilates, have a roller, pilates ball and a few weights at home. The repetitions and breathing help me
Essential oils. I always have a few splashes on a tissue up my sleeve. For me, lavender and bergamot; maybe a slash of frankincense. I think pleasure more broadly is brilliant. Focus on what your senses like to take you out of your head and into your body. That could be sex on the kitchen floor (God, I don’t know), or you might enjoy a soft blanket to cover your legs. It could be a really good cake. Or a sunset. Or music. A playlist is marvellous. Mine is full of the naffest things because they are cheering to me.
Thinking/feeling. Sit with the feeling. I was seized with it, rigid, on the school run this morning. I sat with it, let it do its thing and, in a minute or so, the worst had gone. Here’s a really terrible tip: DON’T THINK ABOUT THE THING THAT WORRIES YOU. Hmm. Right. I don’t want you to think about custard creams at all. No. Stop, Not at all. Doesn’t work. Start a parallel train of thought instead; distraction. Your brain is sometimes a bit thick and will orient quite nicely to that: the other stuff can wander off. The custard creams can hang out in the biscuit tin where they’re supposed to be. Also, if someone is mean to you – maybe again and again – and you cannot entirely escape (adding that you MUST endeavour to escape from a situation which is genuinely threatening: and I promise I have), try to  turn them into a comic character in your head. That’s what I do. Humour. Oh, and those whose influence has been or is still deleterious to my life now get turned into a character in a story or in one of my books. Usually as a mass of characters and their traits; never names. Please don’t tell anyone I told you that, okay? (And anyway, it’s crystal clear in my first book.)
Let go of things. If you keep trying to change others’ behaviour, you will – I HAVE – make yourself ill. I have had and continue to have family members who are cruel to me and it hasn’t been possible to remove this. So I have to think about backing myself and being mindful of how I react. The very act of doing that makes me feel more in control and less battered, ergo less anxious. Rejected? Know that rejection is just as much about the rejector as it is about you. Know, also, that just because you feel or think something does not mean that something is true. It’s possible that you never ingested that properly: I know I hadn’t until my thirties!
Talk to people. Friends; online. Laugh. But, more broadly, a huge thing for me is that I chat merrily to everyone and anyone. At the bus stop; at the supermarket till. And I will tell you a thing: you may blunt someone else’s loneliness, someone else’s anxiety and your world may expand. Insights happen because people are bloody marvellous. Don’t beat yourself up if you’d rather stick pins in your eyes than do this, though. Also, not everyone responds. Go with that.
Animals. Your own; other people’s. Borrow a dog. I do.
Being in nature. Unencumbered and really looking at things and appreciating them. That could be rain on a leaf. Very simple, but the ordinary miracle can do marvellous things, I have found.
Likewise, reading the urban street. Really look; the details in the stone, the brick, stucco, font on a sign…you get the idea. Being observant is splendid.
Self care more broadly. Again, this may sound twee, but making yourself a cup of tea in a favourite mug and serving only yourself for a while is A GOOD THING. When anxiety levels are high or when the black dog bites, that may be the time you don’t look after yourself – be aware that this is the very time you need to.
Reading. I’ve written before about how I rebuilt my mind with books; in childhood and adolescence, I built a world of imaginary friends. We will explore that later. But the point is that reading is escape, beauty; new doors open – ideas you had never thought of. It is a powerful and lifegiving thing and, for me, integral to my mental health. My survival, in fact.
I think that’s enough. Here, my careworn darling. Though there is so much more to say, this is for you. You are not alone xxxx[image error]

 

 

Reassessment, writing and good health.

[image error]

Hello all,

Tomorrow, I am going to start two weeks’ worth of (very) short blog posts on mental health. An A-Z. Cheery, off-beat procession, containing references to creative swearing, reading, writing, nature, custard slices, a mango in the bath and being focused on Professor Brian Cox. Those items integral to stablising my mental health, improving it, managing it. Cats, Welsh cakes, jokes, oils, letting go, avoiding and excising some people. ALL SORTS! I am not a mental health professional, but I have managed conditions for a long time and sometimes in startling ways (so I am told).

