International Women's Day 2022

It has become somewhat of a tradition for me to write on International Women's Day and for the thousands of you that still collectively read my blog so many years on (thank you!) - you will know all to well it is quite the mark on my calendar each year for a variety of reasons.

International Women's Day is always a moment I sit and take stock, take pause and thought of the way to the world works and I find it a day of mixed emotion; usually thankful in small measure of the progressive micro-steps that are taken each year in the name and hope of equality, safety, stability and justice for all women, but alongside that, the abject frustration at the pace of change and the quieted voices of women around the world, quashed by men, politics, bureaucracy, hypocrisy, misogyny, inequality, injustice and engrossed, ingrained in such historic and societal fuck wittery. But still, the march goes on, the days roll by and the voices grow louder, unified in the knowledge that brighter days will come, the power of togetherness is something no gag can bound or quiet.

This time last year, I was on my last day of Covid isolation, having arrived at HMP Askham Grange at the end of February 2021 and was going through my third rotation of "reverse cohorting," which in prison lingo is essentially, penning in any new inmates from other prisons to minimise the spread of Covid, sensible, but arbitrary all the same.

In my final weeks at HMP Styal, my offender manager appeared one day and slid a brochure under my cell door - advertising the wonders of HMP Askham Grange, I didn't understand why at the time, having spent 23 hours a day banged up, like some sort of sadistic "the grass is greener," if you behave yourself incentive, it was like giving an advert for the Hilton Manchester to someone sleeping rough. Be that as it may, I read and reread that folded print out a thousand times, and made it my absolute goal. Soon out of the cell block wing and into the houses, I got a job as the house cleaner, then as the admin assistant in the kitchens and I worked my socks off morning, noon and night in Styal so that I could 1) support myself financially to some extent whilst incarcerated for the purpose of buying phone credit, vapes and fizzy drinks on canteen and 2) to give myself some purpose and routine - old habits die hard, if I'm not working and I'm not busy, I'm dying!

A few weeks of ball busting and crawling into my top bunk with the worlds LOUDEST most grotesque of pad mates, surviving on 2 hours sleep per night and rocking into the kitchens in some sort of catatonic survival mode, still unmedicated with no access to my anti-depressants through the prison, I again was met with my offender manager, appearing at a window.

I lifted the sash window and we spoke through the iron barred space in the glass. "I put a request to the governors to grant you a recat to get you out of here," - I had been in HMP Styal just 8 weeks but to me it felt like a life sentence having been ripped from my actual life.

"But I'm not due for recat until July?" I replied not understanding what she meant 

"I know that Fran but you don't need to be here, we're sending you to Askham Grange,"

Cue motion picture photo reel running through my mind - the brochure, the place from the brochure.

And lo' this time last year, there I was, prison van from A to B, and arriving in a Cat D prion. Prison officers carried my perspex plastic bags to "the annex," showed me to my room - not my cell. It was on the ground floor, it has a massive window looking out onto landscaped gardens, no bars, no locks, and I was handed a key. A room key.

A little single bed, clean carpets on the floor, a wooden armchair, IKEA's finest, a little bedside table with the prison rules and regulations and a welcome pack and induction program. My own little sink and storage cupboards and a wardrobe.

It really was the Hilton Manchester in all it's glory. 

I was handed a small mobile phone - to call home, call whoever, to let them know I had arrived. HMP Askham Grange had a few forward thinking protocols, and the use of the prison mobile phones was one - to alleivate the frustrations of the blue prison phones and the masses of women who used them on a daily basis, those who were in isolation or had enhanced status, could use the mobile phones with their prisoner pin numbers to make calls. All monitored of course, it is not the Butlins lifestyle the Daily Mail would have you believe - security, safety and the constant knowledge that you are in prison are to be expected as part and parcel of the punishment and loss of liberty. Regardless, I sat on that little bed in awe. 

A prison officer came down on International Women's Day and informed us that there was an event going on in the "ballroom" but of course we couldn't attend as still in covid isolation but asked if we wanted anything from the coffee shop - another wonderment of a Cat D prison, that if you earn your right to be in open prison, that comes with a certain sense of normality - because of course, Cat D prisons exist as the final port of call to normalise prison life, as the stepping stone back into society.

What's more normal than understanding a budget, a perk, a pleasure, a reward and something to be grateful and shared, than a coffee shop. The prison officer reeled off what was on offer, a list of cakes and bakes and fizzy drinks. FUCK MY LIFE - diet coke; I could have cried. Those who know me will know rarely a day goes by in my life where I don't have a diet coke, and in HMP Styal, it was easier to get hold of real coke, not a fucking diet coke and I know which I would rather have (thanks to rehab!)

This piece of writing is turning into an ode to Askham but it's purpose as always is to shine a light on the positives. Believe me, spending International Women's Day incarcerated, even in a nicer jail, was a brutal affair. To lose your liberty, to lose your right to vote, to lose your dignity, your equality, your humanity. It was like no International Women's Day I've ever felt or lived.

Today, I sit, on a Tuesday evening, typing sat at my dining table, candles lit, flowers in a jug that I painted myself (on a ROTL might I add! That's a story for another day) not just any flowers, gypsophila. Again, those of you who follow my social media will know that back in 2020, when Sarah and I got married, we had a wedding that was in essence handmade, and couldn't have been more "us" if we tried - including the flowers. The day before we got married, I was at the wedding venue, surrounded by rafts and rafts of fresh flowers, and with the help of my best bridesmaid and her husband (yay mike) we created all of the boutinierres for the guests, the table setting flowers, the venue flowers, and of course, the bridal and bridesmaid bouquets - the star of the show was beautiful babys breath. 

