I ground to a halt long before my diagnosis. The shed in which I created Becoming Unbecoming, On Sanity, The Cree, and Eve lies neglected at the bottom of the garden, gathering spiders and webs. A rather nice wool rug — an extravagance in such a humble structure — is covered in grim bits, empty boxes, gardening tools and domestic objects that were too good to throw away but didn’t make it as far as the garage. I’ve been there to sit sometimes while I’ve been ill. I put the pencils in their proper pots and look out the window at the garden.

It’s not the cancer that is stopping me working — on good days I have enough energy to prune a tree, or walk the 8.5 km to Kirkstall Abbey and back — but it has become more difficult to carve out space for creative activity because I no longer have a peer group. I used to have an enormous network. My peers were academics, artists and comics creators, community artists, a few musicians. Artists make art either within a peer group or in confrontation with one. In the last few years the whole context within which I began as an artist and writer has evaporated and there is no longer a movement I want to be part of, or (artistic) conventions I want to confront. I am left not knowing what to do.

What happened?

I’ll tell you what happened, but first — I went out to the shed and cleaned up last week, motivated by writing this Substack article. I’m sure this is a good sign. I moved all the gardening tools (they found their way back in there almost immediately) and I managed to send a lot of stuff to the tip. I organised the shelves, dusted and vacuumed. So many dead spiders in the Henry!

While I was tidying I made this pencil drawing. It’s hardly earth shattering but I like it. You can see my caesarian scar, just above the public hair line. The stoma opening is like a hot spot. I couldn’t look at my stoma at first. A kindly nurse helped me glimpse it quickly out of the corner of my eye in a mirror. I learned to face it but I hate it still. I’m not Tracey Emin. Let her do her thing. I’ll do mine.

Late at night, sleepless, I scroll Instagram and watch my old peers create things, go places, sell books, win grants and awards. I enjoy their success — I don’t resent it —but I don’t click the little heart because I don’t want anyone to know I am watching.

My thoughts while doomscrolling can be very dark indeed. Languishing in bed in the small hours in my failing body I’ve written several versions of a letter to be kept with my will, planned my funeral down to the smallest detail and had endless, fruitless, imaginary talks with family members who have let me down.

Morning arrives. I take my pills. I deal with the stoma. I take a shower, get dressed, make two cups of weak tea with lemon and take them to a garden chair. By now it is half past ten.

“Do something!” I say to myself. “Anything.”

“Before it’s too late.”

Yes, I’m writing a novel but who knows when that will be finished? I’ve been working on it for three years. Who knows if it’s any good? Some people said they liked it but maybe they were being polite? Some days I read it back and think it’s great. Some days I’m sure I’m deluding myself.

When I started writing it I told a friend that a novel is a piece of piss compared to drawing and writing two hundred pages of graphic novel. It seemed that way at first. It’s true that a graphic novel is a MAMMOTH task for one person. A task I’m not keen to repeat after Eve.

Now I realise that, once a novel is past the first draft, it is less a MAMMOTH and more an unruly horse. A lively Palomino that leaves you gazing in dismay as it gallops into the distance and you know you can stand in that empty field holding onto the empty halter as long you like; the horse is not coming back on its own. You are going to have to run after it.

Before Becoming Unbecoming my art and writing garnered little attention and hardly any financial reward but I loved doing it. I worked part-time teaching at various art schools to keep myself afloat. My colleagues were a ready-made support group, all trying to fit an art practice into the cracks around work and family.

When Becoming Unbecoming was published I was surprised at how popular it was. I met real enthusiasts in the comics and graphic novels world. A breath of fresh air after the studied cool of fine art. Becoming Unbecoming translations in 2016 and 2017 brought me new friendships and foreign adventures, some of which I couldn’t take up because they clashed with my teaching job. This was frustrating.

*Translations are available in French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian Portugese, Turkish and a North American Edition.

I used the pseudonym Una to publish Becoming Unbecoming, to protect my privacy and that of my family. People started calling me Una instead of Louisa. I liked that Una helped hold the concept together. Just one girl. Alone. Later, when I wanted to write on different topics, I found I was stuck with my pseudonym if I wanted all my books on the same shelf. (I hadn’t thought it through.) But other people appreciated Una too. Thank you, Sarah Hildebrand, it meant so much to me that you understood Una so well.

