Part of the reason for not posting, I think, comes with not being ready to share the post that was supposed to come next. It is still going to come, but I don’t think I’ve made peace with some of the things I want to share. Also, I feel there are a lot of opinions about the subject of the writing and I’m getting in my head about it.

Since the festival last month, I haven’t really left my house. I can count on one hand the amount of times I’ve done it alone. I’ve hardly touched my guitar, although I do have one half written song I’ve done since then. I’ve picked up other crafts to stop me doomscrolling and googling symptoms as much. My therapist tells me to learn a new song every time I want to Google. I think the first one I learned will be today’s bonus. I have wanted to share it since the first week of posting.

I am terrified of setbacks. The fear of a setback has stopped me from progressing and still after doing everything I could to “protect” myself from a setback, I found myself still experiencing another one. Thinking about it now, slowly but surely I could see it coming, but even after all of this time I didn’t see it coming in real time. I’d like to add I only did one Sunday morning in bed because that is all that life allowed. You can’t even have a health crisis in peace when you’ve got a family to look after. Aren’t you supposed to have a lie in on a Sunday morning anyway?

Anyway, I ended up back in the doctor’s. For a whole hour, I sat with the doctor. The one who the post a few weeks ago was supposed to reference, but I was lost in a panic and didn’t know what day it was. It’ll come. I don’t think I’ve made peace with everything I need to say. I like him. Somehow he manages to stay calm while I shake and fight with everything he says because my health anxiety can’t accept his answers. He lets me say whatever I want. He answers everything. He gives me a lot of time. He is good. Still, I haven’t taken the medication. Now it’s become a part of exposure therapy and somehow that’s worse. The pressure feels heavy. Logically I know it’s ridiculous.

He called me out for going silent after our last appointment. I didn’t do what I was supposed to do and I didn’t go back after a month like I was supposed to. He also told me he could tell I’d stopped doing all of the things he had previously advised me to do. I had, and I hadn’t even realised. He said it’s typical that people stop when they’re managing a bit better and then it all comes crashing down. He is right. I’ve started working back up to doing it all, so it’s really no surprise I feel like I can write this now and feel the joy in the writing. I was trying too hard to avoid another terrifying setback that I locked myself away again, and hoped the feelings would fade but I wasn’t moving or writing or taking twenty minutes for myself to take a deep fucking breath.

I am really rubbish at sticking to a routine. I hate routine. I’ve always tried to avoid it because I get bored. Now as a mother and someone who feels like they need someone to remind them to do all of the things you need to do every day, and also having to be that person for someone who is learning, I realise how good my mum and dad were at routine. I thought they were boring. I might ask my dad to start texting me “teeth and toilet” every night when he goes to bed to remind me to brush my teeth and go to bed at a reasonable hour just like he used to shout into the living room when me and my brother were trying to stay quiet and hoped they didn’t realise we were still watching telly at 7:01pm or whatever. He reads my Substack so I imagine he’s going to start doing it without me asking now because, like I say, they actually remember to do things. I get to 9pm shattered after fighting my daughter to go to bed and suddenly I remember everything I haven’t done.

Anyway, back to it next week. If this post hasn’t given away what the doctor tells me is fueling my anxiety I’ll say it again so we are back on track: there is another layer.

Paid Subscriber Bonus Below

Read more

I haven’t recorded or released any music since 2019. I don’t enjoy recording. It’s not my favourite part of being a songwriter. I love writing the songs and I love playing them on stage. Sitting behind a microphone to record, though, I lose my voice and my fingers don’t work. I feel like you can hear the effort on the recording. That being said, I do want to release music. When people ask me if I’m on Spotify, I don’t want to cringe at the fact that they can only hear songs that I am completely over.

I have been thinking a lot this week about a collection of songs I wrote when we were viewing/buying/moving house two years ago. I also thought about the fact I’m happy to record into my phone but not a microphone, so today I got one out and have recorded five songs into my laptop. They probably don’t sound much better than just my phone, but that wasn’t the point. I got it out to try and stop being scared of it. Get comfortable behind it like I am on stage. Get comfortable with making mistakes and posting it anyway.

All the songs are short. Some are clearly unfinished. Some just are what they are. I’m sharing them here today for paid subscribers to listen to. Subscribers are going up and I want to thank you for being here and I hope you are enjoying the songs I share at the end of my posts every week. Should I finish them? Should I release them? Are they good enough for that? Which one is your favourite? I don’t think they’re my best songs but I think they’re enjoyable to play and very much all sit in the same category. Just an experiment.

Let me know.

Paid Subscriber Bonus Below.

