Parliament? Policy, people, and a prison visit. Awards, grades and it's only Wednesday. A week in the life of Fran

 I think a blog today was inevitable; it's been quite a wild 7 days.

Those of you who read along as I write, diligently awaiting the next chapter and installment of the life of Fran will know that this time last week; indeed, to the minute in fact as I type; I was sat in the Doctors office having a fairly difficult and by and large tragic conversation. Indeed, those of you who read this blog will also know, I don't cope well with grief, loss and difficult emotional conversations sometimes and that more often than not, my coping mechanism is to drive right on through the road blocks and work hard, do more and have a world full of distraction. I suppose the fact I'm typing this from the train station lounge on my laptop, having had a whirlwind two days in London, following on from a wild week last week work wise, is indicative of that. And it's never easy work; as it's fuelled by who I am, what I care about and it can be draining to drive what feels like my lifeforce into the dark parts and back out again, but walking through fire is part of the job description for lived experience wonder women (non-binaries) like me.

I suppose I've been keeping my mind occupied, today as I was en-route to a womens prison down south, my NHS app flashed to let me know I have an appointment with our fertility consultant next week; it feels a bit fresh. It feels a bit raw. It's almost ironic that we've been on this treadmills for so long that we can go months without contact, jump through hoops, be on a waiting list, drop off one, meet the criteria, and rinse and repeat. I suppose last weeks sad news, combined with my weight loss goal being more or less perfection in terms of NHS fertility funding; I'm the success story yo-yo-ing between being an ozempic queen, a mounjaro monster, a cold turkey flying solo weight loss whizz kid. It's not been linear, and I live my life like any other, through the lens of envy at times that my journey has been up and down and I don't look like I hoped I would, that things still don't fit the way I want them too, that I expected some sort of TikTok unveiling of a hot new bod - I took a picture yesterday morning, cheekbones were popping, chin was singular, face was HOT. I took a picture yesteday afternoon (angle - not kind, boomer vibes point UP) and I looked like I ate the person who was on my instagram yesterday morning; cheeks plumped out, chin threatening to bring back it's best mate, and I felt bleh, I went from feeling fit, thin and fab at 10am, to chubby butterball in the evening. Both are true; girls living with PCOS letting insulin resisitance, inflammation and water weight float around in this body like a life raft; you could literally float me out to sea by end of day, and there's no jade face roller in the world thats going to combat it; I digress, not unusual for a neurodiverse brain running at a million miles a minute whilst feeling all the feelings all at once. My point is; even when I don't see the progress, it's there, whether it's in a chin or two, or in the incredible work thats taking place; it's there.

Yesterday I had the most glorious day of empowerment, visibility and belonging - which is a strange combination of validating factors; when I studied Politics at Uni, bright eyed and bushy tailed aged 18, I had an idealistic notion I could change the world... we are 20 years on and that become more true with each day that passes now.

Stomping through Parliament with a hoarde of angry, fired up women - there's nothing more dangerous. Waiting to go into a room, lined up underneath Theresa May's portrait - I love it. The power, the irony, our T-May looking so stern and like she's about the fuck shit up; surrounded by women who are literally there to fuck shit up and shake up the system that fails time and time again. Tory or not, the woman had balls. Bigger than Keir no doubt.

The first time I went to Parliament, in a room like that; I didn't know anyone, yesterday, I was surrounded by familiar faces, allies, comrades, friends and cheerleaders (and to quote my new favourite person - Daisy; it's a sisterhood!)

I trotted in and sat next to the ever wonderful and always beautiful PROFESSOR Laura Abbott (must change her name in my phone from Dr Abbott) and together, a group of anachists, advocates and allies watched parts of the incredible film Lollipop; yes I've mentioned it before, yes I'll mention it again; and I'll bore you to death in the pestering of WATCH IT AS ITS ON BBC 2 TOMORROW; I'm not kidding - it is; WATCH IT. (And if you don't watch it tomorrow; wathc it on iplayer) 

When I watched Lollipop, it was over the summer, holding my wifes hand in the cinema up north, in sunny Manchester; we both sat in silence, hands clasped together, so much so Sarah didn't even eat the popcorn and anyone who knows her knows this is unheard of! - silence. And then anger.

She was angry because she watched it in slow motion, the injustice, the horror, the hurt, the shame, the pain and she felt it eek into the pain she felt when I was sent to prison and she was failed, as a wife, as my collateral damage. She felt it in my coming home, to a probation officer not fit for purporse and for systems that continued to exacerbate harm, not mediate or heal it. She watched it through the eyes of a woman who married a child of the care system. And I watched it yesterday in Parliament as just that.

The street rat from London who was adopted too many years after the fact; from poverty to priviledge and back again; I watched Lollipop yesterday and my childish brain saw the pain and the struggle of a mother who would have set fire to the world to have her babies back - mine did not do that. She had us taken, one by one. I was made a Ward of court, she was a danger, my father was a danger, they were not fit to be parents, whether through choice or chokehold of addiction and bad behaviour; we weren't taken by the care system we were given.

But as I watched beautiful Posy articulate Molly's struggle in the film; I wondered for the first time, a different avenue of thought - what if people had helped Bridie? (my biological mother) - because for all her flaws; she was failed too. Just because she didn't fight for us, doesn't mean she didn't want to; she just wasn't equipped to do so. This is a woman who has lived a life like mine, early years; and it's not my story to tell - however her court reports are in the public domain; which is where I myself learned I am the daughter of a woman who went to prison; but in short; she is a classic case of systems failure. Not protected by the state from bad men, from early years, to marriage, she didn't have many options for recovery. She was bound to the life of crime through the dependence and familiarity it gave her. No-one showed her a better way. 

She needed the chance to leave the area, get away from the monsters, both at home and in marriage, she needed a safe space, to heal, get help, get clean, get housed, get whole. She needed time to understand how to be a mother and not part of a cycle. I am literally the product of a generational curse. Compounded through a distorted and paradox life of privildge which ended the same way; trauma, abadonment and pain.

She needed more than the option to just give her children away; because with one, then it had to be two, by the time baby 3 (me) and baby 4 my younger brother came along; she was never going to be allowed to keep one.

So I watched Lollipop with a pain in my heart yesterday; that Bridie was failed, in echoes of the ways I was too. We both ended up behind bars and broken, causing chaos and destruction in our wake for longer than should ever have been allowed to be the case. I watched Holloway with the same pain, knowing that's where she spent some of her prison years; that she became an institutionalised cliche and remains so even now shes a lifer in the community.

I am the daughter of a killer, a nonce, and thereafter two white privildge twats who don't do babies with baggage.

But I'm still the kid who turned into the adult and walked into Parliament yesterday to give every part of me, my past, present and future to create a world where there are less Frans and less Bridies and more healed, happy, healthy women who can shape the world they belong in properly.

After the emotional rollercoaster, I put the world to rights with a few superwomen in a pub across the road, hours of chit chat and life and then I wandered to a perfectly lovely hotel across the bridge and facetimed Sarah to tell her about my day.

It's Wednesday. 7 days after we had news of our sad loss of what could have been.

It's been alot.

Today, I zoomed off to a womens prison to talk "life after prison" the reality, the barriers, how to overcome them - what it takes to do it. An army. An army of us.

