Telling the Most Important Story in My Life
“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”
Jean de la Fontaine, 17th century French poet
I’ve wrestled with the idea of writing a novel for what feels like the majority of my adult life. It’s been a meandering stream that’s followed me around for years, disappearing and reappearing; never quite finding its river.
In my late twenties I pushed out 20,000 words — a cascade of scenes focusing on my friendship group at the time, with no real plot or substance, that duly faded away to nothing.
I embarked on another attempt in my thirties, again reaching a respectable word count before agreeing with an author I had paid to meet at the Clunes Book Fair, that if it hadn’t taken shape by now, it was probably kinder to let it go.
Approaching my fortieth birthday fuelled with the zealousness of facing off my own mid-life, I enrolled in a novel writing course, joined a local writer’s group and declared my ambitions to my former client, and now friend, author Helen Brown.
Helen and I clincked glasses over lunch one day and decided to launch Novel Therapy, a podcast that was meant to chart my novel writing progress. What a hoot! I loved every minute of it, but as for progress? There was a familiar lack of that.
Despite making gains on plot and characters this time around, I was still struggling with the shape of the thing; with what I wanted it to be. The giant lump of clay in front of me gave no hints, despite me prodding at it for months.
One thing I knew it would not be, much to Helen’s confusion, was the story closest to my heart: the story of my mother’s suicide. Although I eventually agreed to tackle it in principle, nothing ever materialised on any pages.
In all my novel attempts thus far, I’d been frantically trying to write my Mum’s death out of my narratives. It seemed too hard to write about her. Too real. Too personal. I told myself that Mum’s death was not my story to tell.
I’d written about it fleetingly in the past, both times encountering a kind of vertigo that had scared me off doing it again.
I tried to find freedom in fiction. I made up all kinds of alternative Mum characters and back stories over the years, playing dress ups with the idea of having a Mum again after so many years without mine.
And then came 2020, the year that tipped my podcast with Helen into the odd socks drawer, as I struggled to keep my business afloat and steady the ship for my daughter, who was battling away with her final year of high school in the back room of our house.
By the time I emerged at the start of this year, relieved to be able to flip over a fresh new calendar year, I was wondering what would become of my beleaguered “novel”.
Rising in me as well, was a new desire to do a podcast again in some way. But what? A work related one? One about women and feminism? I drifted through ideas and frustration.
And then, in April this year, after engaging a career coach to help me design my life a little more thoughtfully, and having had our first expansive conversation, I stood facing myself in the mirror in my bathroom, and addressed the idea that had been beside me all this time.
I would do a podcast about my Mum. A podcast that tells the story of my Mum — her death, but also her life — and celebrates and honours her.
I’m calling the podcast, Remembering Jan.
Bek, my career coach, asked me why I wanted to take this project on.
“Because”, I told her over our video call, “it’s important. It’s the most important story I have to tell, and I am ready to tell it.”
Bek kept asking me why; wanting to go deeper. As the answers tumbled out of my mouth, and my tears fell, I had a similar feeling of vertigo from all those years ago, but this time, almost a reverse vertigo. A feeling of height, but also strength; my feet grounded by the passage of time, by experience, by being a Mum myself.
“Because Mum is more than her death”, I told her through the screen. “Because my Mum was a special person, and I want to release her spirit. I want to bring her back to life.”
And also, I realised, because I miss her. That simple fact. I miss her, and I want to connect with her.
I still feel that Mum’s story is not solely mine to tell. I only had one slice of my Mum, as a daughter; one vantage point. But the 42-year old me wants to know much, much more. Who was my mother as a woman? How did her death impact those who loved her? What is her legacy? Where can I find her?
I will be interviewing as many people as I can who knew and loved Mum, from the many different parts of her life. As my aunty Cate said, this podcast will become a patchwork quilt—we can all contribute a square.
So far, I have interviewed my sister Jane, and Cate, one of Mum’s sisters.
Both interviews have expanded my understanding not just of my Mum, but of them, and of myself. It’s difficult to encapsulate how powerful this feels for me; how amazing. How important and precious and wonderful.
All three of us have laughed and we have cried and we have all been blown away by our own revelations. Mum is appearing more in our lexicon, I can sense it. She is closer now. She is near; here with us, as we tell our stories about her.
That alone is already more than I could have hoped for.
I think it’s going to take me about six months just get through all the interviews I want to do. So many people loved my Mum. So many people’s voices and memories are vital to this project.
I’m meeting Dad, when Covid allows it, at the church hall where he first met Mum, right next to the church where he married her.
I shiver with anticipation when I think of how huge that will be for both of us. I have no idea what he’s going to tell me, or what I will end up asking him.
I feel ready to pour my heart into this, and see it through. I am alive to the power and importance of this project. It’s everything to me, because my Mum — is everything to me.
I plan to write in here alongside the making of this podcast. To share the process and its evolution; to chart my own progress.
I feel I have started to slowly reverse the growing sense I had that Mum was fading from my life, and that is such a gift already.
The stream that has been following me around for all these years, is finally opening up. It’s flowing into something bigger now; it’s finding its place.