Interviews
Alana Kirk on The Sandwich Years
Sometimes we write about what we know. And sometimes what we know – and experience – leads us to writing. And sometimes it’s not what you ever expected to write about.
From an early age, I published stories about my experiences. I began as a travel writer, as I adventured around the jungles of Borneo and the beaches of Bali. I then wrote about child soldiers and poverty as I travelled the world with UNICEF. And then, humbled by the grounding of parenting, I wrote about the highs and lows of raising babies. I always thought my writing would be about my hilarious adventures and misadventures. But then life took a turn, and my writing had to follow suit.
I never thought I would write about something so ordinary, yet so extraordinary, as the care of a loved one. Yet that is what happened. Four days after my third baby was born, my loving, glamorous mum had a catastrophic stroke and I was catapulted into what I called my sandwich years – crushed between the responsibilities of caring for my elderly parents and my young children. For a year I literally spoon fed my baby and my mother, changed their nappies and only communicated through their eyes. My funny blog about parenting became a space to work out the pain and bewilderment of suddenly being caught in a tsunami of care, and eventually it morphed in a blog called The Sandwich Years. My life and my blog progressed, and I tried to make sense of one in the other – of both the humour and the horror. As with the parenting blog, my experiences resonated with others and I connected with people from all over the world who were struggling with the same pressures and issues. And that is the power of words, and of writing life stories and memoirs – to make people feel connected. And so I was offered a book deal by Hachette Ireland for a memoir of my experience in the hope that it would help others going through the same thing.
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Writing a 70,000 word manuscript under a deadline is a whole different word game than writing short pithy posts whenever the spirit grabbed me, and many a tree died in the process of me scrunching up pieces of paper and planning it out in post-it notes across my kitchen walls. Finding the right balance between humanity and humour – between deeply personal experiences and broad generic issues that will resonate with people – is a tightrope walk. Exposing myself and my family while exploring the lessons I learned, took me much deeper than my mini-moments on a blog. It was extremely hard work but also joyful to be writing about something so close to my heart. It was also a privilege to look back on the five years of caring for my mum, and to realise how much I had changed. It was never a book I dreamt of writing, but it was a book that helped me write myself better.
Last year, Daughter, Mother, Me; a memoir of love, loss and dirty dishes became a bestseller and I was able to talk and share my experiences on TV and radio. It was amazing to get the responses I did from women who had thought they were alone. It was genuinely humbling to realise what I had come through, and that my learning could help others.
My mass market paperback just hit the shelves and I enter the madness that is book publicity and promotion. It’s wonderful to see it in a new form, another lease of life (along with the Czech version which looks great even though I can’t read a word!). But there is another side to the thrill: there is the personal effort of letting go of something that is such a part of you, especially, if like mine, it is a very personal story. My paperback version, along with a new title – The Sandwich Years – and a new cover, also contains an additional chapter, the Afterward. My mum died on publication date of the original book, ending my sandwich years on the day my book about them came out. (As Nora Ephron wisely said: why would anyone write fiction when real life is so extraordinary?)
And so, a year after I first wrote The End, I wrote a final chapter about the months that had followed, which did bring about the actual end of my experience. Like all the previous chapters in the book, it was hard to go back into myself and pull out those feelings and to make sense of them in words. But, like writing it the first time around, I found the process therapeutic. And this time, when I wrote The End, I knew that I was closing this chapter of my life for good.
Again, I am doing the rounds of press and publicity, and writing features on the topics related to the sandwich years for magazines and newspapers. Writing about real life often means your book has a life of its own. The story is mine, but the experience belongs to many people and that’s what makes writing about real life such a liberating and rewarding process. This genre is becoming increasingly popular for writers and readers alike. And, as I put together plans for a second non-fiction book, I scrunch up paper and doom more trees as I post-it-note my way through the muddle of real life, to find lessons that will help not just me, but others who make that connection.
Sometimes we write what we know, but sometimes we only know it when it’s written.
(c) Alana Kirk
About The Sandwich Years
The Sandwich Years is the heartfelt, inspirational story of the bond between mothers and daughters, and how one woman – through caring for the person she had relied on the most – finally found herself.
Alana Kirk, married with two children and a third on the way, often found herself stretched between the various demands on her time – parenting, marriage, work, friendship, self. But when her mother suffered a massive stroke, just days after the birth of daughter Ruby, Alana’s life became unrecognisable.
The next five years – ‘the sandwich years’ – were a time of heartbreak and difficult choices as Alana lost herself amid part-time caring for her mother, supporting her father and parenting three young daughters, while also attempting to get her career back on track. But it was also a time of growth and love as Alana rediscovered the joy her loved ones bring to her life, and learned how to find a way back to herself.
The Sandwich Years is a celebration of mothers and daughters, and everyday warriors.
(Previously published as Daughter, Mother, Me)
Alana Kirk is a writer and journalist. She has travelled the world working for charities and writing their stories. When her Mum had a devastating stroke just four days after her third baby was born, her life was turned upside down. She began to blog about the struggles of being sandwiched between caring for the two ends of her life - her children and her parents. Over five years later, she finally found a way to thrive as well as survive. Alana still works for the non-profit sector as well as being a writer, and raising three girls.
