Don't make me write!

20 years of painful denial

Greetings friends,

I originally sat down to write this essay about how writing has changed my life significantly because it undoubtedly has. I often like to share some of the more nuanced ways it has helped, hoping it might inspire other women to pick up a pen. 

But when I sat down to write, that’s not what came out, as is sometimes the case when I allow my creativity to take me where it wants because it’s usually where I need to go.

I’ve heard many famous writers say they always knew they wanted to be writers and that they wrote their first book or created a magazine as a child. 

My twin brother and I loved drawing and writing little stories at the kitchen table, my dad encouraged us by proudly displaying our work on the wall, and some of these masterpieces remain there decades later. As we got older and our language developed, I noticed that my brother wrote much better stories than me. They were witty, creative, and intelligent like mine weren’t. He had a natural talent. 

As a teen, my writing progressed to the quiet of my attic bedroom. I’d write stories about the brave girl I’d like to be or the young woman I hoped to become, and sometimes they were about romance and boys. My Grandad Jim died when I was 13, which devastated us all, and I wrote a poem about him to share with the family and honour him. So I did write a few bits and pieces like other writers have stated, but I was not inclined to be a professional writer as I moved into my teens. I cannot answer why this is, but I suspect it’s because I couldn’t see any women who’d done it before; there were no visible role models I knew about. I wonder now if being autistic also affected this - with my need to visually see something taking place to understand it?

It took me a few more years to say: Yes, I want to write for a living, which happened at age 19; Vogue and Elle were my bibles, and I enrolled on a Fashion Journalism degree. But I didn’t become a qualified writer until I was 39, some twenty years later.

I dropped out of uni after a year because I got pregnant. Three years after my daughter was born, when I was ready to return, I applied to do Journalism again, but this time with no fashion element because I was a mum now and I'd changed, and fashion suddenly seemed shallow. But at the last minute, I bottled it. I swapped courses to do a completely different Youth & Community Education degree because I’d been volunteering at a local youth club and enjoyed it. Also, I knew I’d get paid far better as a Social Worker than a Journalist. There was an eight-grand difference in the starting salaries, and I was a single parent, so I told myself it was all about the money. 

I worked as a Court Officer at The Youth Offending Team in my second job out of uni. Similar to the probation service but for young people. The role was demanding, and I struggled to find my feet, apart from the report writing. I had to write three-thousand words reports to submit to the court. I was so good at writing them that I got allocated far more than my fair share, and I didn’t mind. The work involved interviewing the young person and everyone involved in their life and then writing a recommendation on whether they should go into custody. The other aspects of the work I grew to hate. It was thankless, exhausting and dangerous. On one occasion, I was threatened with a razor blade by a young man with cannabis-induced psychosis while locked in an office. So when my boss told me she’d singled me out to be the new Sex-Offender Support Worker, it wasn’t a hard decision to leave. I handed my notice in and decided to follow my dreams and become a writer finally. My colleagues chipped and bought me a very expensive dictaphone as a leaving gift.

I’d recently read Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel (RIP) and was blown away by her honesty. I was on Prozac, and while her story wasn’t anything like mine, it resonated. So I wondered if I could write something similar.

During this time off when I was jobless (although I still owned a fashion boutique, so I had money coming in), I had plenty of time to myself; one morning, I popped into the local bookshop and asked the teenage girl behind the counter what the best book she'd ever read was. She handed me The Northern Lights by Phillip Pullman. It turned out to be the best book I’d read too. I gobbled it up in two days and returned to buy the sequel. This book captured my imagination as no other had, and I was grateful to have it enter my life. But something else happened; I knew with a sinking feeling in my stomach I’d never be able to write a book of this quality. A few months later, I was back in ‘proper work’, this time as a Drug & Alcohol Counsellor. I hadn’t written one word and never even worked out how to use the fancy dictaphone.

Six years later, I’d quit that job because I hated it for similar reasons to the previous one. I returned to my dream of writing and enrolled on an online Journalism course. I completed one module and wrote a travel feature about camping. I didn’t have the confidence to hand the work in, and I left the course as I opened yet another fashion boutique and told myself I was now too busy.

On and on it goes - this denial, refusal, and insecurity; it's painful!