[image error]

The reason the post title is ‘Reassessment, writing and good health’ is because I’ve had my back against the wall this week. I was born with a mild heart condition, but it has become more troublesome of late; also, because, we think, of chronic stress which I have not managed particularly well, my blood pressure is very high. This is a new one. A new adventure! Some weeks ago I fainted; it took my heart a while to sort itself out. I am not allowed to drive and I have a constant headache and am frequently dizzy. Blood pressure monitored twice a day, health centre every week, probably a heart procedure coming up (but likely ablation not a big surgery type thingy). It’s not a very good cocktail because a few years ago, I had two TIAs, – here: https://www.stroke.org/understand-stroke/what-is-stroke/what-is-tia/ – which did not progress to stroke, but you have to be watchful. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t scared a little bit. Yesterday, I accessed my records to discover that – as far as I am able to collate information – cardiology and neurology had not followed up as they were supposed to do after my hospital admission and I was listed as being treated, on medication and so on and I am not and have not been.

(See this mango? Ah, that little number on the lower left there is what, all my life, I have called a mango hedgehog, more on which later.)

[image error]

But isn’t this post about mental health and the A-Z I’ve got coming for you? Yes. I was born with a condition, but I doubt very much that the things I have been through and manage are exactly a help here! So, for example, I have to focus on relaxation and acknowledge the fact that, since late childhood, I have not slept well. We put this down to hyper-vigilance: I wake through the night on high alert, ready to go, to be watchful, to defend. If you have had trauma in your early life, this may be recognisable to you. I am sorry and send so much love. Chronic sleep deprivation is not good for you; it’s connected with raised blood pressure, too. I didn’t know that until yesterday. What I did know, though, is that mental health and physical health are intertwined, so as I deal with the physical nature of things (and we may have to look at some meds to take my system down a bit; I do not have medication for anything or therapeutic support), I must look also at how my mental health is. How I take better care of it.

 

A big wake-up call. Time to change, certainly, and so I thought I would share with you the steps I have already taken and what I have done already in my life. And it will be light hearted. If no-one reads it, I will stop because there’s enough going on in our lives.

Much love,

Anna.

News on writing: next novel, short stories and getting a literary agent

In haste this one – and apologies that I haven’t written for a while. Just to say that I have placed my first book of short stories Famished (publisher TBA all in good time) to be published September, 2020 and so, with my historical fiction Saving Lucia out with Bluemoose next spring…herewith some stars of the show…

….that’s two books for you next year. I also have a piece on rebuilding your mind with books for Trauma: Art as a response to mental health for Dodo Ink in January – and we’ll see if there are further commissions. In other news. Tempest…

[image error]

…the anthology of writings about dystopias for Patrician Press for which I wrote the introductory essay came out last week and, this summer, one of my stories is published in Newcon press’s Best of British Horror, 2019. 

Hello: this is me, by the way! My seven year old took it and I have snow in my hair.[image error]

And also…I have a literary agent! I have just signed with Kate Johnson of Mackenzie Wolf Literary Agency, NY…http://www.mwlit.com/…;

…and we will see where this takes us. Kate has been very involved already – actually I have been talking to her for a year and it is partly Kate whom I have to thank for Famished, partly because she encouraged me to write gothic fiction. We are both delighted with the press it has gone to: it’s a fantastic home! I am currently writing a second volume of short stories which will go directly to Kate and that is called Ravished. While Famished is a series of gothic, horror and weird fiction tales linked by the theme of food and feasts, Ravished is all about age, faith, death and judgement. It’s bloody terrifying me, in fact. I call it my eschatological volume. I’ve been researching Victorian memento mori, photos of the dead, embalming…flipping to googledocs now, it looks like Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children in its use of photos…ooohhh.

Much love and happy writing – or writing amidst a whole lot of other things going wrong and Brexit stress. Don’t wait for the perfect moment, the clear day or a room of one’s own, huh?

Anna xxx

A Christmas that’s blue?My bravehearts, you have YOU.