Subscribe now

Read more

When I announced my Substack I posted this picture. I had found it sorting through my memory box just days after I had hacked most of my hair off with kitchen scissors. It made me smile because I realised it looked exactly the same almost thirty years later. The shortest it had been since I was three, still as messy as ever. I would wear those dungarees now. I could see so much of my daughter in me and the determination that we share. I can’t remember that day, but I know I’ll have been trying to whack the ball as hard as I could and getting agitated when I couldn’t do it.

When I was saying goodbye to my lovely therapist for the last time my hair kept blowing in my face and getting stuck to my tears. I told her that I’m going to go home and cut it off. She laughed, but I knew it was coming. I was not in a good way. I felt like I was grieving a woman I knew was five minutes down the road.

It was Saturday night. I’d gone from one therapist to another on Thursday and Friday and on Saturday the urge to cut my hair was overwhelming. Another attempt at controlling something. Hairdressers often talk us out of it. I couldn’t go to a hairdresser anyway because I was truly stuck at home. I was washing my hair and got the feeling that it just had to go. It was weighing me down. It was in my way. So I did a kitchen scissors jobby. It did give me some relief. I obviously got the Britney comments.

Since I found that picture my family have sent me more, shocked at how similar we look. Obviously, it’s a compliment. To me, she is the most perfect little person ever. We do look very alike, so how can I think she is absolutely gorgeous and struggle to look at myself?

I find it really difficult to look in the mirror. A lot of it has to do with DPDR. It’s a freaky feeling looking at yourself and not recognising yourself, or everything looking really distorted, or my surroundings not looking real. I could easily convince myself sometimes that I am looking at a total stranger. Same for pictures. I hate pictures of myself. My camera roll used to be filled with lots of different things. Since having my daughter 99.9% of them are of her, but for the first few years I was on them too. I look like a different person then. You can see sadness in my eyes now. I look tired and broken.

As well as that though, I do actually look different. I have put on weight and I feel very uncomfortable about it. Shame. My bigger body reminds me of how different I feel now. How different my life is. It reminds me of my failures. I don’t feel strong or healthy. I’m exhausted. My skin doesn’t look like mine. I used to exercise regularly. I can’t even walk anywhere and I used to walk everywhere.

In the year or so before everything got to breaking point I was so busy that I didn’t realise that my body was changing. I started to notice my clothes looked different and I stopped wearing certain things but it didn’t occur to me that I had stopped looking after myself properly. My head was so full with a toxic work environment and trying to be a very present mum all at the same time. I was putting so much of my energy into the wrong things. I still need to work out why. I feel immense shame about it. I was fighting for things that I didn’t need to fight for. I had so many other things going for me.

A few weeks ago when I realised I wasn’t in any pictures anymore, I made a conscious effort to start putting myself back in them. It was in a controlled way. Certain angles, or my daughter covering my body. Hiding my face a little bit behind her. I started wearing the clothes I wanted to wear regardless of how I looked. Tops I would have been too self conscious to wear in my twenties when I was running half marathons, cycling to and from work and swimming many many lengths.

Recently though, I left my house for the weekend for the first time in six months and I found myself in a setting where other people were taking the pictures. My daughter, my partner and my friends. I couldn’t control the camera angle. I wanted to be in the pictures. I asked for some of them. I hate all of them. There’s pictures of my lovely little girl with me next to her and I don’t look like me and I find it confusing. I was very anxious all weekend and I can see the fear in my eyes. I wanted to be there for my daughter. I’m worried in the future she will look at the pictures and ask what was wrong with me.

There were obviously conversations about me not going and her dad just taking her to an event we go to every year. I couldn’t bear the thought of her wondering why her mum stayed at home, so I fought through the fear, and I went. I did really well. I bought a comfy chair, a hat and glasses and tried to look as unapproachable as possible. Do not come to me if I don’t come to you.

For some reason I find it hard to admit that I did it. I didn’t do it particularly well. I lost my patience. I had to escape back to the tent often. I was scared. I did do it though. Now that I’m home and looking at the pictures and I’m not thinking about the fact I managed to take her onto the roller disco even though I was shaking, or that I got onto a kayak with her sitting on my knee, and paddled round for half an hour, or even the fact I actually left my house for three whole days. I’m writing and thinking about my weight. Worrying about people judging me because I managed to camp for three days, but at home I still feel like I can’t go anywhere. Especially in groups of people. Worrying that people don’t understand healing isn’t linear. Why am I even worrying about other people?

I think I find it hard to admit when I am doing well because I am so scared of disappointing people. Over the last few years I have had a couple of false starts at getting better and the setbacks have been worse and worse. I’m so scared of the setbacks. I’m scared to push myself. I don’t want the people who care about me to get hopeful because I’m still not hopeful. Some days I can speak nicely to myself but mostly I can’t, and I have no trust in myself. I’ve said it before, my determination has vanished.