In June 2017 my proposal for a long-form graphic novel, Eve, attracted a small advance from Virago Press (Hachette) and in 2018 a two year project grant from ACE. I was over the moon! This meant I could draw and write full-time for the first time in my life. There were plenty of other jobs (or so I thought) but I might never get another opportunity like this. I left my part-time university teaching job in the June of 2018 and started taking commissions and a lot of trips, including to Brazil where I met many Una’s.

I’m grateful for this period—many artists work their whole lives without a sniff of recognition or even a decent fee. I had never been so happy in my work. I built a modest income from illustration and writing commissions, grants, royalties and direct sales at events. I put Eve together at a leisurely pace. I started a not for profit company called Red Dress CIC to help women and girls recover from sexual violence through creative means.

It was probably unwise to give up a steady teaching job to take on life as a freelancer but you only live once and my heart was in the arts, not in teaching. (Apologies to my students.)

I had big ambitions for Eve. I wanted to see how far I could push a novel-like work in graphic form. I wanted to write about serious things — the end of the world, the beginning of another, the irrational nature of human conflict. Eve, was published in June 2021. It disappeared without a trace. It had two reviews and no events.

Becoming Unbecoming had been featured at The Southbank Centre, twice. (WOW and London Lit. Fest.) Also at Norwich Book Festival and Aye Wright Glasgow, the Cartoon Museum, the House of Illustration, East London Comic Arts, Lakes International, Waterstones and Torch Humanities Oxford and this was just in the UK, so it was something of a puzzle. I remember feeling puzzled.

Now, steel yourselves, hold onto you hat, gird your loins or whatever, because I am going to talk about the gender wars and I need you to stick around to hear what I have to say about how it has affected my art practice.

Of course it was hard for Eve to make an impact in the avalanche of books published after the lockdowns and it is an odd book, sitting somewhere between literary fiction and comics. I think I overcomplicated the story, which is my bad, but I do wonder if a colleague helped Eve’s demise by bringing Julie Bindel’s name as a possible reviewer to my first marketing/PR Zoom at Little Brown. This was stupid, because 1. Eve isn’t really Julie’s kind of book and 2. my colleague knew perfectly well the effect it would have in the meeting. She knew there were staff present who had refused to work on JK Rowling’s children's book, The Ickabog. Julie’s name was uttered so my colleague could feel smug and self-righteous to my detriment. There was at least one sullen, silent face in the meeting afterwards and Eve did not get much marketing or PR, I’ll say that much.

It’s not the only time I’ve been shunned for being friends with Julie Bindel. I will love her always — I don’t care what anyone thinks of that. She valiantly reviewed Eve anyway, calling it “abstract”, which I suppose it is, but she also wrote the most fantastic, insightful review of Becoming Unbecoming in 2015. One of my favourites.

Eve also bombed with the comics crowd. Perhaps because things were still in disarray after the pandemic but certainly because no one invited me to appear at any of the events, exhibitions and conventions that were springing up in 2021 and 2022.

There is a guy, he’s followed me on social media for ten years, always wishes me a happy birthday, but has never had me on his podcast. He didn’t invite me on with Eve. I messaged him and suggested it but received no reply.

The first time we met in 2015, in a round-table discussion about feminism he asked me “But what about those radical feminists who hate transwomen?” I had no idea what he was talking about. I replied with something about there’s nothing radical in the idea that sexual difference is important, or that women are also human. Those ideas seem fairly moderate to me.

Afterwards, I was irritated by his question and looked into it. Once I started digging I entered a long rabbit hole in which Julie Bindel featured heavily as THE MOST EVIL PERSON EVER, which seems unreasonable. Other feminists were being monstered too. (J.K Rowling wasn’t on the radar yet.) I identified some recommended reading from the trans activist side, which I dutifully read, trying to educate myself, but even after all the reading the trans activist position didn’t make sense to me. I understood their position, I just didn’t agree that it was oh-so-simple and it seemed to me that no one promoting the new genderism had put much thought into how these ideas would work on the ground, in real life.