I talked about the road to self-employment, to the freedom of doing what I love, what it takes, what it breaks, what it means; to do something you love, that takes a lot from who you are. But that it's worth it. When I got there, I sat at the front, in my little panelist chair, holding the microphone, facing a room full of women - and I thought "just like me," - faces full of optimism and hope, despite their incarceration. Faces full of joy. Despite the bars. There to listen, learn and take it all in.

What a joy, what a privildge. But I still have the ache, of leaving the prison walls, the keys and the gates, to come home. That I sit, I type, I drink my coffee, I have my moment of repreive before returning home. And they go back, to the cells, to the wing, to the bang up, to the quiet, to the roar, the noise, the nothing. And I still don't get it. That I get to prance into a prison, talk all things hope and happiness if you put the work in and not feel the hypocrisy of being the one who gets to leave.

One woman I spoke to, it was like looking in a mirror; in for financial crime, slammed, harsh sentence, ripped from her family, job, friends, reputation, life. Ripped. And alone. We spoke. She had tears in her eyes. I said "would you like a hug? I'm not a hugger, but I'm learning that sometimes, it's just the right thing at the right time and you look like you need one,"

Her reply? "Yes, but I don't want to get into trouble," and I remembered all over again, the brutality and inhumanity of what prison really is. Where a woman in pain cannot be consoled by another, for the fear of it being a risk, a danger, an opportunity to pass something. It's barbaric. So I gripped her arm and said with every ounce of authenticty and love for another human being "It will be Ok, I promise,"

And she said "I believe you, thank you," and was ushered off by a prison officer with a smaller dick than me I'm sure; forgive the vulgarity, to see the punitive barbarism boils my blood.

I imagine, much like me - this woman will have her OASY assessment, her risk will be low, she's not a danger to society, she's a fragile idiot who for whatever reason, broke the law. We are all human. We all deserve the respect, decency and humanity our prisons lack. Our justice system lacks.

Beautiful beautiful Molly Ellis said yesterday "Empathy and compassion are two different things, empathy is 'I see you, I hear you, I feel you,' and compassion is 'I see you, I hear you, I feel you, and I'm going to do what I can to help you and make it better'"

More compassion please.

And now, some self care, some compassion for Fran.

I will work until my train zooms me back to Manchester (and with the bougie first class upgrade I won on seatfrog auction, girls having a prosecco and a cheese plate) and I will share the joys of my day

(got a FIRST in my uni assignment - big deal, as it tips my grades up and up to look pretty damn tasty for graduation; was announced as a FINALIST in the Northern Power Women Awards - Agent of Change; kind of appropriate given this weeks work in the least! And got offered some pretty epic work along the way. Today is a good day. Tomorrow may well be too. But I will turn off the laptop, give my love focus and attention to my wife, as we head end of week to watch our best friend get married)

I am blessed in this life I built. We built.

I'll be blessed to do this for the rest of my life.

The Barren Barker-Mills

Growing up, my mum and I said some awful things to eachother.

It's fair to say, she was happy to continue that when we separated.

I remember vividly sitting in my room, cross legged on my bed, seething. A burning anger. One that became the undertone of how I felt about her. Not anymore. I let it all go.

But in my late teens, I sat angry. Alot.

We'd argued. She had done what is now known in our house as the notoroious "Christine," which is a firm grip of the chin, where she would pull me face to look at her and demand for me to repeat whatever childish thing I'd said.

In this instance, "What did you just say?" was met with me repeating something I still regret now. Even more so in the context of what I'm about to write.

"I said, there is a reason you couldn't have kids,"

Brutal, and of all the words we exchanged through two decades of war, these were ones I wish I could take back. I'd been sat on the bed thinking it, feeling it, rage coursing through me. Why did she hate me so? She wanted kids so much she went through the labourious process of getting two, so what couldn't she just love me? In every action, every word, whether she realised it at the time, or now, aging into 70's with a memory loss that is specific to me, I don't exist, I'm not mentioned, and even people who knew me back then, I'm sure in 2026, wonder if I was real, because with the passing of time. Francesca Barker ceases to exist in past, present or future. Just a memory of a little blonde girl with a cockney accent, who turned into the heartbreak of her parents.

She was never short of a response in viterol, that remains true even now. So when I said those words, I'd expected a painful heartbreak, a flinch, to release me from her grip and her anger. I thought it would wound, thats why I said it. I'll never know if it did or it didn't. My words and actions have pierced her cold heart one too many times to know which one's landed and which ones rolled right off. She, on the other hand, has always known where to gouge me, and her response that day, will live with me, as much as some of our other verbal tangles.

I sat in a prison in 2021, talking through these war of words, my regrets, my pain, my parents, and the loss of who I was and all I had. Those of you who read this blog will know the advice I was given from a woman who has proven to be the catalyst in my mental health recovery - the therapist wonder woman, Cath "Fran you have two choices, you can keep going down the road and expecting it to change and we both agree you've turend yourself inside out trying that, or you can do whats best for you, and leave them in the past. It's today, and you live for you, you're parents, are dead, buried, you mourn and you move on,"

Best advice ever given. Brutal, as brutal as I've been. But honest. I suppose I've been that too in my own way.

I meant it when I said it to her, that there was a reason she couldn't have kids, because I felt in that moment, and for me, I still do, at 38, she shouldn't have been my mother. We both wish she wasn't. Gosh such frank honesty, its horrendous to read it back. It feels cold and callous and without gratitude. I was always told to feel grateful, I was always told I was ungrateful. But that was always designed around things. Not grateful for people, for love, relationships, kindness, friendship, ambition, opporunity. It was ski holidays, it was shopping in Selfridges, it was a mobile phone paid for. I was never taught what real gratitude looks like. Sarah taught me that. It's in the little things.

I sat cross legged on my bed yesterday. I had a small cry. It was an echo twenty years later.

"There is a reason you couldn't have kids," except this time it's the dark space in my brain and my heart speaking to the other side, calling out the worse and the weakness in my greatest fear.

That the reason baby barker-mills evades me, is because I'm not made for this and my biology is trying to tell me that.

I know it's irrational, but I can gurantee every woman who's been in this position feels it too. That we're failing at the one thing we're supposed to do.

On Wednesday evening, I went to the Doctors, and I knew, before I go there, what the converstion, the pelvic examination and gentle chat was going to be. And it was. I didn't cry. I didn't act out. I didn't react at all.

I went back into the waiting room and Sarah was sat there with a look of anxiety and anticipation.

"Yep," I said and she grasped me tighter than ever. We had a hug and I invoked my mothers emotional response, which is "I don't want to cry in public," 

So we left, hand in hand. And in a bewildered haze, we went to get some food, I wanted a beer, I wanted a moment, to process. I didn't eat, I didn't drink. I didn't enjoy the moment we had together to be anywhere but the doctors office.

That was Wednesday. After a full day in the office. A train ride that lasted forever knowing what was on the other side of it. Thursday is a blur. My beautiful best friend provided sweet remedy in childish nature, knowing my regressive tendendicies, if I can't talk, I do, I fill time. So we had a twenty something revival and had a night of nonsense and it was divine. More alcohol than a fresher, shots, beers, a touch of class in the middle with some tapas and posh fizz, and the debauchery, kareoke, screaming Hakuna Matata into microphones drinking cans of Hooch. It was the reminder I was human, and loved that I needed.

