The Man Who Didn’t Call by Rosie Walsh

I read this in two long bursts - one of which started at 3am. It’s a book I couldn’t put down because all i wanted was these two people back together. The harsh realities of grief and lifelong family rifts are well drawn and believable. All of these people are trying to move forward despite their lives missing a beat one day on a country road, where a split second decision has lifelong consequences. This book explores grief, loss, loyalty, loneliness and the eventual incredible ability the human heart has to heal. 

Sarah has a 7 day whirlwind romance with Eddie. They meet by chance on a country road while Sarah is visiting her parents. She thinks Eddie just might be the one. But, Eddie goes away on holiday and she never hears from him again. Is Eddie a heartless playboy who never intended to call? Did Sarah do something wrong? Or has something terrible happened to him? Instead of listening to friends and writing this off as a one night stand, Sarah begins to obsess and is determined to find the answer. Every clue she has comes to a dead end and she is in danger of completely losing her dignity. As her time back home in the UK starts to run out, Sarah looks for clues to track Eddie down. What she hears is confusing her further. His friend doesn’t give the simple answer, that Eddie has moved on, but gives her a warning; if she knows what’s best for her, she needs to stop looking for Eddie. 

Walsh has successfully intertwined a love story with a mystery. I veered between wondering if Sarah was becoming irrational and willing her to succeed. Interspersed with the narrative are beautiful letters of love and loss addressed to the writer’s sister, affectionately nicknamed ‘Hedgehog’. The letter writer’s sister died when they were young, but we don’t know what happened or who the letter writer is. If Sarah is the author of the letters does this loss have something to do with the warning she’s been given? Is her sister the key - not just to Eddie’s disappearance, but to why Eddie was on that particular stretch of road on that day? 

I quickly became invested in Sarah and Eddie’s story. I think we’ve all been subjected to the watched phone that never rings and how crazy it can make us. It could have made me dislike Eddie early on, but for some reason I never did. I’m definitely a hopeless romantic so I seemed to accept Sarah’s hope that this could still work out. The other characters in the novel are also well-written and compelling. I’m a therapist so I was particularly interested in Eddie’s mother and her mental ill health. I think her symptoms and the way she manipulated Eddie showed a streak of narcissism. She finds it impossible to see this situation from his point of view, only how it might  her. Anything that threatens their dynamic as carer and patient is a huge threat to her and she responds with emotional blackmail and hostility. Eddie is as much a prisoner of her mental ill health as she is. I also had empathy for Sarah’s friend Jenny who is struggling to conceive and undergoes IVF treatment to the point of financial ruin. Her character probably leapt out at me because I’m also not able to have children, and know how difficult it can be to come to terms with. Her stoicism and determination to support her friend in the face of her own loss is very moving. 

I stayed up until 2am to finish the book, because I had everything crossed that the mystery would be explained and these two people could move forward together. To different degrees, all the novels characters are imprisoned by the past and losses they can’t accept.  My husband died when he was 42 and I was 35. It’s like a chasm opened up and I had to choose between staying on one side forever, with the past and my feelings of loss and fear. Or I could choose to jump over that chasm into a new future. I never forget what happened or the love I have for Jerzy, but twelve years later I have a wonderful partner and two beautiful stepdaughters. Thankfully, I had the bravery to move forward knowing I can’t lose my memories of the past but I still have a future full of possibilities I never imagined. That’s what the characters in the novel are trying to do. Grief is different for everyone and there are always tensions between those who are trying to heal and those who can’t imagine healing because it feels like a betrayal. Rosie Walsh draws these different threads together beautifully, creating a bittersweet novel that captures the incredible ability the human heart has to heal. 

Home Truths by Susan Lewis

‘How far would you go to keep your family safe’?


I have read some of Susan Lewis’s earlier novels and this one felt different to me. The writing always  takes hold and pulls you into the characters world, but this novel addresses so many contemporary social and political issues. It felt more like a world I could identify with; I have worked for over twenty years in mental health and I come up against these issues all the time. My client group is largely people with physical disabilities so the effects of the bedroom tax, PIP reforms, and now universal credit, have been a huge cause of depression and anxiety. It was great to see a contemporary novel tackle issues I feel so strongly about.