I wonder if you’re looking forward to Christmas? I am, now – but this process has taken a long time. In brief, I lost my mother just before Christmas and my dad eighteen months before that; in the five years prior to that, I had also lost all the relatives who were most significant to me then and the beloved godmother who loved me in a way – I truly believe – which my mother never did. I loved my mother dearly, my father, too, but if you’ve read my first book, you will see that a lot of very dark and complex things went on and were either not known about or were not…seen…by my extended family. I’ve the scars from all that and there will always be scenarios when I feel tender about might have beens, as loss bubbles up. And Christmas has a habit of swatting you back to your earliest pathology. Do you find that, too? I don’t fancy being frightened kid any more.

Now, in my dad’s family, there was conflict and dissension; there was untreated and severe mental illness which I had some measure of as a child and which terrified me; there were suicides and what I now know to be eating disorders which killed at least one of them. I do not see any of my remaining relatives now – and my father had six siblings so I know I must have cousins living not far away; it is a strange and unreal situation. I do not think about it so much until another relative or well-meaning friend brings it up, usually some time around Christmas. I shiver.

‘You ought to try and get in touch with your father’s family.’

But you see, when I think of it all, of my father’s family, I feel so sad. I can salvage a memory of the most beautiful tree you ever saw at Christmas; it was in my grandparents’ house and it had tiny musical instruments you could actually play; I can bring to mind a pretty little brass saxophone now. But all this is gone. Why? Because when I buried my mother, some of my father’s clan came and, as I turned from the grave, two younger aunts and a cousin tapped on the arm before leaving abruptly. They said, ‘We will not be seeing you again.’ So there’s me, barely an adult, having just lost both parents and there we are. No, I never saw them again because all communication stopped. I know that people say blood’s thicker than water, but I disagree. Blood is thick, alright – but sometimes family links are meaningless.

There, I said it.

If a group of people makes it clear that you have no place in their life and that they do not and never loved you, why would you pursue them? Yes, this hurts; it hurts particularly at Christmas, but this is really where your self care and command of yourself need to kick in. Build more family. You may have a partner, children (I am married, have three boys and help to take care of others’ children); you may not. You are not in any way lesser because you do not. I’m not having that, oh no no no. If you possibly can, try to think that family is a flexible construct. You can build it of your friends. Once you truly accept that, there’s a feeling of liberation.

If you feel lonely, unloved, come and see me. Because I know, I just know, I am going to love you. And I’ve got the pies and mulled wine. And sugared almonds.

[image error]

I mentioned before about my parents. Well, there were many good things and I don’t want to be ungrateful for those. I loved my mother, in particular, with a passion. But my experience, broadly, was of one brutal and sneering parent (my mum) and of another (my dad) who failed to protect me from her. It was made clear, again and again, that I was an unwanted child. That I was the bringer of harm. I was weird kid and eldritch child and any manner of things. I remember wonderful routines and beautiful decorations at Christmas; I also remember being frightened and lonely. I have had years of managing mental health problems, from the OCD that ruled much of my activity in childhood and early teens, to depression, generalised anxiety, the nightmares which are the bringer of insomnia (I always have the same nightmares, more or less) and the dissociative episodes which are managed but not cured. Were I to hunt for a root for all that, I should test my pulse and say…yes: there it is in the ghost of Christmas past when I was given a present unsmilingly and told I did not deserve it. And it was such a beautiful present. It might have been lying beside me as I was kicked in my side or had my hair pulled. As part of all this was a much older sibling who, to me, was angel and devil. He disappeared from my life altogether and then re-emerged. My mother, like my dad, came from a big family but, with a couple of exceptions, when he re-emerged with a new wife, they killed the fatted calf. Because there should not and cannot be – I don’t want to overload you with detail here – a link (meaningless anyway) between my sibling and my young family, recent extended family events at Christmas have involved him and her and not me, not the kids everyone should, I would say, be focused on or more protective of. The loyalty and the love that I hope I have shown my entire life are valued – and I cannot say that I am without family members who value me and who have been understanding and loving – but it is easier to go along with the person who may leave again and go along with it for the sake of my dead mother. So, I have had to entirely reshape my family dynamic and, this year, for the first time in years, we are spending it all at home, the five of us, the cats. the ladybird colony upstairs, the hens clucking away outside. The home I always thought I could not build or have.