We went bowling, I felt my new size 16 jeans slip a little and it made me smile with a strange pride, half of manchester was going to see my lovely thong - you're welcome, but it was a reminder, this fragile fragmented Fran moment; I've come so far in this journey. 4 stone lost. A health reincarnation that I never thought possible. A food noise of 30 years quieted. The ability to choose with the freedom of thought, how to eat, what to eat, when to move, hike, gym, when to eat the Big Mac without the weight of the world and my saddle bag bottom on my shoulders.

No saddle bags here friend. Size 16 jeans, clung to a pert bototm, some iron clad thighs that leg press nearly into the 200's. With ovaries that function without failure, now in clock work expectation and sycronisation. LH test strips that light up like Christmas on time, each time, basal body temperatres that rise and fall like cinematic crescendo month on month. I've jumped through every hoop, I've dropped more weight than a small cow, but more than that, I've saved my own life and paved the way to create another. At least I thought so. But still, in this new vessel, it won't stick. Literally. Still failing.

"It's nothing you've done wrong, you did nothing wrong," said the GP.

It falls on empty ears.

If I hear that one more time I'm going to scream.

I had to explain to him the delicate nature of feeling the joy of a pregnancy remains a marred, tarred and triggering experience for me. For anyone in our situation, it should be met with joy. For me, I'm 19 again, I've been told I'm pregnant and I'm spiralling because the immaculate conception was not one of choice, it was made for me. And I hated every second of it. I felt like there was a poison inside me, and I counted down every day until I could have it eviserated. 

I remember having a scan, I asked not to see it, the sonographer was judgemental, I think she thought I was some silly student who had gotten herself up the duff and now making a decision she didn't necessarily approve of. She printed the scan and left the room, she placed it on top of my notes. I looked. I shouldn't have looked. If I had known that now aged 38 that that image would be my most successful pregnancy to date, maybe I would have been kinder to the toxicity I felt was growing inside me.

So the story comes full circle, 19 year old Fran, complicated abortion, news of an added extra for an STI from the monster defiler; and I'm sick, but holding it together because I have to go home and play the role of Francesca Barker for Christmas.

Breaches of trust are not unusual in the timeline of Barkers; I tell my family GP, my GP, who is a close friend of my parents, that I'm worried, that I'll have to hide the fact I've had the abortion but that I'm still sick and need to be well enough to get through Christmas in Cheshire. That if something happens and I feel worse, they'll find out. It must have been less than 20 minutes later, I got a hysterical phone call from my father - the GP, the friend, had told him. After 10 minutes of hysteria, with him wanting to know why I had had an abortion, another incoming call, my mother.

She was furious. When was she not?

"How could you be so fucking selfish?"

The question flawed me. I was confused.

She was furious, I'd conceived a baby and I'd gotten rid of it.

For a woman who wanted her own baby, pregnancy, she was raging.

It was 10 years later they heard the truth of the pregnancy. In a court the first time I got in trouble. My defence team shared the horror story of a rape, a pregnancy, something that triggered an unravelling and a split in Fran who tells the truth and Fran who tells lies. Fran tells lies, because shes never been taught the safety of what it is to tell the truth. My father stood in that court room and listened to how this horrific incident was exacerbated by my avoidance to report it to the police, that when they contacted me about another woman's incident, I denied it, I said I had no idea what they were talking about. I wasn't willing to make a statement about this man. That I lived with the scars physical and mental of what happened. 

When my mum demanded to know who the father was, I lied, I said I got drunk and fucked a rugby player - of course, a one night stand. She called me a stupid slut.

I think that's probably what my name is in her phone.

So, it's been quite a week.

It's Saturday. Sarah continues to look at me like I'm about to break. I don't think she realises, not for herself, and not for me either, that this week's tragedy hasn't really settled in our hearts.

I'm somewhere between feeling the pride and joy of knowing my body did what it was supposed to, somoene give me a medal, because I did it, all on my own, no meds, no interventions, just me my ovaries and I. I just couldn't hold it. It seems to be a new mountain to climb. Because why would it be that simple?

It rarely is in the life of the Barker-Mills.

We will heal, quietly, get back on the horse undoubtedly, as I face down turning 39 mid-year, the clock feels like it's ticking louder. 

And this convulted piece of emotional exorcism will remain a quiet space to say things on paper, I can't say outloud.

But it will get better.

Finsbury Park station

 I write, upon my Macbook, whilst communiting to work on the train.

Warm coffee in cup, that emparted heat to my cold hands upon the station platform, wrapped in a green wool coat, jumper, wool socks and comfy shoes. Rucksack slung over shoulder with well intentioned fruit and sustenance, to ensure I don't get the daily reminder from my wife to "Eat,". The weight loss drugs are running through my veins and it can easily get to 3pm and I'll have forgotten about food entirely.

But it hasn't always been this way.

Food and I have a complicated relationship. Sometimes it's a need, an addiction, sometimes it's a purge. Sometimes, more often than not, it's the scourge on my life, longevity and best laid plans. It began in 1987, starved and scared in the cess pits of London town, and it very much circled back there. To which this blog is in remberance of.

I say probably once a week to friends, or close colleagues, the work I do is a giant trigger, it's a fine rope I walk keeping one toe in a trauma fuelled industry and one in my own sanity and safe place. But it is the work I chose, or rather, as I feel all the more; it chose me.

Yesterday, a message of help, and SOS in a community group seeking support for a homeless lady, sleeping rough in a tent outside a council building having received little to no support from statuatory services due to being another invisble woman slipping through the cracks in the system that in 2025, are more chasm than crack. 

It was cold yesterday up north, frosty winds that bite the face, the fingertips and a rain that only Mancunians will recognise with the ode of "it soaks you to the bone," and it does. Bitterly.

I read the SOS and thought, not today.

As I often do. I suppose the difference being, I had a certain power in my arsenal to be of small help. And so I set to work in sending emails, calling hostels, emergency accommodations, all who sent me round in circles "You need to speak to this person," "You need to apply through the gateway," "You're not one of our referral partners,"

So, community bank account card in hand, I booked private accomodation for lady in question, a few nights at a reasonable cost - and one that's costed beautifully into one of our more recent grant funding pots from GM Mayors Homelessness charity - to allocate a portion of that money to emergency accommodation costs. Emergency is a hilarious concept, as the council clearly don't feel it's urgent or this woman would not be in icy cold torrential rain sleeping outside their front door, with none of her own. Regardless. Housed, home, warm for a few nights, it was my small contribution to what I later described to my wife as "I feel like I'm plugging the hole in the titanic with my finger,"

I remember the cold wind that bites, and the fingertips that lose feeling, where you sit on your hands and hope the heat radiating from your bottom, or in fact, leaving your body and ebbing into a cold hard pavement, lasts. It doesn't.

It disappates, along with your hope, that it will ever be any different.

I remember my first night in a hostel; the sense of relief, repreive. The peeling of dirty cold clothes from my unkept and unclean body. Dropped to the floor, wrapped in budget and somewhat raw feeling towel. A hot shower that burned more than it cleaned, but the feeling is something I'll never forget. I stayed under that water longer than most monsoons. Bought and paid for, I was getting my monies worth.