The novel opens with the shocking scene where Stephen is the victim of a vicious assault at the hands of a gang, including his own son. Liam left home after his drug addiction and friendships within a gang started to affect family life. It is an incident between Liam and his youngest son that leads to  Steve being attacked and we meet Steve’s family in the aftermath of his death. Angie is missing Steve but trying to keep strong and hold her family together, despite everything going wrong financially. As well as the younger son the couple have a teenage daughter, Grace. The family have lived a life very dependent on Steve and the goodwill of his business mentor. Steve contracted as a painter and decorator, but worked mostly with one property developer. Through him the family rent a home on the best estate in town, at a low cost and with all the features Angie has wanted. But Steve does not have life insurance and without his income Angie can’t keep on top of the bills. The rent is increased and despite having Universal Credit Angie can’t stop the debt piling up. She has a part time job running a local charity that works with homeless people, but it doesn’t pay well. It also makes it more difficult for her to ask for help, because she is meant to be the one with the answers. As life becomes more desperate Angie tries to hide her situation from everyone. They lose the dream home, sell their possessions and end up with the children at her sister’s and Angie sleeping in her car. How will the family come back from this and will Angie’s relationship with her eldest child Liam ever recover?

Despite the familiarity with the subject matter I found Angie’s character difficult to connect with. I seemed to identify more with Grace, her daughter. As a therapist, I do a lot of self- reflection and I wondered if I identified with her because my parents struggled financially when I was a teenager. I know how hard it is to be different from your peers and unable to enjoy the same clothes and activities. Their bereavement and financial struggles have left Grace especially vulnerable; she is angry with her Mum but also wants to help and tries to find ways of making money. This is where unscrupulous people can come in and exploit her anger by inciting that need to rebel, and urge to take matters into her own hands. We get the sense that the mysterious texter who offers to help isn’t who she claims to be. I couldn’t help but be scared for her.

This is a good read and maybe an introduction to some readers as to how tough it is out there once you need the safety net of the benefit system. It wasn’t quite as gritty as I was expecting, but perhaps that says more about me than the book! I think it did show that everyone is only a couple of misfortunes away from being on the streets. We all push things like sorting life insurance to one side, without realising how catastrophic the consequences can be. The home truths of the title allude to Angie understanding the truth of her situation and the inner realisation of just how far we’ll go to look after the people we love most.

Thank you to Harper Fiction for my proof copy of this book and for letting me to join the blog tour. See below for the next stops on the tour.

The Cliff House by Amanda Jennings

I often pick up books about Cornwall as it is a favourite haunt of mine. It’s a romantic, beautiful setting but it’s history of struggle between the haves and have nots goes back centuries. This tension between local and wealthy visitor still resonates through the pages of this book set largely in the 1980s.

Tamsyn is as local as it gets. Her grandfather worked the tin mines, her father was a lifeboat volunteer and her brother is struggling to find work that’s not seasonal. Tamsyn’s attachment to The Cliff House comes to a head in the summer of 1986. To her, the house represents escape, perfection and her last link to her father, who brought her here to swim in the pool when the owners were away. Her father felt rules were made to be broken and they both consider it madness to own such a slice of perfection overlooking the sea yet rarely visiting except for a few weeks in the summer. Now Tamsyn watches the Cliff House alone and views the Davenports as the height of sophistication. Their life is a world away from her cramped cottage, her Granfer’s coughing and his red spattered handkerchiefs and their constant struggle for money.

Tamsyn is firmly a have not. Her hero father died rescuing a drowning child and now she has to watch her mother’s burgeoning friendship with the man who owns the chip shop. Her brother is unable to find work but finds odd jobs and shifts where he can to put his contribution under the kettle in the kitchen. Mum works at the chip shop but is also the Davenport’s cleaner. She keeps their key in the kitchen drawer, but every so often Tamsyn steals it and let’s herself in to admire Eleanor Davenports clothing and face creams and Max’s study with a view of the sea. Yet, the family’s real lives are only a figment of her imagination until she meets Edie.