Then I discovered Rebecca Riley Cooper patiently explaining in philosophical terms the lack of logic in the new gender ideology. Ah! I thought. It will all be over by Christmas.

Ha!

One day an MA student at a prominent London art school contacted me on Twitter to say how disappointed she was to see Julie Bindel’s comment on the cover of Becoming Unbecoming. I replied to say that Julie had dedicated her life to helping victims of male violence and that’s why her comment was so important. The student sent me a string of links to articles by transwomen (that I’d already read) then asked me if I’d heard of Mermaids. (The charity, not the mythical creatures.)

Had I heard of Mermaids.

I bumped into her professor at a thing and asked him about it. He had given her Becoming Unbecoming thinking she’d like it. She’d complained about Julie’s comment on the cover and handed it back to him, so I don’t think she’d even read it.

Then I got into a debate about an article by Hadley Freeman with another art student. This student had been asking to use images from On Sanity, for free, for her zine. I had said yes because I will always support a young woman trying to make her way, because of feminism. She (as she was at the time) slid into my DMs to direct me to various articles so I could “educate” myself and told me how let down she felt about me. She assumed I was ignorant, bigoted, right wing and old. I found her assumptions about me highly offensive.

I’m not really into arguing with strangers on the internet. I’m happy to admit I did the bare minimum to push back against the worst ideas about gender, partly because I felt others said it so well, better than I could. So I shared articles by Sarah Ditum, Glosswitch, Helen Lewis, Hadley Freeman, the dreaded Bindel and others. However, offline I had discussions face to face with peers in which I’m sure I punctured some certainty and self-righteousness but perhaps lost a few friends. Some people responded like the woman who said with childish sarcasm “So, women who’ve had a hysterectomy aren’t women then?” and stalked off with her back turned, or the one who told me “You wouldn’t want to be too heteronormative, would you?” and “It’s the way things are going. All the young people think this way.”

Both those women, who I had counted as friends, had borne two children and were distinctly more “feminine” that I am in their presentation and in their deeply “heteronormative” marriages. They didn’t seem to hear the respect I used to have for them leaving my body like the wet fart of a punctured balloon. I can’t respect people who have so clearly swallowed whole a handful of shallow, mean, thoughtless soundbites and now want to sneer at people who want to think it through properly.

More seriously there was the £4,000 illustration commission I lost because I wouldn’t sign up to their way of thinking. There was the hostile reception I got at a radical left bookshop when I arrived to talk on a panel about Becoming Unbecoming. There was being blocked on social media by a small chain of comics shops when I was booked to do workshops there for a festival. How was I supposed to advertise a workshop if I couldn’t tag them? How was I supposed to trust the staff there? Then there was my little not for profit, Red Dress CIC.

For Red Dress I ran workshops to help women tell their own stories of sexual violence in creative ways, using images, writing, poetry and performance. It took two years of time and effort and legal expertise to set up the company but it stumbled when I couldn’t attract funding and fell after a member of my board sent an angry, patronising email to me after I committed the unforgivable crime of attending the 2022 FiLia conference in Cardiff.

Hmm…

At FiLia that year one of the best things I saw was Samira Ahmed interviewing Nazanin Zaghari Radcliffe about her time in an Iranian prison. Afterwards, an incredible Persian singer, her hair tumbling over her shoulders, entranced us. Women in Iran can go to prison, be flogged, fined and forced into exile for singing in public and showing their hair. They are not permitted to sing solo in front of any audience, but especially a mixed audience. (Yes, there were men present at this event.)

Julie Bindel was there too.

Listen, anyone with my childhood experience is going to be wary of the mob and the “kind” folx who are into gendered identities have felt much like a mob for years. My instinct is to stay away. Maybe your instincts are different? Most people have a strong need to belong. We all need to feel we are supported by our peers. I have never belonged but that doesn’t mean that this has been an easy time for me.

I’m not perfect. I’m not immune to group think. But my early experience of being shunned, blamed, gossiped about and bad mouthed, lied about and defamed give me pause and it’s that doubtful pause that should provide all of us with protection against the excesses of impassioned people. Consensus is not the same as truth. History shows us that consensus has often led to terrible atrocities and that passionate belief can lead people to commit awful crimes. Personally, I am ever suspicious when very solid agreement seems to excite people. I’ve seen that excitement before. It should be a warning that something is wrong. It should alert us; there is a witch to be burned.