For my birthday and for our wedding anniversary last year, Sarah sent me a gigantic bouquet of flowers almost identical to the bridal bouquet I made her to HMP Askham Grange and they lived on my window sill until they literally dried out and died. I sit now, on a chilly springtime evening and the dried flowers from HMP Askham Grange May 2021, sit before me said handpainted jug in 2022.

The flowers feel like symbolism. In harder times, I could have binned them. They could be the synonymy of a love dying but they didn't die. They changed and they held on. And their beauty before me, paired with fresh, white, new flowers, show me the evolution of emotion.

I spent some of 2020 and 2021 caged (lovely MEN word) with women. All of us put in prison by a system that tried (and fails) to find justice and retribution for a world that doesn't understand the why, only the how and when. A system that fails to acknowledge that women who commit crime, are often victims of crime and the self perpetuating failings and outcomes are so better remedied with intervention and prevention as opposed to incarceration. I have never felt less than the empowered woman I have always been, than in those moments and yet, in the dark, depraved no mans land prison is, the solidarity of women was never more apparent.

I met women in prison who changed my life and certainly changed my outlook on life. To have strength and sense of self in a place that is designed to defile your soul and strip you of yourself, your self worth, identity and humanity in order to control, reshape and remake and churn out, job done, box ticked. To find women who hold onto their heart and their core, or indeed find it in that place, is a beauty like no other.

I'm sure some will be mortified at the shoutout upon this blog, which has been a part of my life for many years before prison and will continue to be for many years to come, and all who are mentioned hence forth know me to be the writer, the orator, the challenger, the fighter. We share the commonality of strength of self, even if we share it for eachother. We rise up, we hold up, we drive, together. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for the strength of the women in the weakest moments of our lives.

Prepare yourselves - Umi, you found me broken in the pits of hell, unmedicated, unbalanced and trying to understand what prison was. You taught me to be strong, to show no fear, to stop crying but to cry with trust, usually upon your shoulder. You taught me how to do prison and to hold only my monkey and no-one elses. We stayed up for hours talking about religion, politics, people, purpose, crime, hate, hurt, love, family. You my friend, showed me beauty in a place where there was none and I will carry you with me always, for chicken dinners at home or road trips across the world. 

Patsy, a mirror image of strength and vulnerability, a brutal honesty and integrity that not many feel is possible from women who go to prison in the way that we did. But you defy the preconceptions in your kindness and your decency. You wear your heart on your sleeve even in a place like prison, and guard it with sensibility and despite it being taken for granted, you never lose sight of the greater good - that it is better to be good, to be kind, to be true, than to turn away and never try. To drive forward for yourself and for those you love even when you're running on empty, and there are days I want to shake you and say stop - but I know the fire in you is the fire in me and it burns for as long as breathe, to be the best we can be, because we don't know any other way to be. And that we are ok with that. To fill a void, that was created by the past, is to build a bridge of hope across it and know that the cavern is there, the depths remain, the danger of the slip is apparent, but the bridge is solid and shows the strength of who we are and how we build, rebuild, reshape, and put one step in front of the other, brick by brick. You saved me a few weeks ago, when the traffic was fast and the whip of the wind was on my face, one step infront of the other would have been my last. I stayed on the bridge, as I stayed on the pavement. And I decided to rebuild my bridge, knowing people like you are on the other side of it.

There is love in dark places, that attaches itself to your soul and sometimes you don't grasp it or understand it, but you take solace and peace in knowing it is there. For however long it is there. The love I found on my journey, shaped the way I walk it now, and I wouldn't change it.

My friends, my lord. My friends.

Every single day in jail, every single day. At HMP Askham Grange there was a daily post list, and if you had post your name was highlighted, women would queue up to see if there name was highlighted, after a few weeks at Askham, I didn't even need to look, as the prison officers handing out post would already know to have mine ready. Every single day. "Email a Prisoner," 

Sometimes, letters of love, but mostly, letters of absolute normality and "here's what I did today,"

But a special shoutout to my zoe, this time last year, I sat cross legged on my little single bed and I read an email she sent to me a hundred times or more in the weeks and months that followed.

Zoe you beautiful friend, you knew me well enough to know the geeky feminist politico in me would be suffering behind bars with no access to social media, google or my blog on International Women's Day so you sent me a 3 page email with a list of inspiring women for international womens day and more than that, you told me all about what was going on in your life so I could be part of it. I will love you forever for that email, to know me well enough that you sent me exactly what I needed when I needed it. You defrosted yorkshire lass, I've never appreciated your love more.

And of course Mills, I have talked about love and it's evolution. And regardless of our relationship and it's process, and the turmoil of prison and thereafter, you, you will always be the most inspirational women on International Women's Day.

We knew the day may come where my fuck wittery as the worlds most wonderful radiator bread baker (fuck off) would have to pay the price - and it was a heavy price to pay, mostly at your cost.

People tell me all the time, it's harder for the one's left on the outside and I agree. We began 2020 in a pandemic, which had you redeployed in the NHS covid testing and being a superwoman and being on the front line as you always would be - because you always want to do the best and the right thing. By the end of 2020, you had lost your wife to prison and we didn't realise that could be the outcome. I was ripped from you, our life, our baby plans, our careers, our marriage. In an instant.

You powered on. You think all you did was survive, but you didn't you thrived.

I came home to a woman who drove her career forward, surrounded by wonderful work colleagues who supported you - good attracts good and you have done good Mills, real good. You smashed out your postgrad journey, and sit here now, across from me, on the sofa with the cat, writing a legal ethics essay - because that is who you are, even when it's hard. You just got a fucking promotion!! Of course you did, because what you see as existing, is evolving and is growth and is inspiring to me everyday.