[image error]

And I feel so lucky. We will ring my husband’s family in the US. We try. Again, my husband has made the difficult decision not to see his birth father any more. He tried to make it work from his parents’ acrimonious divorce onwards; that was when he was a kid. He can no longer do it. He is loved, our boys are loved, but then again there are fractured relationships in that family because of two difficult divorces, remarriage and where the kids settle into all that. Or haven’t in all cases. Some families manage it well; it would be fair to say that this one has not. In this particular case, we make the best of it. Because it’s what you do. You take the love and joy where you can; when you get stronger, you realise you can move away from the things that hurt. When you are a child, it is not the same at all. There’s another reason why we are at home this Christmas. My husband wants to hunker down there and for his sons to feel the solidity of that home.

Again, a voice pipes up. ‘You should make contact with your dad. It’s Christmas.’ My husband is altogether more phlegmatic than I am. He just says, ‘Nope.’

And a few more pipe up on the subject of my brother. ‘You should try and make contact with your brother. For the boys’ sake. Don’t they deserve to know him?’ I cried a full hour after that, pulling off the M4 at Cardiff Gate. The notion that I had taken something from my children. (And also, The Glamour. What did I look like, banging the steering wheel in the rage that followed as I sat there?) All well meant, but no, they deserve better and no I shouldn’t make contact. Any interest is fleeting, I am scared of him and more now of what he could say than of what he could do and it is incumbent on me to protect my kids, while I can. Families go down rabbit holes to keep the peace. But I am peaceful. What happened there, in my past, my teens and early twenties, caused me immense pain and fractured every area of my life. Why would I put my kids in a place of risk? Why would I enforce on them a contract with a person who has taken no interest in them and in their wellbeing and shows none now. And a kindly relative whom I love (but still whose opinion I must disparage – this is okay, readers) says again and again, ‘You must do what your mother would have wanted’. There I, the gaslit child, ask a question and am met with bafflement.

I say, ‘Why?’

And a well meaning friend: ‘Christmas is for families…’ ‘Yes, but…’ ‘But they wouldn’t have to be alone with him…’ Think about this. It is predicated on fantasy from an otherwise kind and intelligent person. It is nonsense.

I say, ‘But why on earth would I even entertain that?’

What I said about family being a flexible construct. The other day, my friend J Hall wrote this piece: https://jlhallwriter.com/2018/12/14/a-safe-christmas/  J confronted her parents and the results were explosive. I will leave you to read this beautiful piece. But here is an example of what happened next.

Fast forward over a decade and there are no invitations to family Christmas dinner, no more phone calls after the Queen’s speech. The festivities in my wider kin continue without me. Sometimes I wonder if I am missed, or thought of for anything other than a brief, conscience-pricked moment. My family now is my partner.

At Christmas, for those of us that have lost, we feel the heartbeat of those losses. They pulse under our skin, they surge in our veins. When we stop the busy-busy, the undead of abusive Christmases past nip at our heels. They sink in their teeth and bite. Memories appear fully formed, here to bully and ravage.

Many families have been broken, and as adults our worst Christmas is always remembered, and held a little bit closer to us than it is the rest of the year.

She’s right, isn’t she? And brave. And I said to her just the other day that she can now add me to her family, if she would consent. And she said, ‘I do.’ As I write, I’ve had devastating news about a friend. She’s a friend who calls me ‘Sis’. Through the demanding illness of both herself and her husband, her family has not stepped up. We will be there on Christmas day – as the family that was made. And her boys need me. They tell me. Water is sometimes thicker than blood! Let’s go with that image: imagine a thick water, warm, enveloping, doting, loving and providing.  Like your best bath ever! Yes, that.

Now, here’s a feature from yesterday. From the excellent Kerry Hudson, prefaced with this quotation:

‘Christmas without family might be painful, but it’s a hell of a lot easier than Christmas with them.’

https://www.the-pool.com/news-views/opinion/2018/51/christmas-no-family-friends-how-to-cope-kerry-hudson-lowborn

If you’ve been feeling fragile, may it comfort and support you; likewise, through it, I followed some threads on twitter from @MhairiMcF on how very silly it is for people to comment and pass judgement on whether or not Meghan Markle should see her father (in your face Piers Morgan). I felt for her; I’m no fan of anything royal, but I felt for her, making her way forward and expecting her first child. It is not casting aside or cruelty to decide not to see a relation – even a parent – you feel you cannot see. Because some relationships must, at some point, pass on without you. From here, I found wisdom from @ SaliHughes – commenting here on twitter that,

‘If you know better than the Meghan Markle haters, and understand from exp that estrangement from family members is complex, nuanced, difficult but sometimes very necessary, then you can apply to join my FB group. Search for NFE – Necessary Family Estrangement, in the groups tab.’

