Where we are now
A decade on from loss
T/W Miscarriage, IVF, post natal mental illness.
Pals,
Happy New Year!
I write from my bed, with the electric blanket on and BOTH CHILDREN ON PLAY-DATES.
I think this is a first.
My husband is listening to Bill Callahan and making roast chicken.
A day of 1. Cortado from the bakery and small boys’ football joy 2. Watch a blackbird nudge grubs in damp beech leaves. 3. Two washes hung, another sorted and put away.
A version of bliss? These days maybe.
How was your Christmas “break”? I tried to be jolly. I WAS jolly! But Christmas Eve 2025 marked a decade since the last of several miscarriages, that one particularly gruelling because it was PUL (Pregnancy of Unknown Location). The specialist never did work out where the yolk sac was — just said, matter of fact, that it wasn’t in my womb, and that I needed the chemotherapy drug methotrexate to stop the cells dividing. I had this administered on Boxing Day 2016. The needle was huge. I was told to stop trying to get pregnant for three months, to allow the toxins to leave my system.
Looking back, I feel both erased and made-new by motherhood. How do we get here so naive of what it takes? Of its toll? Of its gifts? There are a bazillion different stories of matrescence and yet, back then, I knew none. Just a vague sense of women, over there, somewhere, being busy. Doing something niche and slightly gross. It was dull and tiring, whatever it was.
Reminder: There are nearly 1,000,000 books published on WWI and WWII. We know about war — about strategy and conflict, mass death and victory. We know so little about what it is to mother, to become one, to be one. We can only change this by writing our matrescence, drawing it, singing it, making it authentic and making it public. Normalising the huge variety of experiences, central to which seems to be: WTAF.
I got lucky with IVF. My first baby was born in 2017. Now my days are not made up of Sudocrem and sleep schedules (why did I bother?!) but screen time negotiation*, Premier League shockers and Post Malone.
My chronic postnatal insomnia and depressive episodes are mostly behind me, but like zombie cells I carry those memories. I often wish it hadn’t been so; that early motherhood had been closer to the images of happy, calm women I’d seen on adverts... But then The New Mothers’ Writing Circle would probably not exist.
So — just 5 spots left on each of my next cohorts. Doors close Friday 16th Jan.
If you’ve worked with me and know the power of this 8-week programme, please forward this, share it with your WhatsApp groups, repost the content I make (YE GADS! Content!) — recommendations and word of mouth remain the best way of reaching mothers.
Tuesdays 20th Jan - 10th March, on Zoom. 10am - 11:45am GMT. For mothers of babies under 2. More info here.
Thursday 22nd - 12th March, on Zoom. 10am - 11:45am GMT. For mothers of children over 2**. More info here.
Wonderful award-winning poet and human Liz Berry will co-lead one of the workshops with both cohorts, whoop!
Reply if you have any questions, including how to pay in 3 instalments.
You do not need to be a writer to take part. You already have a voice.
“I thought mothering would just be changing nappies and cuddling a baby. Instead it took me to the edge of that it means to be human. It tested my empathy to the limit, it challenged me intellectually, it required me to answer and ask questions constantly, to consider metaphysics and the origins of matter.” Lucy Jones, Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Birth & Motherhood.
Amen.
Catrin.
Some links —
BBC’s mini-documentary about The New Mothers’ Writing Circle
Creative Scotland’s film
Project website
Instagram — if you can bear that platform… I’ll be LIVE tomorrow 11:30am to talk about my work.
LinkedIn — again, can you bear it?
I had a radio show in December! Listen to Clyde Built Radio here.
The Motherhood Set — tickets are selling well for this event on Sunday 1st Feb at Glasgow’s Glad Cafe. Reply if you’d like to read.
*Modern parenting is mostly screen time negotiation.
**And feel free to join even if your kid is, like, 8 or 9. The “New” bit of this work is less and less important.