Where Fractured Motherhood Started

 

As I was finishing SPLIT, I found myself wondering what would come next. My friend and mentor, Lee Kofman, suggested I write about my life as a mother of adopted children. And that’s where the first spark of Fractured Motherhood began.

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At first, I imagined it as a love letter to my children—an intimate telling of how I  yearned to be a mother and the joy of finally bringing them into our lives. But when I stepped back, I realised the story had become too sweet, too much like the fairy-tale version of parenthood we all secretly hope for.

 

I had forgotten a crucial truth: I am a woman living with complex mental health challenges. After the brutal honesty of SPLIT, I didn’t want to revisit being MPD. I didn’t want to go there again.

 

Staring at the early pages on my screen, I realised I was only writing half the truth. Yes—there was joy, delight, laughter. But there was so much more to my journey into motherhood.

 

So I began again.

 

This time, I traced the tangled threads of my relationship with my own mother, and the profound way it shaped my life. The story deepened. I realised how much Mother had affected me. While Father abused me, Mother allowed it. And suddenly, I found myself wrestling with the ghosts of that mother–daughter bond.

 

Then, in a moment of serendipity, I gained access to a trove of historical photos of my parents—from their childhood, their wartime service, and their time living in the US. With these pieces, I began forming a picture of who they might have been, and the histories that shaped them long before they shaped me.

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Fractured Motherhood grew from that exploration: a story about facing my past while trying to build a different future for my children. At its heart lies one question: How did I break the chains of intergenerational trauma when my parents could not?

 

That question—and its answer—became the soul of this book. (Hint: it’s all about hope.)

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Pre-orders available now!