It’s not just anxiety though. There’s another layer.

Paid Subscriber Bonus Below

Read more

I learned in my teenage years that songwriting helps my worried and overactive brain. It generally makes it more bearable to live with, and it often gives me answers to questions I’m struggling to answer. My dad had pointed that out to me, too. I played him a song when I was 17 and I vividly remember him saying “do you feel better now?” I obviously rolled my eyes and didn’t give anything away…but when he walked away I remember thinking that I did.

This time, however, my intrusive thoughts and dissociation became too overpowering. Songwriting didn’t feel like the immediate answer. There were too many thoughts. Lots of them intrusive and scary. I didn’t want to sing about them. Still don’t.

I decided to start writing about the last few years just after it became obvious I was unable to play gigs for quite a while. I had been consistent with my morning pages for months to try to get myself into a bit of a routine. I was truly lost in anxiety and, as we know, largely unable to leave the house. At first I thought emptying my head onto the page would be enough but it wasn’t. The more I wrote, the more I thought and wanted to write. As my social life was on pause, and discussions were limited to a fifty minute appointment with my therapist, loneliness was lingering and my head constantly spinning and I knew I had to get them out. It became clear that private reflection wasn’t enough and it wasn’t really getting me anywhere. However, I knew I needed to make something out of the mayhem I was experiencing because that is what I’ve always done. I’ve always put all of my grief onto a page and sang it out loud.

When I realised the answer could be Substack, I decided I would have at least the first month of posts done. I told myself that this was to make sure I stayed consistent. Soon enough, though, I had written three months worth of drafts almost ready to share without really thinking about it. It was then that I started to wonder what it was that was stopping me from actually pressing publish, and why did I want to publicly share anything about the last two years which I find largely embarrassing.

When I asked myself what and why, my brain eagerly snapped back questioning the point of sharing. It told me no one would care about, or want to read, anything I have to say. Classically, it convinced me that everyone will think I’m stupid, embarrassing, and self obsessed. It continued to tell me I’m not a writer, I’m too much, the stories are too personal, and there’s so much more going on in the world than my agoraphobia and panic disorder. I recognised some of these jabs from negative things old friends and industry monsters had shared about my music, or me, previously. Somewhere along the way they had become sticky thoughts and settled into my own beliefs.

Firstly, a songwriter is someone who writes a song, and a writer is someone who writes something. Anything. You don’t have to be the best at it to be one. It doesn’t have to be a career. Why are we always over complicating things? There is no special club. I know this, I believe this. I have to remind myself of it constantly. If I was talking to anyone else I would remind them they can be, and are, everything they want to be. However, I struggle tremendously to be kind to myself. I have read too many articles claiming everything written has to be extremely deep, or if it’s not an academic piece it is not worth reading. If you don’t learn something life changing from it there is no point. Wrong. Creativity is a good enough reason. Relief is a good enough reason.

When I realised this it became clear very quickly why I was not sharing my music or my writing. I am scared. Scared of judgement, scared of not being good enough, scared of sharing some of the stories I have written, scared that I should have developed as a musician since my last releases and what if that doesn’t come across? I have a serious lack of self confidence. My imposter syndrome is wild. It’s held me back my whole life. Always worried about people whose voices are louder than mine, have a better vocabulary, are cleverer than me. I find everything to be very embarrassing and my face always gives me away.

I’ve had a lot of messages since I started sharing this series. A lot of love. A lot of reminders that I am not on my own. People wanting to let me know something has resonated with them. It’s been really lovely to connect with people, some who I haven’t spoken about for years. Friends telling me they think they understand more now. I’ve also had the opposite. People close to me worrying that I am too vulnerable to be sharing heavy things. Telling me they know I’m being discussed behind closed doors. They’re worried that I’ll regret sharing intimate details of my life. Believe it or not, a lot of the time I feel like I am holding back a lot of details to protect myself and other people. I’m being careful to only write what I am comfortable sharing, which may be more than other people. Somehow it feels easier to tell the whole world how I’m feeling than it is to explain why I’m not attending anything I’m being invited to. I’m not worried about people talking about me. It’s the least of my worries.

If everything happens for a reason, I have to believe I am going to get something out of this. Writing is my way of trying to make sense of it. Sharing it is my way of feeling less alone. Still not quite sure why that means posting it on the internet for anyone to read, but maybe it’ll become clear. We already know I’ve been warned and experienced the dangers of holding everything in. That is definitely a part of this. Without the weekly therapy session of dumping my thoughts onto my lovely therapist, it has got to go somewhere else.