Edie Davenport is a disaffected teenager with heavy eye make-up, black clothing and a love of The Cure. The two girls hit it off and Tamsyn learns that Edie has been expelled from her exclusive girls school. She has a spiky relationship with her Mum and as readers we can see why. While Tamsyn seems oblivious to the problems of the family, the reader can see a family already disintegrating. Max hides away writing and is accused of having multiple affairs by his wife. Eleanor is an alcoholic, on medication for depression and seemingly paranoid about her husbands behaviour. As the summer goes on, their relationships worsen and we get a sense that the Davenports are the worst kind of rich people; to quote from The Great Gatsby, they are people who are careless of the lives of others. The summer party shows the couple at their decadent worst and it is fitting that the final acts of the novel occur surrounded by the detritus of that night.

 Tamsyn wishes her mum were more like Eleanor at times. She butters her up by helping with her make-up, painting her nails and letting her borrow her clothes. Yet she never sees her as an equal to her daughter. The scene where Tamsyn realises that she hasn’t been invited to the party, but is expected to work in the kitchen is particularly painful. I found myself very caught up with Tamsyn’s narrative - possibly because I remember being an awkward teenager from a poor background at a school full of middle class kids. I only start to question her motivations very late in the novel. I know she is becoming obsessed with the house and family, but underestimated how seriously she takes her link to house. As Edie meets Tamsyn’s brother Jago and their mutual attraction becomes clear, Tamsyn’s jealousy is obvious. There is a sense from here on that this entangled lives and simmering tensions will reach a crescendo - rather like Jago points out, the seventh wave is always the largest and comes crashing over the rocks below.

I won’t reveal the ending only to say it didn’t conclude the way I expected. I was left feeling like I’d underestimated some characters and I wanted to go back and read their sections again to see if they read differently now I knew the eventual outcome. I think, very cleverly, some characters were deliberately understated so that more volatile and explosive characters seemed to be driving the narrative. I felt left with the question of how we feel when we get what we’ve always wanted? Are we left haunted by what we had to do to succeed? And is our victory celebrated or largely empty? Ultimately, as s reader, it made me realise how much trust we place in our narrator and how effective it is when that trust is misplaced.

The Retreat by Sherri Smith

‘Each woman has come to the retreat for different reasons. Each has her secrets to hide. And at the end of this weekend, only one will be left standing’.

The premise appealed to me. The idea of a retreat as the place of secrets and potential murder was to good to resist. My own idea of hell is going to a spa; especially with groups of women. I’ve been invited to hen weekends at spas. I hate them. The thought of sitting around in a dressing gown with women I’ve only just met fills me with horror. So, a novel exploring the dark side of the wellness industry seemed perfect for me and I have enjoyed others exploring the same experience like Liane Moriaty’s ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’ or Mark Edwards ‘The Retreat’.

It took a while for me to get into the novel,  because I couldn’t relate to any of the characters. Each woman narrates her own chapter creating different perspectives on the story as it unfolds. Katie is the lynchpin of the group. She is a washed-up child star still living off her glory days as child sleuth Shelby Slade. Katie is rapidly working her way through her fortune and thinks back fondly to her manager AJ who looked after her. Unable to find work as an actor Katie has a void in her life that she fills by spending money. She has an unexplained scar on one cheek and I had the sense there was a story to unfold that would be as much of a revelation to Katie as it would be to me.

Ellie has suggested the retreat because she wants Katie to benefit and have a breakthrough. She is marrying Katie’s brother Nate and in her chapters we learn that they live under Katie’s penthouse in a building she owns. We learn that Katie is very dependent on her brother and there seems to be an underlying resentment over Nate having to support his sister so heavily. Ellie pushes the benefits of the ayahuasca tea ceremony, hoping that the spiritual journey will be an awakening for Katie. Early on I felt there were a few aspects of Ellie’s story that didn’t add up. She has no family around her and her British accent is questioned by people they meet. Ellie’s perfect exterior is hiding something darker.

Ariel is one of Katie’s friends and is set up as an unwelcome rival to Ellie. Ariel is overweight and low in confidence. She once slept with Nate and had hoped this would develop into a relationship. She is vulnerable and seems to be running away from a relationship with a married man. She drops  hints about something she might have done to her lovers pregnant wife and seems to be open to the transformation the retreat offers.

Carmen is also a friend of Katie’s but comes to the retreat from a totally different background to the others. She lives in the poor area of the city with her siblings and her father, who has Parkinson’s disease. She desperate wants to escape the poverty she’s in and can’t even afford to fix the boiler, even though she works long hours as a home care worker. She is her father’s carer and is struggling to support the family on her wage. She often has to ask Katie for hand-outs and is desperate for the self-care of a retreat but also susceptible to any opportunity to make money - even if it is illegal.