Practical and wise, that. I want to add, for anyone alone on Christmas day, because of family problems or any other reason – and I mean feeling alone, feeling lonely – then I can thoroughly recommend the hashtag #joinin on Christmas Day, as started by the comedienne Sarah Millican. Here: https://metro.co.uk/2017/12/25/sarah-millicans-joinin-campaign-help-lonely-christmas-7183846/ As Metro put it,

Whether you’re spending the day on your own, are feeling lonely, have suffered a loss or simply find the holidays hard, just click on the hashtag and chat to those feeling the same.

For the past two years, I’ve joined in. I’ve had big bubbles of cry come up – and this despite having the children here. Because I find it hard, still. A huge support and I hope others enjoyed talking to me as much as I did to them.

[image error]

I think that’s enough of all this. The sky is azure here; the air is crisp. Hey you. Gird your loins, get some stollen in, dm me, whatever you need, my bravehearts. Go for a walk and listen to the winter song of the robin for a while. Take a holiday from the worries that beset you (and I mean global worries as well as about family and the dearth or paucity of it) and remember my adage: that family is a flexible construct. I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

As you are and on your terms,

Love, Anna x

 

Writing, mentoring, proofing, cheerleading and editing (BUT ALSO getting through GCSE, IGCSE and A level).

These days, I am finding it a bit tricky to separate out the strands of my working life. And by working life, I mean my teaching and tuition (at secondary level) and mentoring for young people, then my fiction mentoring, editing and proofing which goes hand in hand with my own writing – plus my volunteer work with literacy and as mental health advocate and campaigner. I feel that there’s overlap and cross-fertilization. For example, over the next month, I’ve two events in schools where I’m drawing on my own writing; I’m editing a book in which a former upper sixth student is published alongside established writers and academics and I am having discussions about how my first book, autobiographical novel Killing Hapless Ally, might be used more in mental health settings or by mental health professionals and clinicians.

Then, I have two free schemes available: the Fabian Bursary (which I started for GCSE and A level tuition for young people then expanded to all ages!) and the two free reads a year I offer for book-length projects under my mentoring, editing and proofing work.

So here’s a update on the whole thing!

For tuition at secondary level, my Fabian Bursary is now filled (you know who you are!) from January 2019-January 2020 and I dearly hope I can support a family and a young person and also help them find some joy and excitement in their English studies. But why not get in touch for a chat about 2020 onwards? If you want to do a GCSE in English or English Literature or an A level – perhaps you are 16, but maybe you’re 71 and you’re rich in enthusiasm but funds would preclude study – then you can do it with me. I can arrange exam entry and I have arrangements with exam centres so that you have somewhere to sit your exam.

 

OOOOH WHAT ELSE?

I have a FREE read going before Christmas if you have a book-length project of literary fiction (but will also look at memoir and autobiographical fiction) and want to get it ready for submission. I can read it, proof it for spelling, grammar and punctuation errors, factual accuracy and general typos, suggest edits, share with you anything I know that might be useful and write a report on it. I will also proof a synopsis and any covering letter if you would like that. All you need to do is write to me – you can use the contact button on this website for information. I would like this free read to be for someone who is on low-income and perhaps for someone who is coping with physical and mental health problems. I have been hampered from childhood onwards by the latter and so if I can help empower just one person…

[image error]

Right: for English and English literature tuition, I have some daytime slots currently available on Wednesday and Friday morning; these can be online. I will have more from late May, 2019. Beyond that, if you are reading this and nearby, I’ve slots with me, in West Wiltshire, between 3.10 and 5.10 on Monday and Wednesday 3.10-4.10 from late May, 2019.

I think that’s everything.