I’m hoping that releasing as much information from my brain as possible, alongside other things I am doing, things will start to shift. Maybe then I’ll be able to write songs again. My confidence will come back and I’ll finally record an album and get to the bottom of where it all went wrong (although I have some ideas). If I can prove to myself that I am capable of doing things, maybe I’ll go outside and stop blaming everything on agoraphobia, panic, being too busy, motherhood or work and name it for what it is. It’s fear.

Paid Subscriber Bonus Below

Read more

For me, medication is a no go. My health anxiety tells me I can’t take it. This causes a lot of problems with the people who care about me because generally people without health anxiety don’t understand. I can kind of get why it is hard to get your head around but also, I can’t. It is just the way my brain works. The what ifs keep me awake at night. If I have no side effects, my body will still tell me that I do and I’ll start to believe it. I am often presented with impatience and irritability from doctors and the people around me because they just don’t understand why I can’t take them.

However, after the thumbs not working, unable to speak panic attack I outlined in last week’s post, I knew I needed to try something. Not just for me, but for them. I agreed to therapy but I had to be able to pick my therapist. I couldn’t bear the thought of scrolling through the faces of profiles of people all saying the same thing, so I went with a recommendation.

Within a week or so my new therapist was opening the door for me for the first time. That therapist is one of the very few people to ever create a safe space for me where I felt cared for and listened to. How do these people remember things you said 68 weeks ago? I don’t remember what happened yesterday. Going to see her quickly became the highlight of my week. I treasure every session I had with her and she completely changed the way I thought about therapy in about five seconds. If you’re a paid subscriber the song this week outlines this story a bit more, so I’ll keep it brief. She helped me massively. I have so much respect for her and care about her deeply, but I knew after a few months that it wasn’t enough, and so did everyone else. I put off any changes for a long time, but I was getting worse and when I got stuck in the house, sometimes stuck in bed, I knew I needed further input. After many conversations about medication with my doctor and my family and them not being able to convince me, I reluctantly turned to CBT and EMDR.

This is where I am now. When I post this, I’m about eight weeks into it and not really at a point where I can discuss it properly.

Starting with my new therapist came with the devastating blow that I had to leave my lovely therapist behind. My new therapist didn’t allow me to do both at the same time, which is really what I need. He had come highly recommended, and I was very unwell and my family were full of hope, so I had to trust him and jump straight in.

My lovely little safe space felt like it was ripped from right under my toes. In the final session with my lovely therapist, I couldn’t find the words to even say thank you. I sat and played with my clip and hardly said a word because all I could do was cry. Ugly cry. I couldn’t share any of my feelings that day even though she tried to get them out of me. 24 hours after my last session with my lovely therapist, I started again. Two months later, I am still really sad about it, and kind of in the same position of only having one type of therapy and it not being enough.

I have always been a very emotional person, sometimes too big for some people to comprehend. I do get attached to people and things, so the change for me was very disruptive. Even though I was keen to jump in and learn new ways of coping that might help me get back to myself straight away, I knew there was a problem, and that problem was the one the doctor and my lovely, now, ex-therapist, had pointed out.

Doctor: “You have been holding too much in for too long. I could see it as soon as you walked through the door.”

Ex-Therapist: “I know you have been holding things in for too long and I don’t want to add to that.”

Turns out people really do get sick if they hold their thoughts and feelings in an iron fist to avoid the emotions they’ve repeatedly been told are too much. Too strong. Unnecessary. Turns out I was right all along and crying isn’t a bad thing. It’s a release that I very much need very often. The belief doesn’t even just come from what I’ve been told. I’ve just absorbed it. I come from a family of very strong people. Hard as nails. After three decades of thinking I was just like them and battling through and putting a brave face on, my mask fell off and now I don’t recognise myself, and they don’t recognise me. I miss my determination.

Without that space, I found myself back in the position of having no one to talk to. Not really. Not about the things I needed to talk about and how honest and open I needed to be with my opinions and feelings. I had spent just over a year non-stop talking to this woman, falling over my words, repeating myself, telling six stories at once and forgetting the whole point right as I was supposed to be getting to it. Sometimes she was also hit with an extremely long email because I couldn’t possibly wait until Thursday because I might burst. I haven’t got anyone in real life to talk to like this anymore and I haven’t for a while.

I knew this was bad for me and I’m struggling with it. There’s no element of relief after CBT or EMDR. I like the straight talking, I like having tools to try and get myself back to doing the things I love. I like being told I’m a typical case, it gives me hope. Still, I haven’t spoken about anything I need to. I haven’t been able to get anything off my chest. I feel like I need therapy after therapy and I’m not allowed to go.

