Let me set the scene, as those of you who read along, and so many of you do (this blog recently tipped into over 125,000 views!)
I'm sat, at my vintage g-plan dining table, circular, with the drop leaf sides - precarious in 2026, that sometimes, it makes for great entertainment if our now ageing cat Gordon Ramsay sits upon one of the sides - his weight is no match for a 1970's classic and he disappears out of view rather swiftly.....
I'm sat upon a cleaned up upholstered Remploy dining chair, a set of 4 I bought on Ebay as an upcycling project when we moved into this little house of ours 3 years ago.
Gordon is watching me typing, wondering why I'm sat at my laptop at 9:10pm on a Sunday night, and more so, where is Sarah?
Dimly lit, by a lone lamp, the ebb of yellow orange light reaches me just enough to be acceptable writing light. I look around, as I type to you know, content, in a way I'm not sure many could or would ever understand.
5 years ago, I came home from prison. To a different home. One that was a home once, but lost its dazzle the moment I disappeared into a December night to not be seen again for 10 months or so. It was a strange return, the home, the hope, the thing I'd dreamt of, night after night in prison cells, bunk beds, pad mates, solo, and anything and everything in between. Good mattresses, bad. Green sheets, pink in summer, a luxury of open prison.
The home I came back to in mid September 2021, was not the one I left behind. And to a degree, the person who lived there, the Fran who came before, she never returned either. So it was a ghost town. A ghost ship. Sat in the Manchester sky line. Tall in the darkness of the city lights, but a reminder, that no good could come from that place now. And a realisation, perhaps too many months later, that home, real, true, north.... is this life. This wife. This silly cat. This Fran.
In 2021, I came home, a literal shadow of myself. My identity had upended, my friends jest now, kindly but still with a sadness of remembering - "prison Fran,", iconic and ironic in 2026 as we all cast our minds back to whoever that person was. I don't know her, neither do they, but they held her all the same, in the hope of the real one finding the way home.
Shaved head on one side, not unusual for me, depending on the delicate presentation of my sexuality and what job I hold at the time, with my mothers voice in my head "no-one will hire you if you look like a bloody dyke,"
Turns out its not the shaved head thats the problem; its the criminal record. But we will return to that later.
Shaved head, with "go-faster," stripes. A fellow prisoner had given me the buzzcut ahead of release day, we'd gathered on picnic benches with our canteen haul, a farewell, but not forever. It was a promise made in time, that was held to be true, but died and washed away all the same.
No sadness tied now, memories that fade and a person who lived in that moment, but doesn't exist anymore. It's like remembered a dream. An echo.
Prison binds us so tightly to those around us, we trauma-bond something fierece, especially those of us who are headed in their still broken and lost, but with the veneer of being OK. Everyone in prison is OK, until they're not. And for me, it was the not, where those women found me. Note written, razor ready, and a despair I've felt before, amplified by the severance of it all. The isolation. The guilt. The shame. Crushing and cold that you don't see a way from under it.
It's strange, I feel that feeling still, not the abject ending, of course not, but the crucifying familiarity of the guilt, shame and hate I can't shake for the things I've done, who I've been, was, can be. The fear, that the worst parts of me are buried in a box within, so well managed, but dangerous, like a beast.
What a way to live ones life, knowing you have such capacity to hurt. But loving yourself enough now to know that you won't. Or you'll die trying to make sure you don't. If there was ever to be a victim of mine henceforth, I'd only allow to be me. Morbid in it's truth, but a safeguard of sorts.
That shame shakes loose sometimes, never more so than of late. Those of you who read my monologues here and watch my videos of haste and emotion, will know, the paste few weeks have hit hard. What to some is just a job lost, an opportunity wasted, was so much more stark than that for me. I don't suppose it helps, when those of us who have been to prison and more, and worse, have dates etched in our hearts and minds, and this job saga was just a little too close to today to feel comftable or safe. Safe enough to deal with anyway.
And I'll share why, in brief, because this musing is a celebration I promise.
The risk assessment that came with the job rejection of late (after the job recinding) is as burnt into my retinas, as my court case documents, my sentencing report, and even that damned DBS.
You'll be forgiven for thinking the statements made here are from a pre-sentence report, it is indeed the kind of language I'd expect to see in such a report - not a risk assessment for a job. Alas, the words have haunted me, perhaps because they prick my greatest fear - that because life moves on, and I move forward, it's somehow seen as something I don't care about anymore? Or ever did?
"the candidate did not any any point during the discussion demonstrate any remosrse and / or accountability for the significatnt impact her actions had on the victims of her offences,"
Let that sink in, as I have had to do.
A risk assessment for a job, specific to lived experience. And consider how well you know me. Perhaps I should have sent them this blog; although it's very existence seems to give them pause, so perhaps that is enough.
It's sat horribly with me for the past two weeks whilst I've let it settle in my mind. That two abject strangers in a professional setting could take from a risk assessment meeting about my DBS such gross, personal, presumtive and defining thoughts. (Even more so when you consider there's a robust transcript of the conversation I hold that undermines it at every juncture - knowing well enough to record the conversation and protect myself having had my request for a supportive person denied!)
Alas, we are venturing into dangerous territory where I will be told to quiet down - as I have already, so I leave this here only to hammer home - I am 5 years home today. From the prison sentence that upended and nearly ended my life. It was never about me. It was always about what I had done, and it always will be. But perhaps, to know that, you have to know me, or someone who has indeed commited a crime, or two, or ten.
