Mm-hmm.

So I hope that the, that my story will speak to lots of, um, lots of the people that you work with.

But with Unschooled, um, specifically that story is of how I and my family have been failed by the education system.

Two of my children, I have four children, two of them are autistic and have been unable to access education at school despite being really curious, bright, um, inquisitive children.

And so I have, um, spent many years fighting, uh, with the education authority, with all sorts of, all sorts of horrible, um, institutions, and still have failed to access education, and I've written Unschooled to h- to shine a light really on what that feels like to be abandoned by the systems that should be in place to hold us, particularly as a single parent carer.

And I wrote it to, um, kind of challenge some of the thinking around education.

I'm also a trained teacher, so I understand what learning looks like in the classroom, but as a mother, I've really had to reframe what learning looks like for my kids.

Like, we're just over here going, "Shit, I hope it looks all right on the outside, 'cause it feels bullshit on the inside." And then, you know, with the work that you're doing, it's like you're connecting these dots, and people are able to kind of come together and, yeah, we're all talking about stuff we'd rather we wouldn't, but at least we're doing it together.

So if someone, you know, if I was to sit down with you, How would that work? What would it look like?

I guess it's important to think, to remember as well that memoir is a craft.

It's more than just telling a story or writing the story of our life or an aspect of our life.

But having said that, it can be really important, and I have done this, to write out as much of the story as you can and as much of what you're feeling inside as you can so that you're able then to strip that back.

Because sometimes it's only in the writing of something that you realise where the real story is.

So if I'm working with someone, there'll be lots of conversations where we will try and find what the point of the story is, what the real story is, because often clients will come to me and they'll have an idea of what they want to write about.

And through conversations and through reading of samples of their work, then I will see that the story actually maybe lies somewhere else or the perspective could be shifted slightly to create a story that is more compelling on the page.

So what do you think people should consider when they're looking for a mentor for their life writing and for their memoir or even for other writing as well? What is super important to that relationship to make sure that it works well? Well, I

How do you hold on to something for yourself? How do you keep yourself in any way grounded when you have so many challenges all the time?

There's so much to unpack there.

That's such a good question.

Well, writing is a huge part of it because I think it helps me.

I have a really busy full brain and I think writing helps me to unravel all of that.

And I wrote a lot in 12 Moons about the concept of writing myself back onto the page.

having kind of disappeared inside a very bad and unhealthy marriage and lost myself almost completely, but not enough that I didn't manage to cling onto a little spark of myself and write a book about it.

Yeah.