Princes Square, London. Amongst the priviledge of town houses and Christmas film aestheics, a run away in my twenties, a strange concept. Mid night flit carrying just one bag. Naive and childish. I ran from my family. For the last time. I've never set foot there since. 

A top bunk is never my first choice, and it makes me smirk as I type, given that the next time I would be in a top bunk would be padded up in prison with two lairy scouse drug dealers who made much less amiable roomates.

In Princes Square, it was various Eastern European women, who hung their laundry from bunk to bunk like some sort of continental wash house, but it was dual purpose, drying - and privacy, and for that I was grateful.

Sleeping rough in London is a different thing. Although, I've never slept rough up North properly, a few hours slumped in the street after a binge, yes. But cold long nights as a single woman, young and vulnerable? No.

We gather, like pack rats in the dark. Under a bridge in Finsbury Park station, it's reasonable lit, only small patches of wet from the creaks above, and if you avoid the puddles and find an indent, it's warm enough to pretend you could get some sleep.

Fuelled on Tesco sandwiches, cast at your feet with piteous and well intentioned smiles, it's food enough to keep you alive, but you find yourself wondering, why? Because life isn't worth living in this moment and if you become and invislbe death on the streets of London, no-one will know your name, your real name. And even worse, no-one will care.

When you have enough money for a hostel, it becomes the ideal, the dream. If you make enough money, you can even book yourself into the Wedgewood hotel where you can shower in absolute private, pee in peace, spread out on a double bed, watch television and boil a kettle as many times as you like. Readers of the Daily Mail will tell you this is the luxury of what homelessness and emergency accommodation is. Or better; this is what prison is for many.

Imagine - a heated room with a bed, a dignity to far for the pariahs and the predators on our oh so moral society.

I imagine our fair lady who is still as I type, tucked up in bed, warm, she tells me so this morning via a message - felt that same feeling I did all those years ago.

Relief.

I said to Sarah last night whilst we walked in the rain, as I needed to move, to think, to process

"I don't know how I'm still alive, and I did this, there was no-one there to save me, I saved me, me,"

And it made me proud and sad all mingled into one ball of emotion.

I don't know how I'm still here.

A probation officer once said that to me, after my first misdemeanour and awaiting drug treatment 

"The life you've had it's a wonder you're still here,"

I laughed awkwardly.

Who knew it would become something so much worse in so many different ways.

I wrote last night that I am perhaps too invested in my work sometimes, and that much is true, it takes as much as it gives on occasion, but I think anyone who creates a movement or organisation from lived experience and desire to change something, does so in the knowledge of that. I responded to the need of that lady yesterday, because I could, because I felt it, because I've lived it. I've checked on her and worriedd about her and wondered what more I can do to help her.

Yesterday whilst dancing around statuatory services, I met one of our Coming Home ladies for coffee; she apologised that she couldn't treat me to coffee because she was barely making ends meet - I reminded her that when she meets for a check in, it's a Coming Home coffee, not a treat Fran coffee. She exudes gratitude. Every other word out of her mouth is either Thank you, or Sorry. I tell her neither are necessary. She's come from a meeting and she's working hard to recover, reintegrate, I see the progress and it's a joy.

We talk about the cost of living with Christmas coming up; and I share the plans for the Coming Home pop up shop and tell her not to worry as much about the little things she needs; she can find them there. I ask her her plans for Christmas, and I feel her answer in the pit of my stomach.

Shes spending it alone. Her family don't want her.

I know that feeling. I hear the voice of my mother of Christmas Eve 2010 saying "We've discussed it, and actually, we think it's better if you don't come,"

I put the phone down, and proceed to wrap all of their gifts in a disassociative state.

The next day I try to kill myself and wake up in hospital on Boxing Day. Merry Christmas.

So when she tells me shes spending it alone, we start to write a safety plan and I tell her what we did last year - knowing that Christmas is a giant trigger for reoffending, for safety, for relapse, last year, I created an event where Coming Home ladies could dial into zoom for an hour on Christmas Day and cook Christmas dinner with me.

It was me, my camera, pottering, basting turkey, dusting potatoes in flour, with an overseeing eye of approval from my Northern potato loving wife, and the opportunity for people to connect, share and have community on Christmas Day.

The same will happen this year; I said to Sarah last night "do you mind if I have an hour on Christmas Day to do the dial-in again?"

She's on board. Of course she is.

Important to ask, it is after all, our Christmas, her Christmas.

But she knows all too well, what Christmas is to me and how it makes me feel so she grabs my hand a little tighter as we walk home.

So, just your average Tuesday?

Homeless lady housed for a few nights.

Coming Home lady fed, watered, empowered and a little trip to Asda to get some essentials, because again, thanks to the design of bursaries into our budgets, I can.

And I will.

For those who need community, for those who need visiblity, we are here.

I can't change the world for everyone, but if we cross paths and it's in my capacity, I will do my damned best.

It's the little things that matter.

We all need to do our bit.

Christmas Day with Coming Home https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/christmas-with-coming-home-tickets-1974614331621?aff=oddtdtcreator

Labour labour saviour saviour

I’m obsessing,

Progressing

Thoughts on paper

And pen scratched through ink

As I sit, as I type

Think Think

How can I fix this

Cure the ails and the woes

When theres women living in nothing more than just their clothes

Im fury

I am rage

As I rant upon this page

That its clockwork

Its cycle

That still doesn’t change

That its Corston

That its Gauke

Another fucking report

But the names and the longing

Belonging

Is an afterthought

That theres a woman pleading

Needing

More

Something

Someone

Silence met

With nothing

And shes trying

Shes crying

Sighing

Screaming

More

She cant take it,

So its life now

Like this

The dirt on the floor

Step on me

Over me

Thank you sir

I’ll take that

Deserve that

I’ll hold that door

Ones open for you

For him

For her

But not me sir

Not me sir

The perpetrator

The deviant

The defiant

The silent

The night

The fear

The stigma

The fight.

Don’t hold it for me

Close it nice and tight

Remind me of my place please

Alone and out of sight

Hotel rooms

Hostels

Tents

Cracked ceilings

Feelings

Unsafe

Unsure

Like a past life

Prisoner

Or whore

I’ve seen these walls before.

They shape me

They cage me

They tell me who I am

They tell me what I’m here for

And my worth

Less.

Less.

Less.

Deprivation

Suffocation

Foundations of sand and chalk

With the whip crack

Slap across my back

Telling me to walk

Talk

Thank

Beg

Borrow

But not steal

Not even for a meal

Kids go hungry

Lights go out

But I don’t make a sound

I don’t breathe

I don’t shout

Patient so patient

In the darkness damp

Waiting for your grace

Gracious

Enter now

List

Listing, name, number, repent

I thought my conviction was spent

But not in the pages where you log the rent

It’s bent

System broken

Scream not spoken

Report. Gauke Corston More.

Labour. Saviour.

Not what I voted for.

Reform?

Me? Or farage and hate bait nation?

Scum scum

Shit shoe

I’ll never be more than that to you.

Labour labour saviour saviour

Can I have just a week more?

Sleeping bags on the floor.
I’ll take it

Until I make it

A safe space

A home.

The cell-block memory, a night watching Holloway.

