When one hits a life milestone, celebrates a birthday, a success, has a moment of sadness, grief - it's human, to pine, for your mother.
I don't pine particuarly, because that would denote I have a mother, I don't. I have two, on paper, in past lives, in photographs, through biology and through legal contact. Neither matter much anymore.
And yet, here I write on a Monday evening because there is a childish feeling I just can't shake these past few weeks; for good reason.
2026 did not begin in the way my New Years Resolutions had laid out, not cliche ideals of weight loss and gym bunny behaviour, hiking bigger hills and mountains than the year before, promising to be more dutiful in my ice bath and sauna self care routines - yes, but all quieted in the sad news just a week or two into January; a pregnancy loss. A Christmas miracle by and large, my greatest success, in this long drawn out fertility journey of highs and lows, and lets be honest, brutal woes more often than not. It was a promising start to a new year, that broke our hearts before we'd even drawn breath.
That was the first pang I felt "I want my mum,"
But I don't. Not mine. What good would that do 30 years down the line for an emotionally stunted woman who has the empathy and depth of a wet puddle on a rainy Manchester day and as cold a heart?
I want the fantasy I've held since I was a little girl, where you pick up the phone, still, in your 30's and you ask about her day, and she asks about yours, you share moments of joy, but when the chips are down, and you need a cry and to let it all out - its your mum that you call; and shes in the car on the M6, hurtling to your little terraced house to just sit, give you a hug, and tell you everything going to be ok.
I turned 39 two weeks ago and it occured to me, in my 39 years on earth, I have never; NEVER had a hug from my mother (and i'm being generous in the linguistic label for ease of reading along and understanding the narrative and positioning!)
So this childish fantasy I have held in my heart, comes from a place of unrequited love, Shakespearean in its existence and essence - a love never held, received, or felt.
The loss we felt at the beginning of the year, was brutal. But we moved on, as we do, in our resilience and power as a coupe of formidable solidarity and love. We grimaced, we smiled, we carried on and tried again. Sarah. Not me. I needed a recovery period to settle into the feeling.
And lo' Baby Barker-Mills is now in a safer 14 week utero and living, breathing and growing happily at pace within my beautiful wife's body as I write. A glorious joy. One I don't even have words for. Unexpected in our bliss, that after all this time, a baby, an actual baby, so wanted and yearned for, is now within our reach.
I want to tell my mum.
I don't.
I want to tell the fantasy mum, who will cry with joy at the news of a grandchild, of a child that will enter the world so loved, it will never know anything other than that. I will be that mother, that takes calls in their 30's and drives down the M6 (if I overcome my fear of lorries!) and hold them until the end of time if they ask me to.
But my heart is delicate, and pained.
My brother has a small child, they're grandparents of the year, doting and dallying around South Manchester, the fantasy is real, for him. Not me.
I remain the pariah. The outcast. And so, the news of a child of mine, of ours, would merely be met with horror, disdain, and an abject want to call social services and tell the world I'm an unfit daughter, ergo, unfit mother, person, etc. My mother has never been shy of words to describe me - street rat, sloven, slut, bitch, buy one get one free of the care system, the gutter rat, the apple that didn't fall far from the tree, the disappointment, but most of all - not hers.
She was interviewed for a magazine in the late 2010's, she made reference to having two children - Francesca and James. She was interviewed in more recent years, she waxed lyrically about the joy of having a family - being a ground breaking woman in law, 50 years in the industry, a titan and a woman who had it all - the job, the marriage and the kids. Her true success? She shares - family life. Her pride as a grandmother and a mother to a glorious son and his beautiful wife. No more footnotes of Fran. I have quite literally been written out of history.
As has she.
When our child is born, there will be no stories of Fran's mothers of Christmas past, there will be no nostalgia or rose tinted glasses of a grandma and grandma that live in a 10 mile radius of where we are now. No Uncle. No cousin.
There will be a void. The void I feel.
And whilst in prison, I wondered, would i feel any different if it were ever anything other than this? If the door was open, to go back? To rebuild?
No. Never.
For all the yearning. There has been more learning. The toxicity that grew within those walls, within my heart, body and mind, for two and half decades, the erasure of who I was, who I could be, morphed and moulded into a split personality dual life pantomime of perfection with chaos unfurling.
The gay. The dyke. The liar. The addict. The con. The bitch. The hooker. The street rat.
My mother has indeed given me the greatest gift - what not to do, what not to say, how not to behave, how not to yield and wield trauma, and words as weapons. She has taught me a greater lesson - that to be a mother, is to love, is to hope, is to shape, is to grow, and is to the safe space.
I was never safe. I lived in perpetual anxiety. I lived in fear. They'd abandon me. That I wasn't good enough, clever enough, thin enough, pretty enough, successful enough, fierce enough, popular enough, straight enough.
I wasn't.
Still, it's Monday night, I'm burning with pride after another day in the life of Fran that continues to surpirse and soothe my imposter syndrome as the years of hard work build and unfold like a flower in bloom - the time is now, the life is good, the heart is strong, the hope is endless.
I didn't think I would like to see 39. It would have been overdose, suicide, or murder. It would.
I shouldn't have lived to see 39. I don't know how I have sometimes.
But that god I live and breathe and type, and my greatest weakness is the fragility of a childlike mind that still seeks love, approval and warmth from a woman who had no capacity for any of those things.
I seek it elsewhere, and joyously - I find it. In friendships, in love, in places so unexpected, that bit by bit, my heart heals and learns the beauty of found family and it's power.
It doesn't stop me wondering - "Did she see I won an award? I wonder if she feels pride in the dark of night?"
"Does she miss me and regret how it all came to pass?"
"Would she love a grandchild if not me?"
It's sad, and it's silly, and it's fleeting.
But I share it, in my naivety and idealism, that this too shall pass.
And I dare to dream, I'll be the kind of mummy, a child would be lucky to have.