I haven't made it easy.

In our wedding vows, which we wrote together, I promised to empower you.

It's International Women's Day - you don't a woman or a man to empower you my darling, you're doing it just fine by yourself, but for days when you feel like you need a boost, I'm right here.

With Sports Direct mug cups of tea and cheerleading <3

International Women's Day 2022 - I have life full of women, it's the gay girls dream. I have life full of women who I will be proud to help shape the next generation of Barker-Mills - with IVF around the corner, I couldn't be happier to have the people in my life who are what today is all about.

The Women's Prison Estate

 With many newspapers reporting over the weekend that the government is progressing it's plans to ensure 4000 new prison places become available to ensure the courts can filter through and reprimand those who have been caught up in the Covid backlog of sentencing and punishment - it begs the question - why?

Like some sort of shining beacon of success, the continually misguided vision of a Conservative government and a justice strategy headed by Dominic Raab, doesn't inspire confidence in a world where justice should be restorative and rehabilitative - not punitive.

A laughable quote from HMP Foston Hall's latest inspection, which caused short lived shock waves amongst the tabloids and society, but such disdain and disappointment vanished as quickly as it appeared. As a society often lead by the hand, heart and head by our favourite broadsheets and their social media managers, the horror of HMP Foston Hall falling short, even by HMP standards, was sad to read, but not at all surprising for anyone who has head the pleasure of custodial sentencing in the women's estate.

This direct quote from the inspectors report does indeed cause a belly laugh at the sheer degradation and invisbility of women in prison "The response to women in crisis was too reactive, uncaring and often punitive,"

Punitive responses to women in crisis? It is this punitive approach that sends women by the prison van loads miles and miles across the country to find themselves in the custody, and supposed duty of care of her majesty's prisons, be it HMP Foston Hall, HMP Newhall or indeed, my nemesis and local landmark of justice - HMP Styal.

Now, HMP Styal also had a delightful prison inspectorate report, released a few short months ago, which reads almost and incredibly alarmingly, similar to that of HMP Foston Hall, which was found to be the lowest scoring prison in a decade - why then did Styal come off better when the issues that are rife run rampant just the same there as they further south?

Avid self harm, lack of duty of care, ACCT's masquerading as appropriate safeguards which last as long as prison officers can be bothered monitoring and filling in the paperwork. The hourly flashlight to the face is not enough to ensure the mental and physical wellbeing of women behind bars and I should know.

I was assigned to an ACCT on my arrival at HMP Styal, having been more than hysterical during my processing thinking my world had ended, my life, my wife, my job, my friendships, all torn from me in the bang of a judges gavel and compounded by press reporting that would go on for weeks thereafter.

I was taken to my cell on the wing, and informed, as many of you know having read my writing prior to this; informed that shower was day 8 - yes you read that right. Day 8. This was apparently due to the prisons inability to ensure covid safe showering facilities which required cleaning and therefore the women were rota'd to all intents and purposes as to an allocated day of hot water!

My plastic bowl, now laden with shampoo sachets, a bar of soap and some detergent tablets became my solace of selfcare; bathing my bits and bobs, washing my hair, and indeed, washing my underwear, warmed then by the prison pipes to get dry.

I digress. Sanitary and sanity aside, my ACCT consisted of being made to sleep with my cell ceiling light on for 4 nights, have a flashlight and a bang on the iron door once an hour, so no real sleep could take place, and at day 4, have a more senior wing officer, ask me if I was well enough to be taken off what was essentially suicide watch, and before having chance to process, consider and question, had my file closed off.

Let's just consider my circumstances for a moment; arriving at HMP Styal on a dark December evening, suited and booted with a bag of naively packed prison items, 50% of which were not allowed to come with me, processed, urine tested, hep tested, covid tested and then slammed on the wing with a plastic bowl for 14 nights of quarantine. 

No sleep for 4 nights but most of all? No medication. Due to what was and is still being referred to by HMP Styal as an "administration error," I spent 54 days in closed prison conditions, in the middle of a pandemic, having come from a well medicated, supported life, with no anti-depressants. I went cold turkey like the rest of the drug dependent women in there.

54 days with no citalopram. Every day I used the 5 minute reprieve outside of my cell to go to the medication hatch and every day I was told it was still not sorted.

I can't begin to explain my hysteria but more than that, the total lack of care from the healthcare provider within HMP Styal and the prison officers alike. I submitted apps, I asked officers, I attended healthcare, nothing. 54 days of an emotionally unstable personality disorder, bi-polar, depressive in the most extreme, isolated, debilitating circumstances I have ever found myself in.

So - does that prison estate care for the mental and physical wellbeing of the women is cares for whilst incarcerated under their care, and at great cost to the taxpayer? Circa 53k per inmate?

No.

The women's prison estate operates as nothing more than a holding pen for women who are required by law to lose their liberty and ability to be amongst the law abiding citizens. To protect people from our criminality until either our time is up, or we have worked through the issues that lead us to break the law in the first place.

It becomes tiresome to read these inspectors reports which cite Covid as the primary downfall in prison regime, in the stalling of progress and rehabilitation, education and reintegration into society. That is not good enough.

Whilst the rest of the world slowed down and protected itself from a global pandemic, the women behind bars were maligned, abandoned and failed on so many levels and no inspectorate will report the reality of what that failing really is.

Yes, it's increased levels of self harm - it's women leaving blades behind on cell window sills to make sure if you're a self harmer, you've got access to your desire. It's women bleeding, it's women crying, it's women fighting, it's women turning on other women instead of finding solidarity in the dark.

