For years I was a shadow artist, supporting others to fulfil their creative dreams while neglecting my own. I was exceptionally good at this task. It might have continued this way if I’d avoided the spectacular mid-life collapse that shook the foundations of my identity. But I didn’t. Instead, at 46 I began the testing journey of ‘second adulthood’ as Jung tells it, and a major part of this was re-connecting to my own creativity. Fast forward a decade of vivid adventures, independence, a number of life writing courses and several enormous boxes of Morning Pages in my loft. But no sustained work or any clear creative direction. I’d also become a grandmother. I enrolled in an MA in Professional Writing, determined to finally write. And this is where the well known expression, ‘Life is too strong for fiction’ comes in.

We knew by then that my first grandchild, R, assigned male at birth, was not the child we had imagined. This little one, declaring at three and a half, ‘Nanny, you do know I’m a girl don’t you?’ initiated me into a gender journey of my own, one I had never expected to take. In my arrogance, after a lifetime’s committed interest in gender politics, I thought I had ‘done’ the subject. But that observation pivoted on the gender binary I personally subscribed to. It excluded the lived experiences of those who identified outside of it. How ignorant and entitled I was. By the end of the MA, with an online presence and having written about the paradigm shift in my knowledge, thinking and behaviour, I was contacted by a publisher and invited to write a book.

I deeply grieve that in eight short years, the UK has arguably now become the most hostile country in Europe for gender diverse people to reside in.

Finding the Writing Room community has been a gift. The open, welcoming values and ethos of the organisation reflect my own, and the writing companions I have found are kind, thoughtful and inspirational people. From my first contact with the Writing Room programme director Kate Pemberton my experience has always been positive. With Kate’s guidance, I enrolled in the Novella Fever course with Kiare Ladner. Fantastic start! Then Summer School, followed by Prioritise Your Writing with Alison Chandler, facilitated brilliantly. I’m now looking forward to working with Kiare again soon in her Fiction Workshop Course. And Feedback Fridays have become the spine of my writing week, keeping me accountable and focused. What a treasure trove. The Writing Gods blessed me when I discovered our community, and the gifted generous teachers who bring it alive.

An extract from the introduction of Becoming An Ally To The Gender Expansive Child

In the wake of my grandchild’s choices, I chose to wrestle with myself rather than automatically impose a fixed reality onto him. In doing so, I stood down from being the all-knowing adult and became an apprentice to life instead. This shift in perception meant I let go of expectations and opened up to the experience in front of me. It was against this backdrop that I then received an invitation from Jessica Kingsley Publishers to submit a book proposal to them. I was quite overwhelmed for a few days after their offer. I’m cisgender and, not only that, I’ve always expressed my gender in fairly typical ways. What useful contribution could I make? And, more pertinently, what was I actually qualified to write about? I remember walking in a park close to my home around this time, contemplating the answer. Autumn had taken hold and the remaining flowers were folding themselves back into the earth. I paced the well-worn path, purposely shifting my attention from my head to my heart, listening for any guidance within myself. When it came, it was precise: You’re asking the wrong question, Anna. The right question is this one: What’s the book that wants to get written through you? By the time I’d returned home, grabbed some paper and begun to scribble, another urgent question had arisen in me: How best can parents and caregivers accept and protect their gender-expansive child? The answer is the heart of my own personal story as a grandmother, and of this book: by choosing to become an ally. To successfully accomplish this we have to break open our understanding of what gender is. To do so means to embark on our own private inner journey, side-by-side with our child on their outer one.