Mixing with these four are Dr Dave and his partner Naomi who facilitate the group and the other attendees. Simon and Marie are staying away from the main house in their own cottage; giving them the opportunity to keep their own secrets. The mysterious Lily recognises Katie right away and is her biggest fan, but is it her that leaves the Shelby Spade balloon in the grounds?

We’re never sure of the motives of any character and that hooked me. I love an unreliable narrator and here there are four. Because I’m a counsellor I was interested in the unraveling of these characters and their real inner stories. I thought Katie’s self realisation was well written and it kept me reading. Although I’d worked out early on which girl was hiding her true reasons for the retreat I still enjoyed watching it unfold and the denouement  still held surprises for me. I found myself more drawn in towards the middle and read the rest in one afternoon because the suspense had me hooked. This is a great exploration of toxic friendship and how vulnerable people are preyed upon by the unscrupulous within the well-being industry.

Thanks to Sarah Mather and Titan books for my gifted copy.

Books Are My Medicine

I have always been a bookworm. At primary school I went through the reading scheme at 8 years old so could have 'library time' while everyone else was reading with the teacher. This meant snuggling into an old bean bag and having half an hour to pick any book I wanted to read. My first was Little Women and Jo was (and still is) my first literary heroine. From there it was Pippi Longstocking, Little My, Katy Carr, Pollyanna and Anne of Green Gables. By the age of ten I was discovering the gothic delights of Jane Eyre and Miss Havisham. Reading was a delightful escape from the world and nothing would have pleased me more than to have a big window seat to curl up in on a rainy day where no one could find me. Many childhood visits to stately homes consisted of me running from one space to another thinking ‘Here! Yes, this is where I would come to read undisturbed’. The grotto at Chatsworth House was a particular favourite. As I grew older that escape became more important and therapeutic.

In my final term of primary school, instead of jumping the high jump bar, I decided to somersault over it. I landed awkwardly and knew something was wrong immediately. I felt a crack and a flash of pain in my back. I broke two vertebrae at T3 and 4 and crushed the disc between the two. I thought, like my heroines Katy Carr and Pollyanna, I was going to be paralysed. In hindsight and with psychological training, I think the change that occurred in me at that time was more about the fear of movement rather than an actual physical inability to move. I became more introspective and if I climbed a tree it was so I could curl up in it and read – usually while my brother fished from the next tree over. By the time I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the age of 21 I had adjusted to a more sedentary way of being and this is where books became more than a pleasure, they were a medicine.

I have days when I am well and they feel like spring; a gentle awakening of my body. Yet I do spend more time living from my bed than I would like. I have the constitution of a sloth some days; simply existing from one period of deep sleep to the next. The noise of the TV or radio can be too much at times and being in quiet is the only option. Lately, aside from the fatigue,  I have been suffering from nerve pain and vertigo. The nerve pain is weird. It feels like a prickling sensation over my leg and if I try to touch it the feeling is so intense I almost expect to see sparks. Then when I move my leg there is a searing, burning sensation all the way down my leg. It makes my foot go numb. The vertigo can be a strange sensation of twisting between my eyes with a little bit of blurring. It can intensify so that my vision is compromised. One of my eyes doesn’t focus and I feel like my brain is sloshing around in my head. Then it feels like the floor moves from under me and I start to feel sick. The only thing that settles it is rest. I have to lie flat for a while until it passes.

The one thing I can do through most of these symptoms is read. I have never lost my love of reading. Nothing beats the joy of finding a new novel I fall in love with such as Lucy Atkins The Night Visitor or Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist. Books that you can’t stop reading but don’t want to end all at the same time. Even better when you’re laid up for a long period is an author new to me but with a great back catalogue I can spend a couple of weeks catching up with. This happened to me with Louise Candlish and Elly Griffiths recently. I like to read real books but do find that I default to a kindle more and more. Although, if I love the book I will still buy a real copy for my book shelves, especially if there is a beautiful cover. For me the kindle is my constant companion. It is light, portable and I can alter the brightness depending on my vision that day. It is easier for me to hold – it’s hard to believe that holding a book can be painful but it does affect my arms, shoulders and back. I can manage a kindle one handed and easily highlight or bookmark my favourite sections. This makes blogging and studying easier.

