Category: Thoughts

I used to feel as though my body was filled with words. So full they could not be contained. They fell from my hands, my lips, my very skin. It was as though writing was the only way I could keep myself from overflowing like a river that has burst its banks. Now I hardly…

It started with a binder. I suppose it started before then, with thoughts and questions, but I will always look back at that first binder and view it as a defining moment. I wasn’t one of those people who had grown up always knowing that I was transgender. I liked being a girl, or at…

In that last week before my mum died, I wrote little notes. I don’t know why. Maybe it was a way of working through the horror that was unfolding around me. Maybe it was because writing is all I’ve ever reached for in the most challenging moments of my life. Maybe it was because by…

Like most people, I’ve been watching the Conservative party leadership contest with interest. I want to stay informed. I want to care about this country and what will happen to it. I am also so very tired of politics. Not just this contest, but all of it. I am tired of this dreadful, ugly world….

There is loss in transition. Sometimes I feel like I should not speak these words, or type them, or put them to paper. I know that if I do, they will be used against myself and others. There are people waiting, circling like vultures, desperate for any sign that we regret who we are and…

It will soon be eight months since my mum died. It will soon be six months since my retired guide dog died. I count the months without even meaning to, but the way I feel grief has changed in the time that has gone by. In a way it is less raw. But describing it…

There is a group of people stuck in a kind of limbo. Not quite grown-up, not quite a child. It’s a criticism that has been levelled at many people in their twenties in recent years. We aren’t responsible enough. We rely too much on our parents. But what about those of us who have lost…

I started to write this blog eleven years ago, when I was coming to the end of a tumultuous first year in a mainstream sixth form, after spending the first five years of secondary school at a blind school. I had recently turned seventeen and was filled with insecurities. I had high hopes for my…