 It's been a few weeks since I took a bunch of pretty incredible women to see Holloway at HOME cinema in Manchester. I think it's taken a few weeks to overcome the feelings watching it left me with; on various levels. And I anticipated that. Which is why it took me so long to sit down and watch it in the first place. I knew it would be a trauma, tripping, PTSD, heart skipping affair, and it was. I knew it would invoke and provoke feelings of fury, anger and despair - and it did. All normal responses to watching something so thought provoking and emotionally jarring. So the fact I chose to watch it and invite along key players, partners and pals, was an interesting choice on my part. A strategic one for many reasons - the most prominent of which is - in my professional capacity, I'd be loathe to cry hysterically in public, and I managed to avoid such waves of emotion, just. Those were saved for the privacy of home, and Sarahs arms as usual. We felt it all together.

Watching Holloway was never going to be easy, because I could see the flaking paint, dereliction of building and duty with the greens and blues that only prisons or hospitals seem to don their walls with. I could visualise my birth mother, banged up behind steels doors, with emergency buttons that ring to no avail and the flap in the door that slams shut louder than any letterbox you've ever heard. One slams shut and it rings across the prison, reverberating through the wing like a doomful dinner bell. The bang, the slam, the power, encapsulated in that sound.

One woman in the documentary referenced "the screams," and that you'd never heard anything like it. I felt that. It was and remains the one thing that haunts me in waking and sleeping moments still. Like wild beasts. The screams.

I never quite know how to articulate the things I saw, felt, absorbed in my time in prison. So I write. This we know. So for those who watched Holloway and felt the pain and the shame and the grief and the haunting along with the women who showcased their most isolated moments on screen, read on if you dare; its about to get literary in here. Like a page from a book, so take a deep breathe and walk a moment in my shoes. Holloway style, up north, the corridors of Styal.

TW suicide mental health*

"Out," with a rap on the door. "Out,"

Shell shocked, staring a the ominous liquid eminating from behind me, I don't know what it is or who it is from, but hoping it's the warm bottles of water they rolled underneath this bolted door just 30 minutes ago. I stared out of the window for most of the ride here. Lights glistening in the winter sky, black, dark, and cold. Frosted breath on this porthole to freedom, looking out and wondering if anyone can see in. The city faded with Christmas sparkle, as the country roads appeared and I knew, we were nearly there. It's a lovely Sunday day out down here, if you like to potter around a National Trust. Pop to Quarry Bank Mill, a little walk, a bit of history, a stately home, green green gardens, topped with a pot of tea and a scone. It''s middle class Narnia if ever there was out here, in dark green Cheshire. But we turn right, and not left. And leafy green and peachy keen no more. It's bleak. It's dungeon. Its barbed wire, and a sliding gate that creaks slowly to enter. You shall not pass.... but now, you shall not leave. Maybe you will. In a van. An ambulance, a bodybag. You're not sure which exit you'll take right now.

"Out,"

Stepping over the puddle in my black shiny brogues, laces tightly pulled in neat bows, just like my dad taught me. Smart. Court smart. Might go to prison but probably not, smart. A just in case, middle class presentation smart. Lawyer told me too. Smart.

Not so smart. 27 months. Not smart at all. Smart is what go me here.

Three or four steep steps down, shoe on pavement, and into strip lighting and false bright light. Noise. Overwhelm. Cattle processing. The woman who was in the van with me goes first. They greet her by her first name - she's been here before. One or two times too many clearly, as the banter is familiar, the family are asked about and the faux fun "in for Christmas," diatribe is shared. The prisoner agrees - she didn't want to stump up for Christmas presents and buy into the kids wanting x, y and z this year, so she thought a little stint back inside was just the ticket, she likes the Christmas dinner here, apparently it's one of the better HMP offerings - so why not.

I'm bewildered by this casual interaction. I've just lost my liberty. My family. My home. My job. My future. And we're debating the best prison Christmas dinner. I collapse onto a bright blue bench, hysterical. Hyperventilating trying to catch my breath through masses of tears. My previously painted and pretty enough face, now marked and stark with mascara and pain. 

"Just here please Barker-Mills is it?"

I stand, move to where I'm told.

"Could you just stop crying while we take your picture?"

I look up blearly eyes and hold my breath.

Snap. A3039EP.

Printed, plastic, the only card I'll have now. No bank card, no phone, no reality, no identity. A3039EP. Immortalised. It finally happened. I finally ended up here and I can't help but think - we knew this day would come. One way or another, I was always going to end up here. But now? In my closest moments to recovery and real life? It doesn't feel fair. I'm angry. And I'm sad. And I'm alone.

Healthcare check, question after question and they designate me a suicide risk. Place me on an ACCT and tell me someone will check on me for a chat at some point but - Covid, who knows when.

The woman types "She thinks her wife is going to leave her and is inconsolable,"

Sarah doesn't know I'm here. I went off to court with my bag and a see you later and now I'm facing down 27 months in this dark desolate place.

I can't do it. Not to her. And not to me. 

Do I have Hepatitis? No. I had my jabs in rehab years ago.

Could I be pregnant? I wince. Not likely now I'm here, fertility won't hold my place on the list now.

And I'm frog marched by a prison officer easily 10 years younger than me down to the wing. Shes sweet, but naive clearly as she tells me "It's not as bad as what you've seen on the TV, honestly, it's not all bad girls and Wentworth,"

One key turns, one cage opened and closed, a little walk, another key turns, another cage closes, up some stairs, and cell after cell after cell, its exactly like what you see on the tv. But the noise? It's wild. It's wilderness. Its feral.

It's gone 9pm and I'm being processed and I can't move. Looking at the cell block doors, with the flaps, anonymous and copious. It becomes a blur. (It's 2025, but I write like it was yesterday because it's burned in my heart)

A single cell, because it's covid. Thank god. Small luxuries. If I had been banged up on night one with a random woman, I would have lost it. At least I can lose it in private now. And plan...

I'm handed a plastic washing up bowl, with classic prison blue cup, bowl, plate, knife, fork, spoon and a few sachets of shampoo and a small bar of soap. I look at the prison officer perplexed. She taps on my cell door, a piece of paper with my new prison photo is stuck to it "A3039EP Barker-Mills," with the date and time of my arrival and the date I'm due to come out of 14 day isolation.

Shower day 8 - she raps the dates. There's a little summary list "outside," 15-30 mins days 1, 5, 8. Shower day 8.

I ask what I'm supposed to do until day 8??? She looks at my washing up bowl. 

"That,"

She shuts the cell door, bang, lock, done. I make up my little green bed, single sheet on bright blue mattress, and I hold the sheet in my hands for just a second too long.

Where can I tie it? There's no pipes above, the window doesn't close properly, it's a small slated piece of glass, cracked and Victoria looking with a lever arch arm, you'd be lucky to get your wrist through it. There's no V on the back of the door. The toilet's in full view, sink the same.

Floor pipes? Chair? Phone cord looks more likely.

For the first hour in my cell, I sit cross legged on a half made bed contemplating my exit plan. I can't wait 27 months for a prison van, I can't wait 27 months for a wife who won't be there. I can't. Private ambulance, chauffeur style and out of here in a day.

Dark. Stark. Alone. I can see why they placed me on that ACCT, and lo, a torchlight shines through the flap in the door. If I'm going to crack this, it'l have to be inbetween welfare checks.