It's girls, GIRLS like Annalise Sanderson so close to release but feeling like she had nothing to live for, and being in a position of absolute vunerability, feeling the only way out of the hell of HMP was to be found hanging.

What have we become? Where the logic of retribution rises above restoration? Where empathy is replaced with disenchantment and disengagement, the ability to distance onself from "criminals" and find your own moral standing and sensiblity trumps that of someone who broke the law?

Where is the humanity? The reality? The hope?

4000 new prison places seems to be a shining accolade for a failing government that has no gold stars for honouring any of their broken promises and party lines, who have themselves broken the law on repeat and partied like it's 1999 whilst women were barred from seeing their mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, children. Support networks severed, abandoned in damp, dark, distopia of the justice system. The Daily Mail and their Tory esque ilk will report on women falling between the cracks, what a funny sentiment. Every single woman who is sentenced to prison, to a life behind bars, whether 6 weeks or 6 years, falls between the cracks, becauses there are relentless chasms of failings within the womens prison estate that ensure restriction and rehabilitation. Humiliation and not restoration. Degradation and no equality, dignity or humanity.

But by all means, Dominic you well educated, absolutely in tune with the margins of society and the mental health crisis, drugs crisis, dometic violence fuelled flaws of women who needs support and can't cope with the pressures of an increasingly cruel and stacked world, build your prisons, but for the love of god, save some places for half of the cabinet, because you deserve a place there much more - it may actually teach you what prison is. Cruel.

Fuck your apprenticeship schemes, apprenticeships inherently require a functional skills level 2 of maths and english and with restricted regimes and no education taking place in the closed womens estate, the ability for women to obtain such qualification and eligibility by the time they reach the open estate is unlikely. Your nice ideas that make for good sound bites and sooth the conscience of the masses who inherently feel the injustice but console themselves with the fact that we get our playstations and don't pay for our tv license and some of us even get to contribute to society in a meanginful way by having paid work - which in itself is a joy and curse and comes at 40% levy cost to the prisoner; meaning only 60% of what is a full time working week, in prison conditions, juggling mental health recovery, drug worker engagement and sending money home for ones family, is crowned as some sort of priviledge, working for the likes of James Timpson who purveys and masquerades as the saviour of all exoffenderes, no questions asked, which means ask no questions, whilst pocketed excellent government lump sums for taking on those undesirables no-one else dare, because unsuprisngly, the law ensures disclosure inhibits even those who serve their time.

It's all wrong. And I won't settle until it starts to feel right.

New Year, New Me? Don't you just hate that

It is an interesting thing to sit at my laptop on New Years Eve in 2021 and write, because 1) this is the first public blog I have written since coming home and 2) I'm very aware that the content of my blog is watched, read, re-read and even aired in court on occasion. So for those of you reading for the joy of reading and not some sense of barkerbaker voyeurism - welcome :)

We were all steam rolled into 2021 thinking 2020 was the worst of what the world had to offer, and for many, including myself, the tumultuous nature of 2020 was the gift that just kept on giving.

December 10th 2020 saw me in the back of a prison van, locked in a little cubicle, driving through the dark streets of Manchester to HMP Styal, Christmas lights dotting the road and turns I have learned to love and known all my life, now seen in a totally different light.

In the bleak, cold, stark journey from court to incarceration I had the joy of seeing my own fair abode from the blacked out van window and it occurred to me, how odd I always found it growing up, glancing up at the same windows on the winding motorways of the United Kingdom, wondering what demons lay within and what monsters were off to be put in their cages.

Me. I was the monster off to be caged. Caged, what a Manchester Evening News word, one that has continually filled me with fury in my many moments of anti-establishment, feminist, political cries for equality in a justice system - where women are painted as failed and flawed creatures, where crimes speak lounder than stories that came before, where words in court warp the true sense of truth, and completely undermine whatever we call justice, or whatever justice victims really seek.

So I sat in my cubicle, a bottle of water rolled under the locked compartment door - no handcuffs, just shaking hands and a one track mind - this can't be happening. How is this happening. It's all a big mistake. The continuation of my unrealistic inability to accept the severity of my actions and holding onto the words of a legal team who failed me more than I failed myself and awaiting a press parade of public humiliation that would mark me, marr me, and forget about those I left in my wake, my family, friends, employer, colleagues, students. So quick to print, so quick to run articles that once found fame and now projected shame. The irony. The press prints I've collected over the years, the awards, all locked in The Barker Baker suitcase in my apartment, so that one day they might find the light and I could remember what it felt like it was all for. But in the stark, dark, winding roads of Cheshire now, it was clear to all, even me. It was all for nothing.

A welcome of her majesty's prison during Covid-19, not lockdown at this stage in Greater Manchester and Cheshire in early December 2020, but in the prison system, a convenient and extensive choke hold on all who reside there, for the pandemic opened up a vulnerability - an easily exploited suffocation of the freedoms and dignities that can and should be found behind bars. Eradicated, decimated and masquerading as duty of care. There was none. 

"Don't worry it's nothing like what you see on TV, it's not like Bad Girls," said the prison officer opening the third gate leading to the cell block, and my "wing" - perhaps she hadn't watched Bad Girls, because this was like for like, door after door, slots to speak through, noise like that of a zoo, screams like that of a mental institution or psychiatric ward, and smells like a kennel.

A plastic bowl, a toilet roll, a bar of soap, toothbrush, sachet of shampoo and laundry tablet were handed to me - I must have looked confused. The prison officer tapped the sign on my cell door - my name, prisoner number, prison photo and date of entry. "Shower is day 8 and exercise is day 5, press the bell only if an emergency, that will be all, IN,"

This plastic bowl was a thing of facination for me throughout the prison journey, never more so than when crouching over it to wash with little dignity in my cell, only thankful I wasn't padded up with another inmate and thankfully on my own. The same bowl now to wash what few clothes I had brought with me to prison, having not truly anticipated I might actually end up there. Washing knickers, lady parts, cups, plates, hair. So this is my Christmas. This is my New Year.

