People often ask why we stopped writing.
The simple answer is that life got in the way.
The truthful answer is that life completely overwhelmed us.
For years, I’d always found a way through whatever parenting threw at us. I believed that if I worked hard enough, learnt enough, advocated loudly enough or simply kept going for one more day, we’d find our way.
Then everything changed.
What began as difficulties in school quickly became something much bigger. We weren’t just trying to support an anxious little boy anymore. We found ourselves trying to navigate systems, policies and people who simply couldn’t see what we could.
They saw behaviour.
We saw fear.
They saw refusal.
We saw a child whose anxiety had become unbearable.
The days became painfully repetitive. We’d summon every ounce of energy to get him through the school gates, only for the phone to ring a few hours later asking us to collect him. The next morning we’d do it all again, while being reminded that he had to attend school.
It became the definition of madness: repeating the same impossible routine and hoping for a different outcome.
We were an ordinary working family trying to keep all the plates spinning. Careers. School. Home. Appointments. Meetings. Endless emails.
Eventually, something had to give.
It was me.
I stepped away from the career I loved because I realised my son didn’t need me trying to do everything. He needed me to do one thing well.
He needed me to fight for him.
That decision would change the course of our lives in ways I could never have imagined.
At the time, though, it simply meant there was no space left to write.
Now, three years later, there finally is.
And perhaps that’s exactly where this story should begin.
