Hello from South London where I’m using everything in my power not say something as inane as, “How is it December already! Gosh, *where* has the time gone,” while at the same time having literally just written that. I’m so sorry.
No One Talks About This Stuff now has a cover, a UK publication date, an American distribution date (!) and an imminent appointment with a printing press. This is all down to you, and I am so beyond thrilled to be able to chat about it in person next year when I start fulfilling the pledges. (Sybil is on tip-top form preparing for her walks, although this largely seems to consist of burying her entire face in Streatham Common’s muddiest puddles.)
There’s one pledge level that will be happening much sooner, and that is the tier of Remembering Our Children. If you pledged for this tier, please do check your email junk folder, behind the sofa etc as you will have a missive from Unbound asking for details to go in the book.
To give you a bit more time to do this, the deadline for this is now Monday 4th December. After that, it’s off to the printers.
I’m not going to lie, reading that back it sounds very odd for me to casually say ‘Remembering our children’ in such a way involving tiers and pledges, so I thought I’d take you back a bit to 2021 when I was coming up with the pledge rewards and what made me think that this would be a good thing.
I didn’t want this to have an extra charge against it, so this level was the same price as a signed book. Eighty-seven of you pledged to have a name or a tribute in the book to remember children not with us, whether they were born, unborn, or a cherished idea.
I didn’t pledge to my book because it felt superstitious, and I couldn’t have pledged to this level because my husband and I could never agree on children’s names! Names for our animals were last-minute enough, but it was difficult if one or the other of you had deep-seated loathing for someone you were at school with decades ago who held a particular name. I always loved Esmerelda and Leo, and also lots from Jilly Cooper: Basil and Tabitha were favourites for a long while, and I now have niblings with those names (and their own personalities) which takes them into new places. Remembering the possibility of those names and those timelines felt important, honouring the parents who loved them when they were mere thoughts, and giving them a place.
In October, I went to a Wave of Light service at a lovely church in Tooting. The Wave of Light started as a global social media event to end Baby Loss Awareness Week, where we “light a candle in memory of all babies’ lives gone too soon.” For a long while, I felt isolated from baby loss events because I had never been pregnant. Then, I remember reading these words again – and those of the non-denominational Saying Goodbye services organised by Zoe Clark-Coates charity, The Mariposa Trust, in lovely cathedrals around the UK – and thinking perhaps that could incorporate the lives of babies, our babies, who never got to be conceived.
I’ve since lit a candle for the Wave of Light and been to a Saying Goodbye service at a beautiful cathedral in Oxford. As I sat in the Tooting church waiting for the service to start, I started crying and didn’t stop until the service was over and I had driven back home. There were only six of us in the service; four congregants and two vicars, but having that community to sit with in memory felt so important and magical.
That is why we have that section in the book, as well as arguably my rationale for the book in the first place: so that people can find community and support even while feeling completely alone. Sitting with other people’s stories, knowing that those similar feelings are shared even though the experience might be totally different.
In those moments, events, services, and pages, I don’t only think of my children, off in their timelines with other parents and hopefully having wonderful times, but of all the other children who aren’t with us today. I sit there, I think, and I send them and their parents so much love. They are loved. They are never forgotten.
No One Talks About This Stuff will be published on 21 March 2024 in the UK and on 2 July 2024 in the USA, and it is available to pre-order wherever you get your books. If you are a US resident and you pledged to the book, you will get your copy in March.