I watched the fireworks all through December, split sparks in the sky, blighted by bars. Beautiful in their freedom and mocking in their location. Across the cold starry skies on New Years Eve 2020, Wilmslow never looked so beautiful and so tragic all in one. 

So what of 2021, truly.

What of New Years Resolutions in prison? I wrote on the back of my prisoner pin number sheet my new years resolution for 2021, anticipating my stay at HMP Styal would be as harrowing for the remainder as it was for the beginning, and in my sad handwriting, there is only one word, a piece of paper I brought home with me in September.

Survive

To be honest, on the eve of new year, here now as I sit, my new years resolution is not dissimilar. 

It just requires a little tweak, 2021 saw me survive, 2022 will see me thrive. I have no doubt about that. What infuriates the few, inspires the many - and that has always been a modus operandi I can live with. For those who frown and fight to find flaw and undermine the positive and the progress, there are those who uplift, who stand by my side, who take steps with me, for me, in the right direction. 

Since coming home, I have received, as I knew I would, a barrage of abuse, from strangers and just plain strange. Social media was once the forum of which I centred my universe, the projection, the protection, the falsehood that self-perpetuated the shallow nature of all that had come to pass.

Whilst I was away, I was severed from practically every kind of communication unless a good old fashion pen and paper, and in Styal you didn't receive your actual letters for fear of spice making it's way into the prison - a laughable notion when the level of drugs making their way into the prison system was neither a letter from a loved one to worry about or other!!! Bigger fish to fry HMPSS! 

The detox was beautiful and I genuinely believed when I came home, I would be better, I would see it for what it was, a gentle poison that more often than not, smells like a perfume so you let it in.

I fell right back into my own trap, so overwhelmed by the negative press, the comments, the hurt, the hate, the words, the messages, it went on and on and on and my only weapon was to play "look, everythings ok now,"

Naive and delicately broken as always in it's essence.

For the record, on the eve of December 31st 2021, I'm neither ok, not am I concquering the world the way I would want you all to think I am, but what I am doing is putting one foot infront of the other with a kinder heart, and quite frankly, that's a Christmas miracle and a beautiful thing I can take into the new year, regardless of all the horror 2021 has brought, it has brought love, true, real, overwhelming, life changing love, friendship, honesty, reality, humanity and hope.

My new years resolutions are not to make promises for me, for those I love, they are to make moments and to take steps to bring about something that is more than me.

The political, anti-establishment, feminist, lgbt+, equal rights and justice warrior is well and truly in situ.

Campaigns and lobbying are afoot. Being TheBarkerBaker brought me into contact with the people who make the change, who change the narrative, en-mass, one by one. So the power of that can be it's true legacy. Not what the papers say. But what the change can be.

2022, for you, for me, for every woman still trapped in a cage, mental, physical, financial, emotional, abusive, drug ridden, addicted, who feel they have lost their power because our justice system took it. Power and freedom are concepts. It's voices that get people really scared.

So raise them with me.

Happy New Year Friends <35

To Grieve

When I was 8, my beautiful cat Portia disappeared.

I was distraught.

I looked in all the usual places, even the sports bag he once travelled on the school bus inadvertently in.

Not there.

Days passed, tears ran, hysterics firmly in situ.

I was distraught.

It became apparent that Portia was not going to come home.

Dead or alive, gone for good.

And my tiny little brain, couldn't cope.

I had never known loss like it.

I couldn't comprehend it.

Why? How? Was it me? Was it my fault?

The pain of losing something I loved so much.

It was something I remembered feeling, but didn't understand.

My mother wrote a letter to my teacher, to explain what had happened.

To explain my behaviour.

My tears. My trauma.

And she was annoyed.

That I couldn't or wouldn't pull myself together and get on with things.

That was my first memory of what death or loss felt like.

The second time I remember feeling such pain was my grandfathers funeral.

 I stood next to my mother in a church. Front row. 

And she did a Melania Trump.

Stoney face, grief stricken, hidden under a pair of Chanel sunglasses.

I reached for her hand and she slapped it away like I was Donald Trump.

Bitch please.

Barker's don't cry. Barker's don't really do emotion of any sort unless it's anger.

I know this all too well.

And for the duration of my grandfathers funeral service, I too was stoney faced and cold.

Stalwart in our silent grief.

And then his WW2 service hat felt off his coffin as it was drawn into the fires and I leapt from my church pew, in hysterics, tears streaming down my face, red, puffy, devastated but not understanding why, and placed his hat back ontop of his coffin, panting

"He can't go without it, he needs it, he needs it,"

That memory stands firm in my mind, whenever I think of death and I think of grief, I wonder what it is to process, in a normal fashion, because when I hear of death, I am consumed with a backlog of grief and emotional baggage and it overwhelms me in ways I still don't understand.

Let me explain.

On Sunday just gone, I saw friends, actual human faces, amidst this ongoing pandemic, and in Tier 3 - panic not; social distancing was of course observed - Sarah and I are fairly tenacious regarding Covid as you can imagine.

Walking around in the cold, we trudged around Hollingworth Lake, our old stomping ground and I was consumed with a different emotion all together.

Immense relief and gratitude.

I have moments in 2020, 2019, where I have an outer body experience, and I look at my life and it feels like someone else's because it's not something I ever thought I would have.