Paid Subscriber Bonus Below

Read more

In November 2024 I started to feel strange sensations. I felt dizzy and like the floor wasn’t steady beneath my feet. It was occasional at first. I found myself rushing back to my car from shops convinced I was going to collapse, or having to stop and sit down praying the feeling would pass because it was a fifteen minute walk back to my house with a confused toddler. I felt panicked by it, but I carried on as normal. It felt very sudden, very confusing.

It wasn’t sudden. There had been many warnings. Earlier on in September, we got into a car situation that could have been dangerous but it wasn’t. No one was hurt, there was no crash. Nothing actually happened. My reaction, though, was as if the car had actually flipped. I was jittery, emotional, spaced out and needed to be on my own for hours afterwards. My emotions and reactions to things had been over the top for a while. I could do a whole timeline of events leading up to this point. My daughter’s health scares, a positive pregnancy test that soon was negative again, family disagreements, losing my Granny Mac, an identity crisis, losing friends and working in a truly terrible place that I should have left almost instantly, to name only a few.

I hadn’t stopped, I hadn’t really spoken about any of it, I hadn’t written songs, I had lost all trust in people and the world. I had not listened to my body, and now it was making me listen.

It was a Thursday in November 2024, an office day. Suddenly, the left side of my face went numb and my arm, leg and foot didn’t feel right. Everything suddenly looked really bright. Nothing looked real. I felt off balance and unsafe and a strange feeling took over my whole body. I left the office and tried to go and get some dinner. I was frantic on the phone to my partner who told me I needed to eat and drink and that I hadn’t been looking after myself properly (all true). I tried to relax and eat but it was getting worse. Eventually, I went to the office and told my manager that I felt like I was having a stroke and I needed to leave. I drove home, still convinced I was having a stroke.

The first place I went for help was the walk-in. After listing my symptoms, they asked me if I was pregnant. Twice. It took every fibre of my being to not scream back at the two female nurses “No. I’m not. You dickheads”. After their “oh sometimes people do get pregnant on their period” spiel I weed into the cup anyway. Back in the waiting room, I remembered the dizziness from my first pregnancy and started to hope that they were right. I could do pregnancy. I wanted more kids. Shock horror, it wasn’t. My first anxiety diagnosis.

My symptoms were relentless. Dizziness. Not feeling real. Feeling floaty, like I was fading and just going to disappear. My head felt like it might burst. My brain, and sometimes my whole body, buzzing. Numbness. Feeling glitchy. Weird vision things. Feeling like my legs would go underneath me. Even when I’m sitting down, feeling like everything is moving up and down. Feeling like something really bad is going to happen constantly. Feeling trapped and wanting to escape. I couldn’t relax or be on my own. With no relief from any of it I was convinced I was dying and no one was taking me seriously. I still have these symptoms and they are still all this time causing havoc.

Unable to return to work, I needed another doctor’s note. I went and begged for help listing my constant symptoms and trying to convince anyone and everyone it had to be something serious. The nurse looked at me blankly and unbothered. She told me she was just there to give me a sick note, but chest pains mean A&E, so off we went. We waited for hours. I had blood tests and an ECG. I told them there must be something wrong with my brain. Anxiety.

In April came the second humongous panic attack. I was shopping alone and had walked there. The dizziness hit me suddenly and I looked around for help. I felt very unsteady and became very aware I had a good walk back and none of my family were close by. I started trying to get out of the shop when the tunnel vision hit for the first time. A long black tunnel with a can of tinned tomatoes at the end of it. I rushed out of the shop panicking, relieved to be outside. The floor felt uneven, though, and I didn’t feel right. After about a minute, the tunnel vision hit again. It was hot and sunny and everything felt extremely bright. The busy sounds of Smithdown Road became distant and muffled and I was convinced I was dying. I thought it was genuinely the end. I tried to use my phone to call for help and my thumbs couldn’t move to text. I tried to ask a woman who was walking past me for help and I couldn’t talk. My mouth wouldn’t move. No sound was coming out. The feeling faded and I ran. I ran into the cars, and up one of the roads towards my house. Back to A&E. Anxiety. Have you drunk enough water?

Just over a year later in May 2026, after plenty of other doctors appointments, a year of therapy and still all the same symptoms, I had a similar experience. Fading, feeling like I was falling, tunnel vision, numbness, everything felt unbearably bright. I ran and ran and ran back to my car. I couldn’t catch my breath. Hyperventilating. I was on my own. I’d been playing a gig. I could feel it coming. This time I knew it was a panic attack. It followed the same patterns, I pushed through the weekend and did two more gigs. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I couldn’t get out of bed. On Wednesday afternoon I had to do the nursery run. I got my daughter and got back into the car. It was boiling, the heat was burning my arms through the car window. The brightness was unbearable. I didn’t feel safe enough to look after her myself that day, so I was dropping her off at my parents’ house. On the drive there I started vomiting all over myself on Wavertree High Street, on the way back, the same again on Archway Road. I couldn’t even pull over. I got home, threw my clothes in the bin and went to bed. I was so weak, lightheaded, scared and convinced once again I was dying. My partner forced me to go and see a doctor. A&E. Anxiety. Anxiety induced vomiting. That was the point the pushing through had to stop.