In the past, because I yearned so much to belong, I have endured the shenanigans of obnoxious individuals because they were cool or clever. I have clung to the words of confident people who seemed to know more than me. In the arts it is easy to fall for the lie that cynicism and sneering is equal to sophistication. In politics I have sometimes fallen hard for causes that felt like moral obligations. I was happy to be led by angry, self-righteous peers. I grew out of it. It’s time the arts grew out of it too; a realm that used to be mostly thinkers with a sprinkling of wankers. There has been a full reversal of that dynamic.

So… as I mentioned at the start of this long read, which I hope was worth the effort, I no longer have a peer group and this may be because some believe me to be some kind of Nazi and the others have forgotten about me because I dropped out of sight. It may be because I have lost so much respect for so many people I don’t want to work with them anymore. I don’t know whether this constitutes being cancelled but as I said earlier, artists make art within their peer group or in confrontation with one. I have no peer group and there are few confrontations these days — you either fit in or you don’t. I don’t.

Story of my life.

Luckily, some great leaders have emerged in the arts through the gender wars. Denise Fahmy and Rosie Kaye, for example, who founded Freedom In The Arts , so there is hope for the future. For now, though, I sit here, not knowing what to do, filling my limited time by writing this Substack.

You may have noticed my absence lately. Or not. We’ve all been busy.

I’ve been quiet for a couple of years, trying to write a novel, working part time as a gardener, applying for and failing to secure arts funding. This is quite enough activity but since October 2025 I’ve also been busy having stage four cancer, otherwise known as incurable cancer. It’s extraordinary how busy having cancer can make a person. At a time in my life when time is probably short I seem to be required to spend a great deal of it in hospital, in appointments, medical treatments and in taking long naps to recover from all of this.

I fear I am wasting time.

I am trying to use my time wisely. I’m spending time with my husband of almost twenty five years and my two beautiful sons and close friends. I’ve made a few new friends and lost some who have fled the disaster zone. I get outside in the garden whenever I can and I’m cracking on with the novel despite having doubts about whether it’s any good. I’ve been trying to play the mandolin, which is annoying to everyone, I’m sure. Oh, and I have started this Substack which I finally decided to share with you after much procrastination.

It all started with a perforated bowel, which is a fairly dramatic medical emergency, though I walked into the hospital on my own two feet and had a conversation with the duty doctor in which she said she had no idea what was wrong with me but I looked a bit dehydrated. I was told afterwards that more typically, someone in my situation would come in on a blue light, septic and their chances are not good.

The three weeks leading up to this point were unremarkable—I had a fever and pain and an inability to eat solids or stand up for long, but people kept saying I looked okay. Well, I felt awful. My GP examined me, advised me to switch to a clear liquid diet, suspected a diverticulitis infection, gave me antibiotics and took blood tests. They came back with some abnormalities. She gave me more antibiotics and took more blood tests, which came back with more abnormalities while I was on a mini-break in the middle of nowhere on the Scottish borders. I spent a lot of time in bed on that holiday but still managed a walk each day. Remarkable; I was tapping gently on death’s door.

The day we visited the beautiful cove pictured below I struggled to walk up and down the path to the beach. I looked fine though. The location is a secret; I can’t tell you where it is on pain of death from the locals, who have hung signs along the walkway saying please don’t post pictures on Instagram, we like it quiet here.

The next day we visited a charming coastal village where scenes from Avenger’s Endgame were filmed. I can tell you that New Asgard is St Abb’s in Eyemouth. We pretended to visit Fat Thor’s house. We stood on the harbour wall where Valkyrie had stood talking to Rocket. I was Valkyrie, the husband was Rocket. That was a good day. I felt a bit better. We went to a cafe for a nice cup of tea. I looked fine.

When I returned to Leeds my GP referred me to the hospital where the duty doctor said she had no idea what was wrong with me but I looked “a bit dehydrated”. Later, after a CT scan and the reveal of the horrible truth a surgeon told me that my body had done an extraordinary job of protecting me from the bowel perforation, building a sort of water bubble around it and slowing the infection. I asked her if I should perhaps stay very still. She said she thought I just carry on doing whatever it was I was doing.