Well, apart from the facts that…

…my current book The Life of Almost is moreorless out and about  (I am tongue in cheek about this after distribution problems and being ignored by reviewers) and hopefully near you (but maybe not – there we are; more drear laughs: this is a marathon, not a sprint), I am editing an anthology of writings about dystopias called Tempest: that’ll be out in March 2019; my next book, historical fiction Saving Lucia, will be out with the legendary Bluemoose Books in early 2020 and more historical fiction, The Revelations of Celia Masters, is out on full submission at the moment and that one is all a bit nerve wracking. And if you are submitting to agents or publishers at the moment, let it be known that the latter has been called “unsaleable”, “brilliant”, “too literary for me to be able to sell”, “gorgeous”, “deeply intriguing” and “just not special for what is a very crowded market”. BABIES: YOU HAVE TO LISTEN, BUT BE AWARE OF SUBJECTIVITY – AND BACK YOURSELF, TOO.

 

Love, Anna x

 

 

 

 

 

Mentoring, cheerleading and editing (BUT ALSO getting through GCSE, IGCSE and A level).

These days, I am finding it a bit tricky to separate out the strands of my working life. And by working life, I mean my teaching and tuition (at secondary level) and mentoring for young people, then my fiction mentoring, editing and proofing which goes hand in hand with my own writing – plus my volunteer work with literacy and as mental health advocate and campaigner. I feel that there’s overlap and cross-fertilization. For example, over the next month, I’ve two events in schools where I’m drawing on my own writing; I’m editing a book in which a former upper sixth student is published alongside established writers and academics and I am having discussions about how my first book, autobiographical novel Killing Hapless Ally, might be used more in mental health settings or by mental health professionals and clinicians.

Then, I have two free schemes available: the Fabian Bursary (which I started for GCSE and A level tuition for young people then expanded to all ages!) and the two free reads a year I offer for book-length projects under my mentoring, editing and proofing work.

So here’s a update on the whole thing!

For tuition at secondary level, my Fabian Bursary is now filled (you know who you are!) from January 2019-January 2020 and I dearly hope I can support a family and a young person and also help them find some joy and excitement in their English studies. But why not get in touch for a chat about 2020 onwards? If you want to do a GCSE in English or English Literature or an A level – perhaps you are 16, but maybe you’re 71 and you’re rich in enthusiasm but funds would preclude study – then you can do it with me. I can arrange exam entry and I have arrangements with exam centres so that you have somewhere to sit your exam.

 

OOOOH WHAT ELSE?

I have a FREE read going before Christmas if you have a book-length project of literary fiction (but will also look at memoir and autobiographical fiction) and want to get it ready for submission. I can read it, proof it for spelling, grammar and punctuation errors, factual accuracy and general typos, suggest edits, share with you anything I know that might be useful and write a report on it. I will also proof a synopsis and any covering letter if you would like that. All you need to do is write to me – you can use the contact button on this website for information. I would like this free read to be for someone who is on low-income and perhaps for someone who is coping with physical and mental health problems. I have been hampered from childhood onwards by the latter and so if I can help empower just one person…

[image error]

Right: for English and English literature tuition, I have some daytime slots currently available on Wednesday and Friday morning; these can be online. I will have more from late May, 2019. Beyond that, if you are reading this and nearby, I’ve slots with me, in West Wiltshire, between 3.10 and 5.10 on Monday and Wednesday 3.10-4.10 from late May, 2019.

I think that’s everything.

Well, apart from the facts that…

…my current book The Life of Almost is moreorless out and about  (I am tongue in cheek about this after distribution problems and being ignored by reviewers) and hopefully near you (but maybe not – there we are; more drear laughs: this is a marathon, not a sprint), I am editing an anthology of writings about dystopias called Tempest: that’ll be out in March 2019; my next book, historical fiction Saving Lucia, will be out with the legendary Bluemoose Books in early 2020 and more historical fiction, The Revelations of Celia Masters, is out on full submission at the moment and that one is all a bit nerve wracking. And if you are submitting to agents or publishers at the moment, let it be known that the latter has been called “unsaleable”, “brilliant”, “too literary for me to be able to sell”, “gorgeous”, “deeply intriguing” and “just not special for what is a very crowded market”. BABIES: YOU HAVE TO LISTEN, BUT BE AWARE OF SUBJECTIVITY – AND BACK YOURSELF, TOO.

