I sit, in a coffee shop, near to my city centre apartment, typing upon my laptop looking out on a rather rainy Manchester day.
I come here fairly frequently, so much so, the barista knows my order and has brought me the darkest of americano's - no milk. Cue polite chit chat as to what I have on the books today and what sort of bits and bobs I have to tackle in my little jaunt out of the house to maintain a healthier remote working lifestyle than that I had adopted last year.
2022 was tumultuous, like a boat thrashing and splashing upon a turbulent ocean, it was all I could do to come up for air this time last year.
If by chance you are a first time reader of my work, a synopsis of recent relevance and circumstance. Grave mistakes and outrageous behaviours, misguided intentions culminating in a variety of fraudulent misdeeds circa 2015, mental breakdown and drastic interventions all round in 2016, not many of you will know this, but at the end of 2016, I took a job in care, working as a mental health support worker - why? Because in the burning of TheBarkerBaker, I wanted to know I could, that I was capable of putting other peoples needs before my own, I wanted to do a job with authenticity, based on hard work and tenacity, integrity and grit. I wanted to give back some of what I took in decency.
So I wiled away working in care, bringing in a menial minimum wage, but it was honest, and it paid the bills, of which there were mountains. Chasms of chaos and debt, and letters that looked like Father Christmas' grotto in the North Pole, only a less positive diatribe, wish lists aplenty from a creditor too many.
Somehow, I scraped my way through the banality of it for a year or so and with therapy, support from friends and family, I pulled myself together, post-apocalypse and evaluated what I wanted and needed my future to be.
Education. All that was good, all that was pure of TheBarkerBaker ideation, was the teaching, was the sharing, was the educating and empowering. It brought me joy to facilitate, engage and inspire, with the rudimentary philosophy of what it was to make a loaf of bread - taking nothing and turning it into something. I was adopting that philosophy whole heartedly within my own regeneration and rehabilitation.
Cue re-education and upskilling, a deep dive into professional development and learning, and lo', with the support of my new found employer, I began my transformation from bread maker and law breaker, into educator, authentic, passionate and grateful that my hard work was beginning to pay off.
A few years into my new role, with the qualifications to justify and quantify what I already knew - I was; am, a damn good teacher, with statistics of successful outcomes for learners to boot - an email.
GMP. Detective from GMP. This wasn't small potatoes PC calling. This was the big dick and he was coming for me.
"An informal chat," how many of us entangled in the justice system have fallen into that trap? Knowing full well the extent of our misguided misdeeds and mistakes, all too often, walking into a good cop, bad cop and falling foul at the first hurdle of any hopeful defence.
It's 2019, I've been married just 4 months. I've been in my job a couple of years. I've got stability that I have never ever known. Critics of mine, victims of mine, will say it's undeserved, that it's at their cost.
Walk in my shoes as I have tried to walk in yours, perhaps then the criticism may be welcome, but as has been the case for the past 7, nearly 8 years now after the fact, I tire of the daily diatribe and character assassination and attempts to destabilise. I did then, in 2020 and even more so now, as I sit, in 2023.
It's 2020, Covid-19 has stolen the year from us all, and I am sentenced to 27 months custodial sentence.
Off I go to HMP in peak pandemic, to wile away my time behind bars in a system that has ground to a halt, no education, no visits, no meaningful activity and conditions that have since been found and documented to have met the threshold for Mandela's definition of "torture,"
And so from closed, then open, then tag, then home.
Home, end of 2021, on tag until the end of January 2022.
Hence, here I write.
Less than a year since having my GPS tag removed from my ankle.
In full time employment. Sustained for 6 months.
Having launched my pilot project with incredible women behind me, supporting, driving and guiding it's trajectory with me - if I'm honest, to ensure it's integrity and longevity, for fear of how TheBarkerBaker having another crack at social change may come across.
Always aware, always suffocating under the imposter syndrome, the proven so "ideas bigger than her bank account,"
Terrified that the project, whilst so desperately needed and so perfectly suited and guided by me, having lived and breathed the systemic failures of the prison system, would suffer under it's founders name.
But tenacious and gregarious as ever, to the distaste of some, but beautiful reception of others - Coming Home was born.
But why?
This time last year, I was at a crossroads like no other. None more tantamount of the direction my life could go.
Based and bound by ptsd, trauma bonded relationships, unhealthy in their origin and dependence and yet curated and maintained like some sort of addiction and necessity of familiarity and comfort. Misguided.
I was willing to throw it all to the wind and hide in my prison persona, for fear of trying to be the old me, the new me, what did that even mean?
Fran who tries, who thrives, survives, smiles - that Fran had been hired and fired 3 times in the space of 3 months post release; all, despite disclosing my criminal convictions and having those conversations, victim to the press and run of google that had branded my fraudulent acts through a less than truthful or accurate lense; a sensationalised fall from grace story, the hookwinder, fraudster, monster of many who had defrauded friend foe family, whoever the press could shake a stick at.
So January 2022, in my blur of "who am I? What next? Why bother?" - a little self wallowing lets be honest and still in some post prison haze.
I broke.
Staring at oncoming traffic over the princess parkway, wondering if it was kinder to jump with no traffic so as to avoid other victims I might create.
Despite having been a ghost. An arse. A shadow of my former self. My friends rallied, as they do, to support, save and protect me. From myself.
Babysitting, watching, holding, and piecing me back together. No questions asked. No apologies needed. Just love.
And so I'm here, today in 2023. Despite my close brush with the end.
Today, a piece I wrote about sex trafficking was published in the phenomenal Inside Time, my third piece non the less. Wonderfully received and accepted, all with my hope and vision to drive forward change and visibility surrounding the issues women in prison face.
Today, I was shortlisted and broadcast across social media as a nominee for "Mentor of The Year," award.
2022 saw the launch of Coming Home. Successfully attended by what is now 15 participants in it's pilot phase.
The first cohort of women all of whom have achieved incredible things following successful mentor pairing, work experience opportunities, job interview line ups, further education offers. More than that, with the support of incredible people behind the scenes, I managed to create a safe space for women like me - who need and want to comfort of other people who have been to prison, but not the sometimes tainted and toxic relationships that can come from those environments.
A place without judgement but always with accountability.
My wonderful wife, who I have found my way back to with passion, dedication and shared hope, optimism and love, continues to drive forward, making miraculous impact in her work at The Christie.
We embark upon our fertility journey with tenacity and hope. Again!
We build upon the ashes of what was, to regenerate and flourish like a phoenix from fire.
Is it easy?
Never. Every day is hard. For any woman coming out from the shadows of prison, it's about rebuilding your identity, authenticity, purpose.
For most women, it's a struggle to get out from under the past, the guilt, the press, google, the ripple effect; or in my case, the incessant, persistent, constant surveillance and my victims determination to take aim at my life, my employment, my wife, my financial stability, my identity.
Imagine, to have achieved the things I have in a year and be terrified to share them for fear of them being torn down, belittled, undermined, eroded, compared to the Fran of past lives, and measured against my mistakes, forever.
Well, it's 2023. And I am SO proud of who I am, how far I've come, the work that I do, the life that I live, the friends that I have, the family I have built, the women I know.
I am proud.
I work like I have something to prove, I do, to myself. That I am more than my mistakes and that I can learn from them and use them as positives to shape a stronger, safer, kinder future.
Have you heard it all before? I suppose thats the problem.
I'm taking each day as it comes and starting and finishing it as I mean to go on.
In anyone's recovery, in anyone's journey, that's the fairest outcome
More than that, it's what everyone deserves.
It's not about second, third, fourth chances.
It's about faith.
