What did you do during the Pandemic? Answer: I wrote Telling Stories, my next book which will hopefully be published next year.
During that year I finally found the space, place and time to write an account of my search for my birth family. It turned out to be a much more complicated book than I first imagined, comprising of a huge variety of texts: original source documents like my adoption file; historical research; case notes and reflections from my professional career; letters and email correspondence; and extracts from the poetry diary I kept of my search from the very first day I sent off the form requesting my original birth certificate.
Wrapped around all these sources was the landscape in which I gardened, planted and walked every day. As I coaxed foxglove seedlings into life or hid for a glimpse of a hare, the natural world taught me new lessons on the old dilemmas which surround adoption: loss, genetics, nature v nurture, the quality of resilience. The morning pages I wrote that year bring this understanding to the book and front each chapter.
A few years ago, I wrote a piece for the Guardian about the search for my birth mother. A lot has happened since then, but this may give you some insight into Telling Stories. Guardian Family 28.3.15