I neededn't have worried, they didn't last long.

I abate the desires of death for now, and lie on the plastic mattress, the cold night air billows through the cracked glass cell window and clangs against the lead casing where it won't close properly. I become obsessed with the paintwork. Flecks of dried blood are etched up one wall, tiny drops, like rain, that are half cleaned away, half painted over, blood red brown, now blue hue with new paint. I wonder who was in here before me, that they'd leave their mark like this. Perhaps mine will join. But no razors allowed for the fruit cake on night watch.

I learn later, the girls sling and swing razors for the self harmers and it's a prison gesture of care, to leave a used or new one on your window ledge when leaving your cell to move to another. 

No such luck in mine. Just the Jackson Pollock affair.

My first night, it's safe to say, not much sleep. With the lights on full in my cell because they won't turn off, and the flashlight shone in my face to make sure I'm not dead, it's a sensory overload.

But it's not the light. It's not even the pain. It's the noise.

Crying first and foremost, and not mine. Hysterical crying. Echoes.

Screaming. Agonising screams. Hysterical screams. Screams that sound like death, or birth, or both. This is clearly a usual night here, as other inmates shout and tell the screamers to shut the fuck up, by name. The crazies, for sure, wailing like ghosts or mourning mothers. Relentless. The banging, smashing, throwing of furniture, or faeces, of angry prison guards having to deal with the latest smashed up cell, the latest dragged off to the seg, more screams and cackles of lunacy. Of glee. Its a cocktail of crazy and my brain can't cope.

I'll never know silence again. Even when I have it now. I don't. Because those sounds live somewhere in the back of my mind.

Morning comes, the door swings open and a brown bag is kicked across my floor. The door slams shut. Open for 20 seconds, no more.

I run to it, and bang at the flap. "When can I call home?"

"When your numbers get approved and you've got some money,"

How can I get fucking money, no-one knows I'm here.

I'm hysterical.

I could smash my cell up. I don't.

I sit once again, cross legged like a child in a school hall, and open the brown bag. It was supposed to be given to me last night but I was processed after hours. 

Off brand cereal, a carton of UHT milk, some split open tea bags, which are now mostly dust, and a Soreen malt loaf snack size piece of cardboard.

When I was being processed they asked if I wanted a vape pack. I said no. They asked if I wanted a food pack. I said yes. I was handed a see through bag with random items in that only now looks appealing having been greeted with faux frosties and no tea.

I haven't eaten since breakfast at home before my court appearance but I'm not hungry. 

The see through bad is a bag of wonders. Noodles x3, a bag of sugar, a packet of teabags, a big UHT milk, a packet of biscuits, sachets of Nescafe... beige wonders, but welcome right now. How does one make noodles with no cooking appliance? My first foray into prison cooking and the things you can do with a kettle. Good things. Terrible things. Useful things. Concerning things.

A cup of tea at home is the most magical thing in life. It's a moment in our busy lives where Sarah and I end our working day, look at one another an hour or so after a home cooked dinner, whilst watching something on tv and say "cup of tea?" and one of us makes the perfect cuppa, with a tasty biscuit, or if it's a particualy good day, I'll have made a cake - we're in 2020. It's peak covid. Cakes were plentiful in the barker mills household. No such luck in prison. It is quite literally the place the world forgot.

And thats that my friends. For now. An insight, perhaps part of a chapter for a book. Who knows.

When I watched Holloway, I saw the paint flake, the bed frames, the cell doors, and it flooded back to me in droves, in waves, crashing over my rebuilt life and I squeezed Sarah's hand a little bit more.

It's 2025. It is quickly coming up to mid September, my anniversary of release. For some, for most, we have anniversarys of joy and of woe, birthdays, weddings and passings. For those of us who have been to prison, we have release date anniversary's and the dates we got sent down. They're there forever whether we want them there or not. They creep in the dark parts of our mind and even though we heal, we grow and recover, the scars lives on.

I spoke with the beautiful Brenda - I'm loathe to call her Brenda, for me she was and is, the formidable Lady Unchained, and much like me, she speaks with a brutual truth that makes the harsh reality of prison unavoidable, and what happens when women who've been to prison find eachother is - the trauma bond reopens and if you're with the right people, it fuses in power to be and do something greater, to heal the wounds that hurt you, for the sake of other women like you. Equally, and important to note, when we find ourselves with those who reopen prison wounds for the sake of scab picking and unpicking past lives, we don't heal, we hurt some more. It's a fine line for those of us who have survived the prison walls to know who and how we fill our lives and hearts moving forward.

The people I invited to Holloway were not by chance, they were by thought, care, alliegiance, peace and purpose. They were my safe space. IF I had broken down into fits of hysteria, my professionalism would never have been in question, each one would have rallied to protect and empower. That is my point. We are here by the strength of ourselves and our people. We are here to grow and show in our power together. That only change and only good will come if we unite with the bigger picture and purpose. Academic, policy, prisoner, person. Knowing, the humanity, dignity and hope are more importance than punitive, punishment and power.

The time is now.

They took it all - the grief of losing everything you knew

 I've been in a strange headspace lately, because my dreams are repetitive by nature and cyclic in the way they arrive in the darkest of hours, to remind me. You lost it all.

I have recurring dreams at the best of times and I'm sure it's indicative of unhealed trauma and a broken heart beating in it's own way, mourning the loss of something and collating the options as my subconscious rifles through the archives of grief to present what it thinks I'm searching for. Like a 90's computer, the grind and clunk of the junk to find the right file.

Of late? It's the villa in Spain, forgive the overbearing middle class nature of that statement. Not just any villa, the most beautiful, white washed, epitome of privildge nestled in the Mijas mountains in the Costa Del Sol. A step into millionaires mansions and away from the dreary, leary boozing of the beaches down below, it glitters like a palace in the sunshine and the cobbled steps down to the expanse of house, terrace, gardens, pool, shimmer in my mind as if I were there yesterday.

My entire childhood. My teenage years. My early twenties. All there. Easter holidays, weeks and weeks over summer school breaks, a cheeky October week away to bridge the need for warmth in the run up to cold English winters. A Monarch flight or 50, zooming from Manchester to Malaga, like clockwork, as a family we had it down to a fine art.

Flight, car hire, same company for 15 years or more, a traditional Seat Ibiza, manual to make my mother sweat - not from 30c heat, but from driving a stick and not an automatic German beast of BMW or Mercedes. Suitcases, one per person, not like my life now, where baggage is free and crammed into cost cutting hand luggage sizing to save on the price of hold luggage!

Mine? A United Colours of Benetton hefty black plastic suitcase, with colourful corners - a Christmas present from years gone by, and back in the 90's, accompanied by a matching heavy black plastic vanity case - essential travel aesthic for a white middle class posh girl from Cheshire.

I dream of this place all the time.

It's memories, or it's fantasies. Often I struggle to separate the two anymore because my whole past life feels like a dream and something that came to me whilst losing my mind in a prison cell. Did I imagine the whole thing and this life I once had, never really existed?

But it did. Suitcase and all.

I dream of our family friends, every holiday with them, joined at the hip, parents, kids, and long summer nights. My dad manning the BBQ, cooking my favourite fillet of pork with his magical soy glaze that only tastes good when he makes it, ample dining outside on the south side terrace, laden, grotesque in abundance. Bottles of Vina Sol, white, dark Rioja's and cold bottles of Diet Coke dotted up and down for two families who share life.