I was stable, but they planned to operate in the next 24 hours. My operation was delayed twice because the crack colorectal team had to operate on two other people who were closer to death’s door than I was. A lovely surgeon came to give me a cuddle the second time and promised I’d be in surgery in the morning. She was wearing a Superwoman surgical hat. I hoped that was a good omen. I showed her my son’s Iron Man helmet. I had my operation the following morning.

So…I am very, very lucky to have lived for the nine months since my diagnosis. I have advanced bowel cancer which has spread, causing metastases in my liver and a little in my lung. The bowel perforation might have killed me in October. The cancer might have killed me in the eight weeks I had to wait for chemotherapy while I healed from the operation. I’m very grateful to the medics who have got me this far. There is an excellent cancer centre on my doorstep. I have supportive family and friends. I have enough good days to be creative and productive. I’m not in pain. Several doctors have commented that my high level of fitness before this crisis helped me survive it. I have to cope with a stoma now, which is difficult. I’m slow and sleepy and I have nerve damage in my fingers and toes from the chemo. Nevertheless I’m still here.

There are reasons to be glad. There are reasons to be sad. I’m not old, but I’m not terribly young either. I’ve lived a life and had some great adventures. I’ve been surprised by the kindness and generosity of some of the people in my circle. So many cards, flowers, books, cake, and chicken soup, gift vouchers and a furry electric blanket! Lots of visitors. A lot of sleeping.

I’m an outdoor type and this has really helped me to stay sane. I can’t throw, kick, or hit a ball straight, but I love walking and gardening and I was an outdoor, all weather runner for ten years. I’m not up to running at the moment, but if I can get into the woods near my house for a walk I feel the same intense calm I used to get from a good run. One benefit of going at a walking pace is that one gets more of a chance to look around.

In January, when nothing is growing and the branches are bare there are moss covered rocks in the woods, tumbled and scattered around the path. They seemed unnaturally bright when I first got out of hospital. I used to stand alone on the path to look and breathe and listen. In the deep winter months after my diagnosis I had hungry eyes. I wanted to hold onto the looking. In the spring I became hyper-alert to the sound of bird song, the water running in the stream, the wind in the branches. Spring brought the scent of the earth rising and the quiet power of budding plant life.

We are usually in such a rush we don’t notice these things. Artists tend to pay more attention but all of us can take delight in the world, stopping to gaze at a good tree, or a cluster of clouds. Don’t be a cynic, be the person who still admires the moon on a clear night.

Over winter, in the hospital, in my sick bed, under blankets on the sofa, I used to fret about the hellebores in my garden, which I planted in 2024. They hardly bloomed at all the first year and I worried I would die before they blossomed and miss seeing them. This seems a odd thing to worry about under the circumstances.

I needn’t have worried; the Hellebores bloomed from January to April. I went out to look at them every day. Now, after their spring pruning, they are sprouting magnificent new leaves. The Periwinkle and the creeping Phlox has done well, flowering violet, pink and white from March till June. The Azaleas were gorgeous too. There was a cold snap at the start of May this year, so I had an anxious wait for my white-flowering wisteria, which only lasts a week (but smells incredible) leaving an abundance of foliage which the fluffy little blue tits from next door are using to hide from the pigeons. A patch of Oxeye daisies has finally raised its many heads and this year there is a proliferation of flowering Sage, often covered in drunk bees. Erigeron is turning pink, sweet peas are finally climbing, the honeysuckle is doing its thing. Just waiting for Lupins and the Veronica now.

I need to stay around to see all of this again next year. I’m hopeful I will. My consultant says I had “pleasing results” from the chemotherapy at six weeks (Folfirinox). Today, here I am, after twelve cycles, feeling depleted but waiting to hear if I can have a break in treatment of twelve whole weeks. (Come back next weekend to hear the news.)

I don’t aim to make this Substack a cancer blog, about treatment or positivity (mainly because cancer is just grim) but I want a place I can leave my musings, dreams, hopes and poetics to remind myself what life is for and reflect on the adventures I’ve had. I hope you will join me.

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