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When I started writing about failure, I thought I could be fairly succinct. And then I realised how unprocessed some of these things are, so I decided to spread it over a couple of posts. The one failure in particular that clearly has impacted me the most is in this title of this newsletter: being signed by a literally agent and subsequently failing to write a book. It happened years ago now and yet when I think about it, my response is still visceral. I talk about it rarely because of this. And in all honesty, the legacy of these feelings shapes a lot of how I work and show up online.
Something I have discovered about myself over the last few years is that I hate talking about what I am doing work-wise. I openly talk about being a psychologist, but I very rarely discuss what projects I’m working on or what services I currently have on offer. Since leaving the NHS over five years ago, I started by paying to advertise my services on various therapy databases and over time I am proud that most of our work was generated by personal recommendations and word of mouth. However, when I think about using social media or other online ways in which to market myself and what I offer, I am overcome with….the ick?
Is it the ick? Or is it just embarrassment? Particularly when things don’t go to plan and the plan has to pivot, or even change entirely. I feel shame easily and deeply, so I am very avoidant of things that I fear will not turn out how I hope. Which on many occasions can become a self fulfilling prophesy.
Sometimes I think I simply don’t give myself the chance to succeed.
Back in 2017, just a few weeks after giving birth for the second time following a deeply traumatic and gruelling pregnancy after loss, I was approached by a literary agent. They were from a large, well known London agency and I was deeply flattered and excited. At that point, I was so dissociated, so disconnected from myself and my own needs, that I felt that this was exactly what I needed and wanted to feel like me again: a project to get my teeth into that would have a beginning, a middle and an end. Something that I might even be good at and succeed in.
Essentially, everything I wasn’t feeling as a desperately lonely and unconfident mother.
We met and the agent was wonderful, warm and reassuring. She was complimentary about my writing and the topic of baby loss, which at the time was not as mainstream as it is now. People were taking about it (one of my pet peeves is when people say that no one is talking about it - they were, they just hadn’t been given the platform that they deserved), but it just hadn’t reached wider audiences. Social media, and Instagram in particular, was just starting to explode and with that has come increasing access to conversations on difficult topics.
I signed a contract and learned more about the process. I would write a proposal and a couple of chapters, this would be sent out to various publishers and we would wait to see if anyone wanted to pick it up. Simple. I was writing regularly and liberally at that time anyway, even with a small baby who never slept. This would surely be no problem at all.
I started writing. Quite a bit in fact - I have just looked over some of it and there are thousands and thousands of words. But nothing felt quite right. I wanted to be a beacon of hope, of positivity and (this make me cringe deeply), inspiration. I groan inwardly when I admit this. I wanted to portray all of the things that I actually didn’t feel - I just didn’t realise that I didn’t feel them.
I went back to my agent and said that things weren’t flowing as I had hoped. That maybe I needed a bit of time. She was kind and patient, explaining that there was no timeframe. No pressure. That I had a book in me and it didn’t matter when this came to fruition.
But I felt pressure internally. This was the only thing I felt that I could be good at. My blog and social media account had breathed life into me when there was absolutely none left. My baby had died on my watch, inside my body, and writing had become my way to seek forgiveness for this. I couldn’t save Orla, but I could offer my support to other people. I could offer information that might actually save other babies (something I felt a lot of conflict about in the early days when I was so angry that it had to be my baby who died) or I could be a compassionate ear to those who were grieving.
I couldn’t help myself, but I could help others.
Around that time, my mental health slowly began to unravel. I believe that it would have happened anyway at some point, but I think the book issue sped up the process somewhat. At a similar time, others in the baby loss community were offered book deals and my response to anything that feels remotely competitive is to withdraw. I throw in the towel and admit defeat. I do not feel able to compete with others, and so I don’t.
Things at home became harder. Sleep more scarce. Long bouts of excruciating crying. Reflux. Loneliness. Hours and hours walking alone in parks and the streets of London. Sitting on the sofa alone (from what I can remember, watching Love Island). Soothing my baby alone with no one to soothe me.
When sleep came, it was fitful, clouded with intrusive images of my baby dying, of terrible things happening to her and of me not being able to prevent it. Over and over again. My body was flooded with fear, panic and shame.
And in my heart, I just knew that I couldn’t write a book. Because my story was still unfolding. My trauma was only just starting to emerge. What I thought had been trauma and grief had been only the tip of the iceberg, and now the sea level was dropping to reveal the true depth and breadth of what existed within me. Things that predated Orla’s death. Things that I had carried since childhood.
Yet despite knowing this in my bones, I felt horrendous for not being able to just do it. To just write the bloody book.
I felt so stupid and naive for having told some people about my agent. I berated myself for being so ridiculous to believe that I could achieve something like this. I wallowed in my embarrassment. I lay awake at night wondering what people thought of me. The pity they must be feeling. The second hand embarrassment. For weeks and weeks.
Then I broke.
I wrote a blog post a few years ago about going to the GP and being referred to the perinatal mental health team (you can read it here). It was the beginning of the unravelling and the rebuilding. It was the thing that allowed my metamorphosis into motherhood to actually begin. Learning to parent in the shadow of death. A transition that continues, but is much less fraught.
And so here I am seven years later. With various other failures under my belt and other chapters in my reproductive story lived. In that time, my agent has left the industry and many other books on the subject have been published. I know there is always space for more, but the question is, do I have it in me to be that ‘more’? What if I try again and fail? What if I try, fail and fall again? Do I have the resilience?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Or maybe it’s about reframing that failure as a sign that the time simply wasn’t right. I was in a bad place, my writing was not a true reflection of how I was really feeling and I had so much more to go through and grow through.
It just wasn’t my time. But hopefully, one day, my time will come.
Michelle x