If there is a ‘story we have to tell’ when a book is conceived, for me it had to be this one: about the mothers.
Writing isn’t a choice, when words are your only power. As an adopted person, books and words became a secret I could keep in my head without anyone knowing. It was where my mother lived, her absence, like a secret chamber that no one else can enter. I was an Irish child washed up in a house where Britishness and good manners ruled. My adoptive sister and I were Project Charity (to be improved).
Words in my Head
Words occupied a secret chamber inside my head, where the unsaid could coexist alongside the real unasked questions. Then there were languages, Danish, Dutch, French, German, all commandeering a small corner of that secret chamber. If I can do that, I reasoned, then the world will begin to see me, to really see me. Until then, the real me had to remain invisible, I was a product of a system which provided ‘blank slate’ babies to British mothers.
Perhaps a career as a barrister came as no surprise, but a specialization in child law meaning that I represented mothers faced with the possibility of losing their children to adoption, put some twisted pathos into the mix. I will never forget them, the mothers, those I could help, those I couldn’t.
My Own Birth Mother
A meeting with my own birth mother, followed years later by the discovery of a hidden treasure in the ruins of my grandmother’s cottage in Drumbresna, a random telephone number revealing a trail that led to my family, might sound like the stuff of a good memoir. But having worked in courtrooms up and down the land watching birth parents navigate a system that is under-financed, under resourced and lacking nuance, meant that the book I had to write would be one of fiction.
In fiction I could do what might not be possible in court. In fiction you can tell a story that defies all the odds, whilst at the same time, bring into the light the forgotten, the unnoticed.
Bitter Irony
One afternoon shortly before Christmas many years ago, a young woman, burdened by her own troubles, was in court because the care of her young son had been neglectful. We heard evidence about the single room she occupied with him with a mattress on the floor and little to no furniture. It was bleak. Midway through, bright lights slashed through the blinds as though floodlights were shining directly into the courtroom.
The trial was paused and an investigation by the usher revealed it to be a fully lit Santa on a sleigh waving at onlookers. No more bitter irony could have wormed its way into what was the saddest of trials. The court decided the son be removed and placed for adoption. He would be collected by social services after the hearing.
What Happens to the Mothers?
At the end of the day having left court a little late, on my way to the car park I saw the mother walking along the street ahead of me. It was raining and dark, she had no coat. What will happen to her, I asked myself. I have asked many social workers what happens to the mothers? There is support for them, they will tell you, if they ask us for it. But would they ask for support from the self-same Local Authority that has just removed their only child? I doubt it.
When I met my own birth mother, after two beautiful days together we arranged a further meeting to take place in a week’s time. Three days later she cancelled – she could not bear to say goodbye a second time, she said.
Mothers Who Walk Away
So there is an untold story: the mothers who walk away in pieces, who have to find a way to go on living. Yet publishers, literary agents and the like who shout out for stories about marginalised people, women’s stories, cannot bring themselves to acknowledge them: to really care about them. Maybe it is because, a woman who has been deemed ‘not good enough mother’ is the worst person in the world. Yet in reality they are not.
If there is a ‘story we have to tell’ when a book is conceived, for me it had to be this one: about the mothers. To make them live on the page, to feel, breathe, fall apart and eternally, without fail, stoke the fire of hope for the rest of their lives. I conjured them as fiction, from the women I have met, their courage, their failures, their hope. Forbidden words became my novel.
(c) Judith Trustman
Judith’s first novel How Like a Winter is available from her website www.judithtrustmanauthor.com
About How Like a Winter:
Are you still a mother when your child is gone? A journey back to belonging.
Two women. Two mothers. Two lives reshaped by the children they lost. For Tara and Jo, life is never the same again after their children have been adopted.
In the fallout of separation, they try to make sense of who they are, who they might have been. The novel explores what happens to birth mothers when their children have gone, themes of motherhood and the idea that we are only seven degrees separate from each other.
And when the children come looking, nothing is certain, hidden connections emerge, unexpected love stories are forged in the fires of the past.
Tender, searching. Unforgettable. How Like A Winter is a novel about belonging, about the ties that endure across time and distance – and about love that refuses to let go.
Order your copy online here.
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