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.