But always uncomfortable even then, shrinking into my sarong, hiding my shape, slinking up and down a table of salads, casting glances at a disapproving mother willing me not to touch the carbs and keep it minimal and appropritate. Summers of obesity or what I perceived to be, squeezed into size 14 swimsuits, bought at a shop off Deansgate in Manchester, where one buys a swimsuit and then pops to San Carlo to lament the size of the purchase.

Summers of defiance, get thin, get fucked, the burberry bikini that lives rent free in mind, even now at the age of 38. 18 year old me never looked so good and it made my mum so mad, she'd lost some of her ammunition, she'd lost a reason to hate and berate. The fat frump of a daughter, now so blonde and beautiful and burberry clad - baby pink with the classic Burberry etching. With tits that sat so buyoantly, fucking incredible.

I dream of that place. I dream of that Fran I suppose.

But I was so miserabe. All of the time. Every single holiday. What felt like an opporunity to relax and do what people do on holiday, have downtime, family time, became a source of dread for me. It always felt too easy an opportunity for my parents to hyperfocus on my flaws, my character, my isolation, my awkwardness and all the things we know now - abject, overwhelming anxiety, crippling EUPD and bi-polar, wrapped up in a traumatised teenage mind. I was a nightmare. But I was their nightmare.

I think of the last time I spent time with them there; my mother had the classic sigh of exasperation when she saw me walk through the door, genuine disdain. It was almost a frustration and inconvience I was there and I remember thinking at the time "will you ever look at me any other way?" and as I type this now, I feel the pain of what that feeling was, because the answer was, as it is now, NO.

My brother posts still, non-chalantly, from the north facing terrace, on the expensive rattan furniture, little social media snapshots of cold glasses of wine, with his wife and child, in that very same villa. Family. Abroad.

The severance hurts me still. The resentment probably just as much.

However, I sat to write this blog today, because there has been an echo, a ripple, that I can't shake, that's being drawn from these recurring dreams.

The audacity.

I woke up one day in my mid 20's to a text from my mother, not just any day. Christmas Eve morning, 2010.

"We think it's best if you don't come tomorrow,"

No more was said.

Not much more has been said since to be honest, only viterol and venom in response to my sad looking olive branches and cries for help and reconnection over the years.

The phasing out of Fran had been in motion long before that message, years in fact. With every fuck up and faux pas I made, it reverberated through their lives and their words, louder and harsher than I could have ever imagined. I never needed a court of law to define me, or decide what kind of person I am, my parents were doing it long before the gavel banged.

I was written off.

I was a liar, a cheat, a thief, a drug addict, a drama queen a lesbian. And to be honest, they could never quite decide which of those attributes they hated the most - but I did. 

Me. Just me.

We jarred on every aspect of who I was, or trying to become. I couldn't be fat. I couldn't be stupid. I couldn't be broken. I couldn't be gay. I couldn't be embarassing. 

So one day I was thin. One day I was straight. One day I was clean. One day I was smiling. One day I was perfect. It didn't matter.

Pretty straight Fran with the long blonde hair, going off to University to study Politics and become something, someone, with the burberry bikini and the big tits, all the boys chasing her. Fast cars, lots of money, Selfridges shopping, Moschino sunglasses, Louis Vuitton handbags and it never changed a thing. All it did was confuse me. Who was I meant to be? Because I turned myself into every version of Fran to find the right one and none seemed to fit.

By the time I ended up in prison, I understood whole heartedly how I had got there. This lack of identity, this fraility of self. Yes.

But it was the grief. The loss and the hurt. It poisoned me from the inside out. And the angry girl who was consumed by a sense of abandonment at 3, seemed to be living a life on loop. Parents don't love you. They leave you. Parents don't protect you. They hurt you. I'd had two sets that proved that to be true. So I became everything they thought I was. And I felt so alone.

When I was adopted, I thought I'd found the safe place, the space, to grow in love and hope and happiness. That my mum and dad were going to help heal me, and show me who I was supposed to be. I watched my brother become this perfect son and I couldn't grasp why I wasn't that.

I grew up in the sphere of my parents influence, friends and family, like gravity, like orbit, circling my life. I didn't have anyone on the outside. I wasn't good at making friends. I was too confusing to make and keep friends like other people did. I didn't know who I was, so I couldn't be reliable in conventional friendship. I was too busy evolving, shape shifting and being a square peg in a round hole. Jay found it easy, he was a natural, charasmatic, beautiful to look at, enigmatic, he had become my father. Although I find that much less appealing a quality now I'm grown.

This small life, was my entire life. Completely depending upon the people who raised me to tell me who to be, to finance my life, to pull my strings. And by proxy, the people in their life. I grew up thinking I had a full life, because I was always surrounded by people. Noise. Social events. It never stopped. I remember watching Titanic in the cinema at aged 11 (naughty!) and Kate Winslet said "I'm standing in the middle of a crowded room, screaming at the top of my lungs, and no-one looks up," and it stopped me in my tracks - EXACTLY. - her character then proceeded to consider jumping off the back of a ship, so again, I can relate!

These people that filled my life, they don't exist anymore. They all evaporated overnight. And for all the things I've been, all the things I've done right, all the things I've done wrong - I will never understand it. And that sense of abandonment hurts me even now. Which is why I dream of the villa. It's the physical representation of my loss and my abadonment. Not by family. But by all.

The friends we summered with? Gone. Not a word for nearly 20 years. I've been homeless, I've been trafficked, I've been an addict, in rehab, in prison, I've been raped, I've been in pain.

Silence.

These friends - when I was first adopted, my mums best friend, gave birth - I sat and looked at this newborn baby and asked her "So are you going to keep it? Or are you giving it back?"

It made everyone cry.

The hilarity. The hypocrisy.

Such a tragic world view for such a little girl and yet they all proved my theory to be true.

If you don't like it, you give it back.

I was frozen out. By them all. They took the word of the people who broke me and disowned me and never bothered to question the validity and depth of such reasoning. None wondered what kind of parents disown their adoptive child.

So I suppose that says more about them then it does about me.

I was easily accepted as the pariah. The pepertrator of pain and hurt.

Every single person I grew up with, every single one. From the age of 4 to 23. Gone. Overnight. 

I've spent so long healing from the pain and loss of my family and mourned them like death itself, because it is; to us both, I hadn'd addressed the pain and loss of my entire life.

I've spent so long trying to be perfect. Imploding TheBarkerBaker was proof of that. Success and visiblity and shining my light in everyones face, that would catch their attention right? Then they would see I was worth keeping around, contacting, reaching out too? Right?

Not even a fall from grace and a prison sentence provoking a hello.

I look at my life now, so full, of all the right people - so soulful, authentic, loving, generous with their friendship and acceptance of all the Fran's I have been and the person they love and value.

I was never unlovable. But everything about the first 20 years of my life screamed that I was. Every person in the first 20 years of my life proved that. Screamed that. Re-inforced that. I was so fragile. Truly, a lost little girl asking the world to love her and never leave her. And they all did. And it broke my heart. Worse than that, it broke my sense of self and sent me into a spiral of wondering if I could be loved, trusted, accepted, and kept.