The panic attacks that I’ve described are just three of many and for the best part of two years, all of these symptoms have ruled my life. They affect me every single day and dictate where I can and can’t go, who I can and can’t see, and leave me wondering if I will ever feel like myself again. Sometimes I have all of them, sometimes just a few. However, the derealisation is constant and depersonalisation holds its hand. It started that Thursday in the office and it hasn’t gone away.

Derealisation is often described as feeling like you’re in a dream-like state, even by people who say they’ve been experiencing it for decades. I like dreams. I daydream a lot. I daydream when I eat. When I’m having a stressful moment I think about something I love and get lost in the daydream, sometimes for quite a long time. It feels like a break for my brain. Derealisation is not a dream-like state. It feels like you are stuck in a nightmare. Like the recurring nightmare you had when you were a kid. Nothing looks real. Everything looks wonky, different, too bright, too loud, too overstimulating. My own voice doesn’t sound like mine and catches me off guard. This is most of the reason I don’t like going outside. This is why looking out of the window is scary.

During this period I have seen a lot of doctors. There is one doctor in particular who I saw that first time I went to A&E and I think of him often. Although he could not cure me, he gave me a lot to think about. He was patient with me and discussed things with me that he didn’t need to. He went above and beyond. On bad days I remind myself of the words he said to me to try and make sense of the situation. Such simple words that I initially thought he was mad. Surely he was wrong. Such a simple idea couldn’t be what was causing this.

Eighteen months later my lovely ex-therapist said the exact same words to me. Very matter of fact. Almost in passing to get to her point. Like it was obvious and I should have known. I did know, the doctor had told me. Sat in the therapy room I thought of him again. I thought it was fascinating that they both knew the same thing about me, and I couldn’t work it out for myself. I know now that they are right and I’m starting to understand why I learned to do it. I still haven’t figured out the best way to deal with it though.

Paid Subscriber Bonus Below

Read more

I have wanted children since I was five years old. Even that young I prayed I’d be able to have kids when I grew up. I remember worrying about infertility. I definitely didn’t know the word, but I had picked up that not every woman could have a child and it terrified me.

In January 2021 I found out I was pregnant for the first time. I was a couple of months into my Music Production degree, and my health anxiety during the pandemic was wild. I was also very sick for the first four months of pregnancy. I couldn’t eat or drink and slept most of the time. Sometimes during online lectures (sorry, George). I couldn’t keep anti-sickness medication down, and eventually found myself in hospital on a drip after vomiting up an ice pop and losing a stone. Somehow though, after all of that, and then either pushing a watermelon out of your body, or having major abdominal surgery, it all becomes worth it.

I absolutely loved the newborn bubble. My heart and my home were full of love and happiness. My belly was full of lasagne, salty chips and jam on toast (my cravings apparently started postpartum), and Ted Lasso was on the telly. I did get a truckload of postpartum anxiety, but really this didn’t feel new because I had always struggled. Having a little 6lbs baby was new though, and like all first time parents, I was learning on the job.

As I had decided to crack on with uni, my daughter often found herself strapped to me marching around Ormskirk. She was crawling round practice room floors, being propped up in recording studio chairs and coming to singing lessons from newborn until she was two. I was so happy to be sharing all of my experiences with her even though I was the weird old woman with a kid to the eighteen-year-old students I was learning with.

In my day to day life she was, and still is, very much a part of everything I was doing, musically and otherwise. I have always been incredibly proud to be a mum and I love sharing everything I do with her. However, I hadn’t posted anything about my pregnancy, or really my daughter online. The people who had been following my music for years, or booking me for gigs, were largely unaware that I was now the mother of a lovely little girl. This wasn’t because I was trying to protect her identity. I was trying to protect mine.

After experiencing the music industry over the years, and defending my career (not hobby), I had decided that I would be taken even less seriously now that I was a mother. Gig bookings would be fewer. I would be viewed as old and irrelevant. How could I possibly play gigs if I have a baby at home? Who will look after her?

As predicted, I had a load of “oh, bloody hell, you can’t be doing that anymore”. I still find it absolutely mental that people just assumed that I would leave my whole identity behind, stop playing music, and forget about a career I had been working on for over a decade. Even my band at the time assumed I wouldn’t need them anymore. As usual, I was being underestimated. Even by people who had been on the journey with me for a long time, and watched me adapt time and time again. Gigs, however, have not been a problem and have only fewer because I am more selective, and have a stronger understanding of what I want.