 

Love, Anna x

 

 

 

 

 

Two Poems to read for Remembrance Sunday

There is much to say about these poets, Edward Thomas and Wilfred Owen, both of whom fought in WW1. But today, on Remembrance Sunday,  let me just offer a beautiful poem from each, and a brief story of their service.

Neither man came home.

Edward Thomas. 1878-1917.

[image error]

Thomas enlisted in the Artists Rifles in July 1915, despite being a mature married man who could have avoided enlisting. Thomas was promoted to corporal, and in November 1916 was commissioned into the Royal Garrison Artillery as a second lieutenant. He was killed in action soon after he arrived in France at Arras on Easter Monday, 9 April 1917. His widow, Helen, was told that his was a ‘bloodless death’; that Thomas was killed by the blast wave of one of the last shells fired as he stood to light his pipe and that there was no mark on his body.  We now know this was not the case because a  a letter from his commanding officer Franklin Lushington written in 1936 (and discovered later in an American archive) states that the cause of Thomas’s death was being ‘shot clean through the chest’. Thomas is buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery at Agny in France (Row C, Grave 43).

Here is a favourite poem of his. It is gentle, pastoral but profoundly moving.

As the Team’s Head Brass

BY EDWARD THOMAS

As the team’s head-brass flashed out on the turn

The lovers disappeared into the wood.

I sat among the boughs of the fallen elm

That strewed an angle of the fallow, and

Watched the plough narrowing a yellow square

Of charlock. Every time the horses turned

Instead of treading me down, the ploughman leaned

Upon the handles to say or ask a word,

About the weather, next about the war.

Scraping the share he faced towards the wood,

And screwed along the furrow till the brass flashed

Once more.

The blizzard felled the elm whose crest

I sat in, by a woodpecker’s round hole,

The ploughman said. “When will they take it away?”

“When the war’s over.” So the talk began—

One minute and an interval of ten,

A minute more and the same interval.

“Have you been out?” “No.” “And don’t want

to, perhaps?”

“If I could only come back again, I should.

I could spare an arm. I shouldn’t want to lose

A leg. If I should lose my head, why, so,

I should want nothing more. . . . Have many gone

From here?” “Yes.” “Many lost?” “Yes, a good few.

Only two teams work on the farm this year.

One of my mates is dead. The second day

In France they killed him. It was back in March,

The very night of the blizzard, too. Now if

He had stayed here we should have moved the tree.”

“And I should not have sat here. Everything

Would have been different. For it would have been

Another world.” “Ay, and a better, though

If we could see all all might seem good.” Then

The lovers came out of the wood again:

The horses started and for the last time

I watched the clods crumble and topple over

After the ploughshare and the stumbling team.

And here is a second poem; this one by Wilfred Owen, 1893-1918, prefaced by a brief account of his war service.

In 1915, Owen enlisted in the Artists Rifles Officers’ Training Corps and in June 1916, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant (on probation) in the Manchester Regiment. During this first part of active service, he was blown up by a trench mortar and spent several days unconscious on an embankment lying alongside the remains of one of his fellow officers. Rescued, Owen was diagnosed as suffering from neurasthenia or shell shock and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital in Edinburgh for treatment. It was here that he met Siegfried Sassoon, who encouraged his writing. Once discharged from Craiglockhart, judged fit for light regimental duties, eventually returning to active service in France in June 1918; then,  at the end of August 1918, Owen returned to the front line. He was killed in action on 4 November 1918 during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal, one week before the signing of the Armistice. Owen is buried at Ors Communal Cemetery, in northern France.

Below is my favourite Owen poem; it’s beautiful and eliptical: it doesn’t have the visceral horror of ‘Dulce et decorum est’, but I find it the most haunting poem of all. There is, of course, no answer to its sorrow.

Futility

BY WILFRED OWEN

[image error]

Move him into the sun—

Gently its touch awoke him once,

At home, whispering of fields half-sown.

Always it woke him, even in France,

Until this morning and this snow.