I sat on the sofa in our little festive flat this evening, and I cried. I said to Sarah

"I can't explain it, you couldn't understand what I mean when I say, I've spent forever, before you, with you, trying to find who I am, know who I am, and now I have it, I feel like it could all unravel," and I faltered, with immense emotional cracks. My chin wobbled. And I couldn't contain this strange emotion.

I'm happy. Happier than I have ever been.

Walking around a lake on a cold december morning with the kindest people I know, who I treasure, more than I thought possible, I realised just how far I've come.

That the life I have, the life I live, is of my making. The people I fill my days and heart with, are beautiful and fill me with joy. I really am happy.

But it's never easy. I am yet to know a period of my life where I could say it was easy.

We live our life with demons day to day, and its all consuming and sucks joy from the smaller things, no matter how much safeguarding we put in place.

So cards on the table friends, 2020 has been a shit show.

We are a year on with baby making plans, the grand ambition, get married, start a family. Stalled.

The diagnosis of PCOS for me was a short lived relief, the knowledge of having just one ovary to work with, and limited at that, was a suffocating pressure - literally, all of my eggs are in one basket. And if that basket doesn't have many eggs left, my grand plans of being mother of the century are swiftly out of the window. 

Heaven forbid it was easy.

What about Sarah you ask? The perks of a gay relationship, two potential mummies.

Alas, running alongside my fertility saga, hairy faced drama, weight gain/loss/gain/loss fit/fat/fit/fat, comes something much more harrowing.

My darling wife, superstar to all who know her, rock, absolute pinacle of all that is good in my life, received much more life changing news.

We're all about the polycystic in this house - Sarah was diagnosed with autosomal dominant polycystic disease this year; something shes grappled with more and more so over the past few years, but has become more prominent over the past 18 months - and much like my PCOS, she knew something was afoot and finally got the answers she was looking for. Many tests, scans, pokes and prods, and lo' a diagnosis that brings with it fear, anxiety, lifestyle changes, dangers and ultimately a life limited disease that renders our plans to grow old and grey and saggy naggies together into our 80's less likely as we grow old disgracefully together.

In a year that has served up drama left right and centre, a global pandemic, family ill-health, mental health, infertility, an abundance of negative pregnancy tests and crying on the toilet, now serves us a year into our marriage - a shorter happily ever after than we planned.

So for anyone who fancies lending us a kidney or an ovary, just say the word.

I digress.

2020 has been a shit show.

But it has also shown the true depth of strength as to who we are. I've always regarded my bounce backs and the fact I'm alive at 33, is due to some inbuilt strength - in reality, that's not it all. My existence up until recent years, has been entirely thanks to a land of delusion, a mental health disorder and drug addiction that has supported a disengagement with reality, allowing me to exist and cope in my own backwards way.

Who I am now, is a person of resilience, in the face of this drama, trauma, chaos. Something has changed. I keep expected to break. Because who could juggle this?

We can.

We can. I talked to our friends as we walked around an almost frozen lake, and their love and solidarity, warmed my heart and gave me hope.

We can. There is nothing we can't face together. And no matter what the weeks, months and future brings, I am hopeful.

Last night, we received news, of loss, of pain, of death, in the family.

And it should have, could have been the straw that broke the camels back - but we sat together, held hands together, and felt grateful, that in the face of loss - we were oh so lucky to have the life we have together.

And of course it provoked my need to write - because my unfamiliar processing of emotions peaked - what is it to grieve?

I was consumed with sadness, for Sarah, for her family, for what it is to lose a loved one. I was overwhelmed with pride at the work she does in fighting cancer on a daily basis. But as she lay asleep in my arms, I was wide awake.

Ever since I was a child, I've never understood what death is. That someone or something is there and then gone. Remembered and then forgotten. The ceasing to exist always boggled my brain and continues to do so. 

Covid makes it particularly difficult, as we can't rush over and hold the family members that need it. We can't hold the hands of those who want it. We can't mourn together en-mass and remember together.

It's the cost of this chaos.

Whenever someone dies, whenever theres a funeral to plan, to attend, I panic. I worry. I pick up my phone and want so desperately to call my mum and dad and check they are ok, alive in the least, because I know if they are dead and buried, no-one will have told me and it will be up to me to check.

There have been family funerals I've been barred from attending.

There have been family funerals I wish I hadn't, banished from gravesides and the right to mourn.

For the love of god, I only found out my Nana had passed recently and she had been dead for two years - this is the curse I carry as the black sheep and cast out. The life I chose and the family I left behind to build the one I now call mine.

On my wedding day, the family member we lost yesterday and I had a moment.

He took more photos than our photographer. He kissed me and told me how beautiful I looked.

I told him how happy I was that he could be there, and he cried, hugged me, and was so glad he had the chance to see Sarah marry me.

So what is death? It's memories like that, which will forever bring joy and remind me that the family I have now, the family I have the priveldge to be a part of, to build my own with Sarah in whatever way we find possible, makes me the luckiest person in the world.

And no matter how much time we have, every second is worth it, and I won't regret a single one. Never again.

I know who I am. 

Pound of Flesh

 

I shake as a type,

Don’t believe the hype.

Misinformation is everywhere.

And it may well have come from me.

If you could see, me

The one that exists now,

Maybe you’d fight less,

To take away my crown.

But to want, to restore

Justice and glory to your tribe

You come at me,

Harder,

To take what’s mine.

Maybe you see it as yours

After all that’s come before

But it’s not.