At gigs I was sharing stories about being a mum. It felt easier in the room with people, but I wasn’t fully leaning into it, and I felt a bit like I was living two different lives. My daytimes were baby and toddler groups, lots of coffee, pounding the pavement at nap times and socialising with other mums. At night, I was singing songs I’d written when I was a completely different woman.

A few people noticed that I wasn’t performing songs about motherhood or my daughter. Even when I started to share newer songs they were about other things going on in my life, because, believe me, there’s been a lot. I find writing about my daughter particularly challenging. I have never felt love the way I feel it for her. She is a massive part of me and I am a massive part of her. It takes a lot of pouring out, and it is a very emotional process. I’ve never really written love songs before.

I was also worried about being a mother becoming my whole personality. From the get-go, I knew I needed to keep doing the things I loved before I was a mum. I had read so much about women getting lost in motherhood, forgetting who they are, and putting all of their wants and needs on hold. I didn’t want to be that person. Naturally, it is a massive part of my personality and I treasure it dearly. I wanted the mum friends. You’ll find me on the swings in the park, and going down the slides at soft play. I will never miss an event that is important to her for anyone or anything. I want to always be fully in motherhood, but I also want to grow alongside her. My creativity is a big part of me and it is a non-negotiable.

With 2024 came the release of Laura Marling’s Patterns in Repeat, a brilliant album heavily focusing on motherhood, and after listening I was furious with myself. In fear of being treated unfairly, I had hidden the most precious person in my life, my biggest love, who brings me unimaginable amounts of joy every single day. Someone I had dreamed of meeting since I was five years old. The chapter in my life I had yearned for. On stage, I was presenting a version of myself from memory. That person didn’t exist anymore and I wasn’t being genuine. Being proud of my journey and my wonderful daughter did not mean it was my whole personality. I had let other people lead me into thinking that I couldn’t be a musician and a mother. What a load of shit.

Paid subscriber music bonus below

Subscribe now

Read more

Since I have stopped working I definitely feel relieved. Feeling extremely uncomfortable at work was confusing because singing, playing guitar and writing songs is my favourite thing to do. I’ve always had a strong work ethic and generally enjoyed throwing myself into work. I couldn’t understand why I now felt so bad, unsafe, and had such a strong desire to escape.

After a particularly bad weekend in May that led to the biggest setback to date, it was obvious to everyone involved that pushing through wasn’t working. Being self-employed, I felt I couldn’t choose not to work. There is a mortgage to pay, a daughter to clothe and feed. If I’m not earning money, someone has to do it for me. I obviously didn’t want to put that pressure on anyone. Being given permission to stop by my dad, partner and therapist was a huge relief. I really needed to be told it was okay to stop, and I needed to hear it from all of them. It had been six months of knowing I couldn’t do it anymore and doing it anyway.

Being locked in has come in waves. There have been multiple phases of not being able to get out of bed. When I eventually got up, I couldn’t get down the stairs and when I finally did, my own couch felt alien. Sometimes I couldn’t leave the house on my own, some days I couldn’t leave at all. This still happens. Last summer I started to get out again. It was hard and scary but I did it. I managed to go to a family festival for the weekend which was challenging, but I started to feel better there, and was surrounded by close friends who knew what was happening. Afterwards I had a better spell, but autumn and winter came with a couple of bad experiences. I pushed through Christmas, and at the start of this year I was stuck again. I couldn’t go to work on my own, if at all. My partner or dad had to come and watch me play, which caused all sorts of issues. I was letting people down left, right and centre. I started playing in fewer places at the end of last year which eventually led to where I am now.

After the setback that stopped me working, I needed help even with the nursery run. Driving became near impossible. I often sat outside crying too scared to walk in to pick my daughter up. Some days I needed to be on the phone being told I could survive it. Therapy, the highlight of my week, was now online because I couldn’t walk from my car to the door. Even if I could, there was no way I’d be able to sit there for an hour experiencing the sensations that I do. I did not leave the house alone for weeks. Even with other people I stayed in the car if they went into a shop. I really struggled being alone, and often still do, but I also don’t feel comfortable in anyone’s company. Without details about what got me here, I can understand some of this doesn’t make much sense. Those experiences and stories will come as the weeks go on, but it generally stems from different strains of anxiety and wild panic episodes.