I don't miss my middle class wonderment of fancy things. I miss the fact I had a life once that I thought meant something to the people in it.

The recurring dream of the villa, it comes as I fear the loss of these people even though they're not in my life. I saw the father of the family we holidayed with and adored, died and I was quietly devastated. He was Donald Duck, he would make silly voices and tell silly stories. He bought me a little bean bag ball from Knowsley Safari park the first time we met post adoption. He made awkward jokes when he got cancer that made everyone cringe. I don't know why he died. Age? If so, my parents are one foot in the grave too. But I felt it, from a distance. It's not like I could go to the funeral. I'm still existing in the shadows, and forfeited the right to mourn and do what other people do because the Barkers said so. I thought of sending flowers, I didn't want it to cause upset. So I just sent condolences to one of the kids I grew up with at the lose of their father. I didn't get a reply.

I suppose, for me, those I loved and lost, will fade away one by one. 

I haven't existed for a long time so it makes no difference.

I'll hold onto rose tinted versions of villas and what space they hold in my heart and hope it time, the healing of that lost life, fades too.

The black brogues

 I have had the amazing luxury and opportunity of late, to be here, there and everywhere on behalf of Coming Home - learning, leading and engaging in meaningful conversation, research and fundamentally - lobbying. 

It's not great secret my passion project is more than that, it's a part of my core and certainly a part of my core work at Coming Home - reducing stigma.

So it occurs to me on this Friday morning as I sit on yet another train, to another part of the country, to present on the media harms in use of language and the perpetuated stigma of "women who commit crime," there's an irony.

I put my clothes out last night, to avoid the stress and faff of deciding what to wear early on this morning - I have a tendency, as an over-thinker, over-worrier, and let's be honest; control freak, to flap - as my wife calls it - the Fran flap. A whirlwind of anxiety induced fussing, forgetting and overwhelm.

This morning I put on my suit, lovely light cotton pinstipe shirt and then stumbled over what shoes - first pick; summery black flats. Right choice - smart brogues.

But I have an aversion to these shoes.

Particularly THESE shoes.

They're beautiful, real leather, shiny, buff up nicely for events and for days of serious work, they're my formal work shoes. They're also the shoes I wore to my sentencing hearing. So to say they've had a life, is an understatement.

They've walked through the streets of Manchester, they've clip clopped through the Crown Court, they've been in a prison van or two, and they've walked the landings and walkways of two of his majesty's prisons. Laces and all.

The girls in prison used to snigger at the sheek and shine aesthic of these shoes and bray "only nonces wear posh shoes like that!"

And I'd remember what the first prison officer said to me - when they ask what you're in for, tell them fraud, but have your paperwork to make sure, they know, it IS fraud. 

Between the posh shoes and the white collar conviction, apparently one can be mistaken for quite a different type of criminal. Good lord.

So I'll admit, I smirk and grimace when I see these shiny shoes of mine.

Much good the presentable suit and good characeter references did me last time I wore these and felt such anxiety.

Let it be said, I type this now, on my University laptop, in a first class carriage (don't make me harp on about the joys of Seatfrog upgrade auctions, I'm obsessed) going through my notes for today's presentation.

Slide one, introduction to me.

How does one consolidate such a thing in one slide? 

Good girl gone bad, gone good again, gone bad, gone good. I'm every female offender in the country with a track record like that. Certainly every non-violent perpetrator of crime and I'm a screaming example of what reoffending and offending behaviour looks like if you don't address the route causes.

Childhood trauma, sexual abuse, gender identity, sexuality, sexual assault culminating in an unwanted pregnancy and STI, homelessness, sex work, trafficked, addiction, criminality.

A cliche. A trope. A woman who was always going to end up in prison.

Of course, the media didn't mention any of that, just my forever branded labels - dishonest, decietful, and a variety of incredulous claims even I burn with anger at so many years after the fact.

It always amazed me when I came home from prison and read every single article, every single comment, forum, facebook share, to my detriment, of course, it was the most brutal character assaisiantion one can weather and I had only just been released from prison so to say my mental health and sense of self were at an all time low would be an understatement. Alas, I read and I re-read and I still do now, because those grotesque representations of who I was and what I did, continue to be the fire that fuels me to change it. No woman should leave prison looking to a future beyond the bars, to be faced with the futile and putrid hatred of strangers, nay-sayers and those completely removed from the reality of what it is to commit crime and pay for it.

How have we come to live in a world where it is acceptable to do this to human beings? Brand them like cattle in a digital world, so that they may walk the streets and live the lives of shameful beasts, the immoral, living among us, cloaked and dangerous, walking side by side, and the only way to know who is good and who is bad, is in picking up the local newspaper or clicking on the latest facebook post to read from the safety of your own home and moral standing to cast apersion and judgement on those who have done wrong. Bad people.

They walk among us.

In black brogues and nice suits.

It's true.

Does it soothe the souls of the masses to know that they have the moral high ground? Does it make them feel safer knowing these people, like me, have been outed? Falls from grace documented? Reminders. So that no matter what progress and purpose comes forth, they remain trapped under the judgemental foot of society?

The society we are released back into, to rehabiliate, reassimilate, reiintegate into?

With good grace and hard work and smiles upon our faces, with relentless gratitude at the second, third and forth chances bestowed upon us?

No.

My talk today is about the harms of media use of language. Yes. It is also about how we combat that, as people, academics, policy makers, human beings. The challenging of media outlets, journalists and social media platforms in their use of language and the questioning of whether it is indeed in public interest to write these things for a known eternity in a digital world. To combat the negative, with the positive, and empower women to take back their narratives - through digital literacy, legal knowledge and self advocacy - sharing the right to be forgotten pathways, the address to google, media and more. The combat the grotesque nay sayers and those who perpetuate and amplify the negativity with ideals of "throw away the key," "bring back the death penalty," "more prisons," "let them rot," and educate them with kindness, proportionality and rationality, as there by the grace of god go I - we are all one mistake away from a moral misstep and misdemeanour that could outlive us.

If those of us who commit crime, are to be held to account and understand the depths of accountability for our actions, then so should the people who report on it. Sentencing in this country is by design, by guidelines, supposedly so its ethical reporting - the two don't marry up.

If a woman serves a sentence, it must end in accordance with it's timeline.

For me, 27 months issued in December 2020, should have meant a line was drawn at the point of sentence expiration. My offender manager said to me the week before my release "when you walk through those gates, you're a free woman, you're sentence here is over," Of course, semantics, I was released upon tag, tagged for 4 months, on licence with probation meetings until the end of my sentence so freedom was not an accurate summary - however, my sentnece is still ongoing, 5 years after the fact, 10 years after the crime. It's endless. I'll speak today and those who hear me, may well google me to follow up, engage. If they do, they'll find the topics I'm talking about - they won't find Francesca Barker-Mills, speaker. They'll find the dishonest baker who defrauded half of Manchester with radiator loaves and 5* holidays - only one of those is true. In 2025, none of those are relevant.

And yet, you'll have to work hard to find my LinkedIn and the life I have now, who I am now, who I've always been underneath the chaos and behind the bullshit. 

And maybe when you find me on page 2 or 3, you'll understand the severity of the issue.

That nice suits and black brogues, don't mean anything. Google does.