I built this post apocolpyse

From the ashes and the dirt

From the breakdown

From the psych wards,

From the closed doors,

Its unfair they shout

Why her they pout

It’s not fair they share

Amongst the war rabble

Gather

Gather

Closer in

Suffocate

Eradicate

All that she is

Pain and pleasure

So intermingled

It’s justice they harp

Aim for the heart

And burn it all

Apart

Tear them

Scare them

Brutal in the truth

Your right

I’m wrong

It’s your line

My song

But your beat

On the battle drum

Fran your time has come

End of days

End of nows

End of futures, pasts and present

To strike you back

With full attack

In a way most unpleasant

Stick you in that room

That will consume

The good the hope the dreams

Because its your fault

YOUR FAULT YOUR FAULT

They scream and scream and scream.

Hate

So much hate

And youre right to feel that way

But that person

That fantasy

Doesn’t exist

Not today

So youre punishing a memory

A night terror

A monster

That stalked the night and day

But your adamant

So adamant the monster has to pay

Take it all

Take the hope

The life, the liberty

Take the friends, take the love,

Destroy the family

She deserves it

Punish her

Push her face into the ground

Suffocate her

With our honest truths

So she can’t make another sound.

Danger such danger

The words that she can speak

And the lies she tells

Just watch her

She will start to leak.

The façade the mask the lovely face of day

It’s fake you know,

We’ll show you so,

We will wash it all away.

In flames of fire and integrity

We will show you who she is

The demon the defrauder the monster deep within

She got married you know

God help the girl

Who fell for her lines

Because shes poison

Yes shes poison

And it starts from deep inside

Smiles, All smiles

As she lies to your face

We will protect the world

TO make so sure

They don’t suffer the same disgrace.

 

Stop this please

JUST LOOK AT ME

LOOK AT ME AND SEE

 This demon, the monster,

It really isn’t me.

You got caught in the storm

You washed ashore

And I promised a life line

But the life line

The rope

It chokes

It broke

It died.

Stop this please

Stop this now.

I can’t breathe

You’re consuming me

You’re killing me

And taking all that’s good

I hate myself

I hate it

I do, I’ve paid the price

To live with this

It’s costly, its penance enough

So pounds are paid in cash and flesh

And still you want more

You won’t stop

I see

I know that now

Until I’m back down on the floor

Under foot

Under stood

To know my place

But you don’t know me

You don’t see how I’ve changed everything but my face

I worked

I fought

I drowned

Then swam

And floated back up

To breathe again

I can’t sleep again

I’m scared again

I can’t

Please stop. Just stop.

I can’t do this

I’ve given you all I’ve got.

I’m good

I’m kind

I’m here.

I’m sorry

Please stop being so blind.

Christmas Card

I got a card in the post one Christmas,

It had a photo of boy,

With eyes like mine.

Merry Christmas

From a stranger

Who's name was Edward.

I don't know anyone called Edward.

But I do love a good Christmas card.

I read it ten times or more,

Sat on the piano stool practicing my scales.

Then like a scene from Harry Potter,

The Dursleys snapped what was mine,

Precious in pen,

And it disappeared never to be seen again.

Why though

How though

Who was this invisible boy?

Why did he write to me?

Was he a pen pal?

Maybe he was looking for a friend,

I know I needed one.

What perfect circumstance brought you to my door?

Well now you're embers in the Christmas family hearth

Burning,

Like the questions in my heart.

And then there's your name again, in type cast,

Council special.

The kind of black and white text that says "worry"

The kind of black and white text of NHS letters,

Bail notices, court orders, and social services supreme.

E d w a r d

Brother.

Oh there you are.

And look there's more.

Trawl the typography and you'll find her.

Donna.

I've never heard that name before.

Who are you?

Sister.

Well this is new.

A family on page two.

I would have liked to know you.

I suppose better late than never.

I wish I had understood your letter.

The postmark,

Where you were,

Why you wrote.

I feel like it's not just time they stole.

It's the hammering,

Chisling in my heart,

To widen and deepen this hole.

I know I have parts missing

And I've been looking for a link

And there you were,

In pen and ink.

I've been wondering why I don't feel myself,

Why I don't fit here,

And it's only now it makes sense.

Because I've got you here.

And I hold you dear.

Love.

For pieces that got lost along the way.

For parts of me that never got a say.

We're like a jigsaw

And you can tell we were made by the Irish

Because none of the pieces fit quite right

But theres something in the silence of knowing you,

That makes me feel like things could now be alright.

I wrote today that I wish I could have grown up with you

And that's a childhood dream,

But I wouldn't change it, because you wouldn't want to see what I've seen.

I wouldn't have wanted to be that person,

The one I was before,

Because I was cold and mean.

Time has taught me to be kinder,

Hopeful.

Love harder, softer.

And open up parts of me that have never seen the light.

Because I trust that you are me, and I am you,

And we always win

We always fight.

I've done things wrong,

That I try to put right,

And you hold up my integrity.

Through your love of me

And you see all that is true

Because your family

Because you are you.

I wanted to know what love meant

And I spent years trying to find out

I made friends,

Lost more,

Broke my heart

Broke theirs too

It was all the long road

The long game

Of fate leading me to you.

So hello brother

Hello sister

I've missed you

And I'm so glad that your hear

Because it's 2020

And when covid says we can't breathe,

I can, for the first time in my life.

To love you

My wife,

I've built my little nest,

And I've gotta tell you,

It really is the best <3

World Suicide Prevention Day - a little late

This week was "world suicide prevention day" and I saw an abundance of moving stories, blogs, vlogs, status updates and I wanted to write my piece, but I couldn't.

I only write when compelled, when an emotion evokes my need to. I call it my exorcism. Often when I am overwhelmed, caught off guard, suffocated by past, present and future and as much as I wanted to write, the words wouldn't come.