My biggest worry about the state of my mental health and being locked in is the effect it is having on my daughter, and whether she will carry that into the rest of her life. I’m a good mum. We play, we make things, we do science experiments, we paint, we bake. Sometimes all before 9am. It’s good, but it doesn’t feel good enough. We do it all in the house, or our very small yard. I’m worried she will forget the many adventures we have been on. We were constantly exploring museums, parks, beaches, theatres, etc. We saw our friends every week and were socialising in playgroups and our favourite cafe daily. In our old house, we used to walk out the door every day with a pram and a bag full of snacks and just see where we ended up. Sometimes it was just the Huyton ASDA, but hey ho. We loved an adventure. We still do love an adventure. That hasn’t actually changed. Unfortunately, I am not currently capable of facilitating those experiences. We made some wonderful friends because of those expeditions and because of one of my jobs that I had to pause when this all began in 2024. I am sad we haven’t been able to do that for a long time, and worry about how it will affect her confidence. Now she visits family only with her dad. She sees her friends at the weekend only with her dad. She sees other parents and whole families together. She’s very aware I’m not there. She asks why. I think about all the experiences she has missed out on and all the friends she could have made. The kind of friendships you have as a kid that might only last the afternoon, or a week in Majorca, but you remember them forever.

After giving birth to my daughter, it took about five seconds for me to work out how clever kids are. People generally underestimate their understanding of things and how much they can feel and absorb. She can see my exhaustion. She can feel it. It is obvious she can feel my panic. Even though I desperately try to hide it, she can see it. We still do a lot at home, but I feel terrible throughout. I’m not myself. I can’t always bring the calm energy she needs. I’m worried that she is carrying weight that is mine, not hers. She asks me if I’m okay a lot. I lie. I hate liars.

Subscribe now

Paid subscriber bonus below.

Read more

Hiya, my name is Katie Mac. I am an independent singer-songwriter from Huyton (which is in Liverpool) and I write a lot of songs about it, amongst other personal things. Substack is a new venture for me during a strange time in my life.

Pre-pandemic my life was full of gigs. It was constant. With the first lockdown came the cancellation of my biggest tour to date. I had a really good feeling about it and had worked really hard on organising every aspect of it. Instead of hitting the motorway, I found myself hitting the couch. Although I was riddled with anxiety, the pause also brought surprising relief. I hadn’t realised how hard I had been pushing through and making things happen in my music career alongside other side quests. Whilst I was sitting at home watching Gogglebox and whatever Stephen Mulhern was presenting on Saturday nights, I realised that I didn’t know what I had been chasing, the end goal was unclear, and my efforts had been pretty aimless.

In typical music industry fashion, I have been fucked around by a lot of industry men who talk the talk (more on this later), and I made a promise to myself I would never work with, or for, anyone ever again (more on this too). On reflection, I think the aimlessness came from needing to prove to myself and everyone else that I can do anything, and I didn’t need any muso industry letdown to get me there. However, I am learning all too well, once again, that I absolutely need to learn to stop rushing, remember to pause, and consider how the fuck I am feeling rather than cracking on and hoping for the best.

Unable to sit still for too long during the pandemic, I decided a degree in music production was the best option. During that time I became pregnant, had a baby and finished my degree without pause (there’s a theme). I was exhausted, but really and truly happy. I kept writing music, albums worth of it, all still unreleased. When the world reopened, I was gigging semi-regularly. When my daughter reached three years of age, gigging relied on the help of others. Babies you can take everywhere, toddlers you cannot. There were also other big changes in my personal life which meant gigging my own songs became more of a special occasion.

After finding myself jobless after years of working in a way I had promised myself I never would again, cover gigs were my saviour and became prominent. It is not lost on me that because of all the hard work I have put in, I find I can be selective of original and cover gigs, and largely find myself in front of wonderful audiences in lovely venues and pay a mortgage and scrape by. Although it may read that I consider playing fewer gigs a failure, I certainly do not. Since becoming a mother I have played some of my best gigs to date, definitely quality over quantity, and one day I will play more.

However, I’ve now found myself for the second time in my life where it is not possible for me to play gigs. This time the world is very much carrying on, but my brain has put me into a personal lockdown. I have been battling heavily with my mental health for the last two years. Although I have struggled with it since childhood, this time is a completely different ball game. My world has dramatically shrunk, I’ve lost friends, and it has become near impossible to leave my home. Although I have been trying to push through and make it out to the other side with very little change, after a couple of scary setbacks, I have made the decision with help from my partner, Dad like no other, and lovely therapist that it is time to press pause and accept all of the help I can get.

So, here we are. This is me finding a new way to share my stories and songwriting, getting things out of my head, and practising my new skill of asking for help. Everyone is welcome here in my very personal diary, and thank you for being here in whatever capacity you choose. I look forward to the journey we are about to go on together.

If you opt to be a paid subscriber as well as my usual oversharing, you will also gain access to extra oversharing, unreleased demos, choose the covers I share on my YouTube channel regularly, real life lyric scribbles, and other things that will come with future releases.

Lots of love,

KMAC x