Whenever I am well I am the first to be up and about, trying to catch up with all the things I’ve wanted to do. When I’m not, books bring the world to me. I read books set in my favourite places like Venice and Cornwall. I read books set in new places I haven’t had the chance to see yet. It opens up fantasy worlds to me, when I truly need a complete escape from the real one. If I’m feeling very vulnerable and need comfort I can re-read an old favourite like a Jilly Cooper romp, novels like Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus or Joanne Harris’s Chocolat series that sprinkle magic into my life. I can read about people I identify with or whose experiences I have shared. Reading Jojo Moyes’s novel Me Before You, and it’s sequels let me into the world of Lou Clarke who is my literary soul sister. I too met a man with a severe disability and fell in love, only to lose him. Each new instalment of her story uplifts and brings me joy, but also makes me realise I can carry on and I’m not alone. Caitlin Moran’s books make me laugh and take me back to my teenage years in the 1990s. There is a book out there for every prescription and that is honestly how I see my reading. Each book is therapy in its way, even if it is simply helping the time pass. Even in hospital, I will have a pile of books on my bedside table and start diving in as soon as I am able. Now ,to convince the GP to put a monthly book token on my repeat prescription.

City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert

A joyous, exhilarating, riot of a book

When one of my favourite authors writes a new book I always experience a confusing mix of emotions. Excitement and anticipation mix with fear; will I love it as much as I love their last book? I don’t want to be disappointed. This is how I approached Liz Gilbert’s new book City of Girls. Like a lot of readers my first encounter with Gilbert’s writing was Eat, Pray, Love; a book that was nothing short of a cultural phenomenon, not to mention the following hit film. For me, it was her novel The Signature of All Things that caught the imagination. The combination of a sparky and intelligent heroine, the feminist theme and the historical detail came together in a beautifully woven story. So as the publication date approached for her new novel I desperately wanted it to live up to her first.

I shouldn’t have worried. City of Girls is a joyous, exhilarating riot of a book. Our narrator, Vivian, plunges us into 1940s Manhattan where she is sent by her parents after expulsion from Vassar. There she is placed in the care of her Aunt Peg who runs the, slightly ramshackle, Lily Theatre. I was suddenly immersed in the bohemian world of theatre people where Vivian soon finds her niche. At Vassar she made friends by creating outfits for the other girls on her trusty sewing machine. So, in her new rooms above the theatre she is soon surrounded by showgirls wanting costumes. I have an interest in fashion and sewing, so I really enjoyed the descriptions of Vivian’s creations, made on a shoestring with a lot of help from Lowtsky’s vintage clothing store downtown. Yet not everything is as it seems on the surface. Is her friendship with showgirl Celia as mutual as it appears? What influence does the matronly and doom laden Olive have over Aunt Peg? Where is Uncle Billy, whose rooms Vivian has been using since her arrival?

 Some of these questions are answered during the production of the brand new play City of Girls. Aunt Peg’s friend Edna Parker Watson comes to stay after losing her London home during the Blitz. Edna is a talented theatre actress who is petite, beautiful and impeccably dressed. She arrives at the Lily with her huge wardrobe and her very famous and much younger husband, Arthur. Every member of the theatre company does their very best to get this musical off the ground and make it a success. Vivian works hard on her costume designs, but also finds herself becoming an unofficial PA and friend to Edna. Determined to put on the best show they can to turn the Lily Theatre’s fortunes around, Aunt Peg agrees to audition for new actors. When Vivian meets Anthony, the new leading man, she falls in love for the very first time. But alongside the awakening of first love, Vivian will also have her eyes opened to how cruel showbiz and the wider world can be. Several revelations teach her that not everyone can be trusted, the most unexpected people can come to your aid, and Vivian realises she has been walking around with her eyes closed. As the Second World War moves ever closer to their shores Vivian is left with a reckoning of her own. Does she want the respectable, quiet life her family expects or does she want to make her own way in a city and a career that is anything but quiet?  