Only when I reached 34 and was finally alone and had some proper time to myself because my daughter was getting older, did I have to face myself and acknowledge how much I’d denied my calling. 

At this time, I was deeply troubled, I felt like my life had failed on every level, and I had this idea that writing would save me. 

I finally, after all of these years, started writing. I took free online writing courses to get better. I followed other writers online. Then volunteered at an online newspaper in Manchester. Then began a blog. Then got a job at a national wellness magazine. Then completed a Master’s Degree in Journalism. I say it like it was easy, but it wasn’t. I liken putting your writing out there to extracting your heart from your chest, placing it on a silver platter, and then holding it out to the whole world for them to come and bludgeon to pieces if they choose.

But by this point in my life, I understood I had no choice but to pursue a writing career. Like many other big decisions, quitting jobs, leaving partners, and moving abroad, it didn’t come from bravery; it came because I felt I had no other option.

Writing did save me. But not only from my miserable existence but also saved my past and future. Because I also learned to use writing for personal growth and development. It is the most powerful tool I know of to make sense of who we are and what we want. Some of the answers I have been able to uncover about my past and my patterns within journaling sessions I’m convinced ten years of psychotherapy wouldn’t have been able to produce.

As I write, my shoulders drop, I can relax, and I don’t have to pretend anymore; I can be me. And writing my emotions down channels any tangled feelings through the pen and onto the paper, where they can be seen for precisely what they are, and they lose their power. So there is always a sense of relief and satisfaction.

But the story of low self-esteem and self-comparison sadly doesn’t end here. I wasn’t cut out to be a journalist; I won’t interfere in people’s lives, break confidences, or fight for work. Sure, I could have continued the wellbeing journalism; staying in five-star hotels in foreign countries was excellent, but it paid less than peanuts and was meaningless. Writing about the quality of a massage in a two-grand a night hotel for wealthy women to read grated on me. How was that of any importance or even worthy of writing about? I started supplementing my income with copywriting, which paid 10x what journalism did, it was no more meaningful, but it meant I could eat and buy nice clothes.

Eventually, I fell out with writing professionally and decided it was just one more thing I’d failed at.

I still wrote blog posts, which was how I became a life coach. Women started reaching out to me for support because I was writing about things that I found worthwhile - mental health issues, addiction, low-self esteem etc. So I followed the energy and trained as a coach and, later, a psychotherapist. And I love the work; it’s meaningful and satisfying and rewards me financially.

But I’m a writer. 

Nothing reminded me more of this than at my Gran’s memorial last summer. My twin brother strolled over to me and said one of the most shocking and beautiful things I have ever heard. 

I’ve written a novel, I’ve just finished it, and I want you and Mum to read it before I do anything with it.

Wait. What? I said.

He told me he’d been writing it slowly and secretly for four years and hadn’t even told his partner about it. My heart burst open with pride because I knew it would be brilliant, intelligent, funny and creative. Because that’s who my brother is. But what the fuck.

It felt similar to when The Guardian approached my sister to write an article when I’d been pitching for years with no response but far far worse. I’m the fucking writer in this family, people!!!! 

(I understand how childish this sounds!)

But I had nobody to blame but myself. Because I hadn’t written a book. I’d been trying to write a book for years, a memoir about my wild experiences while living in Asia, and addressing the initial emptiness and loneliness that comes with an empty nest. I have cleared out space in my diary and sat down to write on three separate occasions, sometimes managing to sustain it for weeks, but I have always become overwhelmed.

But at that moment, in that cemetery in Manchester with the sun shining on us all as we said goodbye to my Gran, I knew then and there that I could write a book and that I would.

I don’t write like my brother; I couldn’t because I don’t have the same creative talent. But I understand now that my writing skills are different and have value too.

I hope we’ll all recognise this eventually, as we age, that we can accept our limitations and still be worthy enough to pursue our dreams, even when it's not straightforward, or we perceive that other people are better than us.

If you have a dream, it belongs to you; it is yours, and it is up to you to go and claim it.

Love Hannah xoxo

About me: I'm Hannah, the writer of this newsletter. I'm a qualified Journalist, Life Coach, and Psychotherapist. I'm an Outdoor Leader and obsessed with nature - being in, healing from, learning about and respecting it. I'm over on Instagram and offer relaxing and healing meditations on YouTube.