And then today, whilst lying on a doctors table, he asked me to take down my jeans and it triggered two responses in my brain - 1) I once read in my child court case records that the first time a doctor asked me to do that after I was rescued from the horrors of biological parental care, I screamed the place down and refused and fought the poor man off.

And 2) I slid my jeans down, first thought, my thighs are tighter, the gym is paying off, they look GOOD, but they remain scared, and whilst the doctor did his thing, finding out whats happening with my fertility, I focused on the scars on my thighs and I was caught in a paradox in time; there was a Fran on this earth that used to cut those beautiful thighs and hide them, and now there's a Fran that see's the scars, remembers the pain and every reason, for every white line, every cry, but it's not me anymore, this Fran is lying on a doctors table getting the answers Sarah and I so deserve on our road to baby making.

World suicide awareness day; a strange thing isn't it? In 2020? When we talk about it all so openly, I didn't think as a teenager I would ever see the day where people who had suffered in silence, were able to step into the light and turn something so heart wrenching into something so magically positive. We are all survivors, and we stand side by side, through the mediums of social media, sharing our words, our stories, our pain and we heal, together.

Two poignant moments in my life where suicide was more than a cry for help, it was a goodbye.

Christmas Day 2010. Alone, in halls of residence, no family. Cut out and left to sit for the first time in my adult life, lonely, surrounded by gifts I had bought my family.

I drank and I raged, I smashed up my flat, I launched the Christmas tree across the room, smashed my phone on the kitchen floor, and then swallowed every pill I had in the house...only to be found in a puddle of purple sick by a concerned porter who had heard the commotion and duly took me to the A & E that was literally and thankfully, directly opposite my flat at the time.

I spent Christmas night 2010, with needles in my arms, pin pricks in my feet, holes in my body where they couldn't find a vein, like a voodoo doll. Alone.

My marks and spencer turkey a thing of the past, and 20 cans of strongbow cider, tracing my steps like an alcoholics version of Hansel and Gretel showing the way I came.

I lost my mind.

I broke.

I've only felt like that twice in my life.

The first was that Christmas Day, alone. And the second was in 2017 in the fall out of the business collapse.

The second time began with alcohol, pills, not enough, so I got angry, a kitchen knife, cuts, running out of the house with my then fiance on the phone to the police trying to get me some help. I ran, faster than I ever have.

And there I found a bridge, and I let my feet dangle over cold cold water. Looking at my drunken angry lost and broken reflection. My hands gripped the brick, the dust stuck to the palms of my sweaty hands. Mascara down my face. Who was that girl looking back at me? Because I didn't recognise her? I don't recognise her.

Do it.

Drop.

Like a stone, to the bottom of that cold canal. Take a deep breath and fall through the air. And all that pain, will be gone.

All that pressure. All that hate. All that debt. All the lies. Hopes. Dreams. Failures. Wash it away like it's a page from the bible and sink to the bottom, because that darkness that ripples and reflects back at you sat there on that bridge, it's in you and drowning is easier than this.

Sirens.

Lights. They zoom past, up to our house, our home. The home I broke, with the knocks on the door, the screaming the shouting. The bullshit I brought to our door. I took your safe place and the only way to give it back, is to go now.

I step off the bridge, walk round the tow path, and dangle my legs over the side, toes touching the water.

Phone ringing. Sirens louder. They're getting closer.

And as if held back by something that's not there, I lean forward, shoes in the water now, and I answer the phone. Policeman. Come home.

I sit.

I breathe.

I stand up and I walk home. Wet.

Then it's hospital.

The part of my brain that tears up the good parts of my life doesn't exist as much these days, with therapy, lots of therapy, medication and the most work I've ever had to do to change, it's quieter, but it still whispers on dark days.

I stood on our balcony last week, in the pouring rain, looking out over the city lights and it was like a cold hand on my shoulder, creeping into my safe place, my happy heart, and I hushed it before it spoke.

The dragon, stoking the fire.

"You're still her and the world would be better without a girl like you,"

"You're still dangerous, no-one believes this new you, you don't do you?"

And I turned the ring on my wedding finger and breathed in the first cold nights air, September breeze and before I had chance to entertain the chaos, there were arms wrapped around my waist and a kinder whisper of reality from my wife "come inside,"

And a song, that's kept my brain in it's safe place - I'm obsessed, and everytime I listen to it, it inspires something new in me, but more than that, it strikes me to the core, and if there was ever an anthem thats appropriate to my emotion writing this piece its this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsiVvkzCdSI

Every so often in my life, I find a song, and the lyrics, tone, tune, all of it, becomes this celestial moment where everything the artist is singing, entwines with how I feel. Well, tay-tay, you've tapped into my heart on this one. It's changed my perspective. But more than that, it's given me hope. And I really, really just needed it.

Sometimes, in the dark places, spaces, when we entertain the concept of death, the end, the better offs, the what ifs, it's love that pulls us back, and that's a beautiful blessing.

Sometimes, and more often than we care to admit, it's just us. Staring our choice down. Swim or drown. And it's only in those moments you realise that what you brought here was never weakness, it was the coming back that was always your strength.

So for those of you who hear the whisper, even in the best of times, when we are all smiles, and life is good. The devil on the shoulder plays havoc no matter what.

Remember, you chose life. Even if it took you to a hospital bed, wired up. Even if took you to feeling your feet in the water.

It's too cliche and too disrespectful to say "you're alive, feel blessed, live each day like it's your last, life's a gift," when happy clappy fuck wits and therapists say that to me, I try not to laugh.

It may well be, and it may be viewed as wasteful, squandering to throw it away, once, twice, twenty times, it doesn't matter. No-one has the right to tell you you were wrong, and that you're ok now.

Forever and a day, it will always be ok to say

I'm not ok.