You will fall in love with Vivian as she takes you into her past and candidly shares her exploits in 1940s NYC. She takes you from theatre, to nightclub to a dingy apartment in Hell’s Kitchen where she conducts her first love affair. She holds nothing back and I felt her delight at encountering the bohemian characters of the theatre, her passion and ingenuity for costume work and her discovery of a city laid out before her like a playground. She allows us to experience her growing up with every triumph and mistake she makes along the way. Such an engaging central character is well matched with other beautifully drawn female characters from the dowdy killjoy Olive who has surprising depths, the enigmatic Edna Parker Watson, the brisk and sometimes foolhardy Aunt Peg to the glamorous showgirl Celia who leads our narrator into a world of nightclubs, make-up and disposable men. The women in this novel are strong, surprising and all teach Vivian something about the kind of woman she wants to be. The novel emphasises the importance of strong female role models or mentors in both our personal and working life. I found myself torn between bingeing on this book or savouring it slowly: I wanted to know what happened next but I didn’t want my adventures with Vivian to come to an end.

I'm Not a Celebrity.I Am A Muslim by Sahera Patel

I was offered the chance to read Sahera Patel's book through my Lotus Flower Book Club page on Facebook. She kindly sent me a copy through the post and although it has taken me a little while to make a start, once I opened the book I read it in a couple of days. I have a personal interest in memoir, so much so that when I was pursuing my PhD I focused solely on memoirs of disability. I love to read about the author's life journey and share their inner world. Although many memoirs I have read touched on spirituality in some form, I was surprised when I realised I had never read an autobiography that focused on Islam and what being a Muslim means.

Patel's memoir starts with her father's terminal illness and this thread runs throughout as she shares with the reader her own life growing up to be a young British Muslim woman. She cleverly anchors the book with tenets of her faith that I found both informative and inspirational. She grows up in the wake of her parent's emigration from India and their resilience when reality hit that life in Britain was not as they expected. The author's raw honesty as she describes the domestic violence she and her siblings witnessed is breathtaking. They become attuned to the moods of their father who is disappointed with what Britain has to offer him. He struggles with the responsibilities placed upon him by the wider family back home who believe that everyone in Britain has money. This pressure intensifies as his own family grows and his escape is gambling. Patel describes poker nights at their home, where there is smoking, drinking and her father losing housekeeping money which only exacerbates their problems. All of this destructive behaviour is not only against his faith, but makes the family's money worries so much worse. They are in a vicious circle, culminating in outbursts of verbal abuse, damaging property and eventually physical violence. The children can sense what is coming and try to divert their father, or take their mother out of his sight line to prevent attacks. The sense of walking on eggshells comes across strongly, as does the sibling's heightened awareness of both their father and their mother's seeming inability to know when trouble is brewing. I strongly felt the sense of isolation; that they cannot tell anyone what is going on, but try to cope with it alone.

Despite, or perhaps because of this difficult family experience Patel's maturity and humanity shine through on every page of this memoir. She recognises that for some people this might be the first time they get to see the world through the eyes of a British Muslim and her explanations of certain customs or rituals are always engaging and often informative, helped by excerpts from The Koran. Her faith sustains her throughout her life, perhaps because it is constant and therefore provides a contentment not present in her earlier life. The compassionate way she is able to love and forgive is highly inspirational to me. She writes that in Islam it is not permitted to expose a fellow Muslim's sin and that she had to reflect deeply upon her feelings for her father. The soul searching exposes a dilemma between wanting to remain true to her faith and respect the man she knows is dying. However, there is also a personal spiritual need emerging, that of catharsis and truth. Patel decides to portray her childhood truthfully with bravery and with a spiritual honesty that is heart rending.

I thoroughly enjoyed the section where Patel starts the process of looking for a husband; an introduction is made and she has the option to agree to a courtship or not. The description of the tiny bedroom where potential suitors are sent up to be 'vetted' is comical. Patel clarifies the process of 'arranged marriage' showing that she has the power all along and also the importance of looking for compatibility in a life partner as well as that spark of attraction. I was also fascinated by the description of their eventual pilgrimage to Mecca where both their spiritual and physical strength is tested to the limit.

I took so much away from this book: a new understanding of Islam and the clarification of traditional customs that I thought I knew about; an incredible example of love and loyalty within a family despite the pain and hurt caused over the years; but most of all an impression of a young woman with a quiet strength - comfortable and content with herself and her choices, as well as the enduring faith which sustains her. I felt honoured to share such an intimate and honest journey of self-reflection.