If anything might rouse him now

The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds—

Woke once the clays of a cold star.

Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides

Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth’s sleep at all?

 

 

 

 

 

Because language matters

I am currently editing a thing or two and getting in a total stew about language. In this case, what other people have written and whether I dare challenge.

And I think I do dare.

Language matters – what it connotes and the attitudes it betrays; words other and marginalise and encourage others to do the same. I found, when writing The Revelations of Celia Masters (this is my fourth book, currently on submission after a revise and resubmit) that I took apart some of Trump’s words and phrases.  They are not new. My book is about settlers in the Middle Plantation of Virginia during the English Civil War and I came to look at such words as ‘tame’, ‘infest’; ‘crazed’ and ‘animal’. One of the things many have observed and protested about is that language – presidential and administration language – matters and Trump is roundly casual about the way in which it is used, blaring and glaring; full of brutality.

Trump’s proud ‘We tamed a continent’ says a lot, doesn’t it? The verb ‘tamed’. It says something like, they were savages, but I am not: I am civilised. And the pronoun itself, we. The colonisers who did tremendous things and set the natives straight. The we. We are still that we and it’s still encumbent on us to tame them, he would have you believe. It’s so erroneous I don’t even know where to get started. Trump also refers fairly constantly to ‘Western Values’ which has absolutely no meaning at all. It’s a shadow phrase which I doubt he could even articulate.

I spent a lot of time thinking about the important of language choice when I was preparing Celia Masters (as I am now as I edit others’ work); mulling over sources and academic works like David Hackett Fischer’s exemplary Albion’s Seed. I was thinking about how the Cavaliers, coming into asylum under Berkeley (which is the starting point of my book) held freedom in the highest esteem, but that within it was the freedom to oppress others – and I realise I have expressed that in very broad terms, so you’ll have to read the book! (His and mine!) I explored how, through noting contemporary sources, you could see that colonists clearly believed that their settling of America was God’s work and that He had intervened to make it possible. I promise to write more about this later – and you can see that Celia Masters becomes repelled by it because of what she sees, comes to understand about herself and her true past and what she creates…

 

Back to the editing.

I am, for example, struggling with some of the phrases white writers use to describe skin which is NOT white; this has to be handled so very carefully or not handled at all, some might say. What do you think of  ‘honey-coloured’ or ‘cocoa-coloured’? I’d say you delete it if you’re a white writer. Do you baulk at that? I am also…bothered by the phrase ‘traditional cultures’ in that I see it used by anthropologists and sociologists, but I see academics in the same and in other fields taking it apart. Am I on shaky ground? Quite possibly, but I want to have a discussion about it and with different sources. And I personally don’t think anyone should be using the phrase ‘third world’ because that IS diminishing, patronising and othering.  My older boys were mortified to learn that I had challenged its use in their secondary school. I am a person who is sometimes chided for being ‘too PC’ which makes me tremble with a sort of punchy anger. Overreaction?

When I was writing The Revelations of Celia Masters, I had to think very carefully about the language and concepts I handled because my protagonist is a mid 17th-century white girl tangling with cultures and worlds that ate deeply unfamiliar to her. She has seen only Somerset, the Dorset coast and the court of Charles I. I was really worried about how I was going to write about the use of slavery in the colony and also to write about the Algonquin Indians who are in my story and, like the slaves, integral to it. I sought advice from an excellent source and was led, amongst other things, to the article below; I also discussed how I might approach my exploration and found that what I needed to explore was Celia’s whiteness. I turned it on its head. ‘…write you‘ in the words of the article in this link. As you write, reflect on your own privilege and power. There are plenty of jarring narratives about black culture from white voices. Also, I was damned if I were going to reduce folklore to some hokey thing about fairies, when it’s fire and blood and richly syncretic. The article was useful for that, too. Read carefully, discus with various sources, don’t shoot from the hip, be prepared to be totally and utterly wrong (you might enjoy what the late Hans Rosling has to say about this in Factfulness) and remember that words have power.   

What do you think? About any of this?

(Article from Buzzfeed: succint, intelligent and pithy – and I’d love to discuss it further!)

. https://t.co/gvJ06LmBwe