The shackles that bind, I wrote previously, they exist like Jacob Marley, longer or shorter by virtues on earth, mine, I hope, are shorter and lighter than they have been in my 39 years, weights lifted, sins and errors, improved upon. But if we live in a world where summarising ones life, light and heart, can be so easily done to such detriment. I don't know how we move forward. Or at lease, how I do.
I yo-yo, between abject despair, that the weight of this is what will crush me in the end. It's not the burnout, it's not the endless idealism and work, and hope and dreams of change. It's the past that I can't let go and won't let go of me.
And the beacons in the darkness, come. As they tend to. In hours of need.
I need not name, there are perhaps to many to do so. But the light that fought off the dark these past few weeks has been abundant, in love, solidarity, care, compassion and truth. And if I'm honest, the rally cries of "fuck them," and "we love you," have been roaring in my ears and my heart more than I ever thought possible.
Is it therefore possible that this reprobate and defiller has built a life of love, compassion and integrity after all?
It's not even the words, it's the hand holds, the hugs, the shoulder thumps for those as neurodivergent as me, that say "we're here, we've got you,"
Is it, truly, the life I've built I'm scared of?
For someone who feels the shame and shadow, it feels uneasy to lean into the pride and the passion.
I have it in my work, in buckets. In me? In this life I built? It would mean acknowledging the one thing I may be criticsed for.
It's OK to put it down now. It's OK to let it go. It doesn't have to define or consume you anymore. Just be.
Perhaps this is the beginning of that, and I let the toxicity ebb away.
9:35pm, still typing.
Sarah is currently at a gig in the city with one of our dearest friends, bopping along like a cool indie kid, with a giant pregnancy bump under her cool aesthetic, still madly beautiful in all her larger than life aura. She would disagree but I can tell you, she's never been more magical.
I have classical playing, candles lit on the side, that Sarah lit before leaving, demanding I "get cosy and chill," after a day sorting out the nursery upstiars.
The nursery.
My god.
I type on the vintage dining table, because my home-office is no more, and I'm thrilled. I bid farewell to my glorious desk, a facebook marketplace lady appeared and promised to love it as much as I did. And lord, it's brought magic into this life. A business, a hope, a dream, realised. A degree, empowered. Articles, essays, journals, blogs, all of it. Created on that giant Victorian-esque dream.
In it's place sits a cot, a beautiful white, bright, light cot.
Something I never had. Sarah said to me yesterday as we put it together with instructions and screws all over the floor, huffing and puffing as she directed from her "pregnant lady," chair.....
"I want this to be just as you dreamt it, because I know how important it is for you to make baby feel safe,"
She says these things with a look in her eye that borders on love like you've never seen, with a twinge of sadness and protective pity that says "I'll protect you too,"
And so, we put it together, slid it into it's new spot in the newly painted nursery, amongst furniture filled with tiny people clothes, neurodivergently allocated and folded intrinsically in their specific places. Newborn, 0-3, 3-6, 6-9 and so forth. More nappies than you can shake a stick at. They're everywhere. We are poonami ready in any room in this house.
And then tonight, as I went upstairs to look at it in the night light, the first thing I saw was this
In our childs room sits my childhood toys. Those who know me, who know this blog, will know, my childhood was complex. Miserable by and large for various reasons.
Beginning in a way no child should, created for a profitable purpose, and not for love or adoration, well, I suppose that's not necessarily true; for the love and adoration of other people, but not for parents.
A strange way to wander the world, knowing you were a commodity; and so, the joys of cots, small person clothes, cuddly toys, lampshades, freshly painted walls - they're a luxury. I know that. I feel that, in every change I make in that tiny little room, I feel it.
Daisy duck sits besides Daisy cow. Sarah bathed them the other day, and they had 30 years of life on them; now they sit pretty and pampered in our childs room; next to Fran Bear. The bear that Sarah had made when I went to prison. Our friends dragged her to Build A Bear in Manchester Arndale and created a mini-Fran - tartan PJ's and a starbucks... close enough. Sarah pinned one of my wedding earrings to it, so not only is Fran Bear, Fran like, shes also got some serious bling.
What a hodge podge of life sitting upon that shelf.
With books, the room is full of books, our shared favourites, some I've already ready to the bump.
5 years home from prison, and I can moan and feel pain, it's all valid and human, but the joy?
It's unrivalled.
In this house, this home we built, Baby Barker-Mills will arrive in just a few short months, ahead of Christmas 2026, and entirely likely, around the time I was sent to prison.
Sarah and I were musing over the irony of time and the dates we hold in our hearts and why.
Let December be the month our child is born, and nothing more. No more dark marks, dark hearts.
Just joy.
So whilst my wife parties (sat down) at a gig watching one of her cool bands, with our cool Canadian friend, I'll be the 39 year old wife at home, who is folding baby clothes, fussing a geriatric cat, writing about life, love, loss and wonder simulaneously.
I was tagged in a photo of jam today, and it made me smile, because if a time of identity crisis of late, it reminded me of exactly who I am.
I'm the person who picks blackberries on my daily walk with Sarah, makes jam and sends it up and down the country to people I've met and forged fire with because I know it'll bring them as much joy to know I was thinking of them when I made it in my kitchen, with love and hope in my heart.
That is who I am.
A jam making fucking wonder woman.
