This is not so much as a review, as 21 reasons why Jessica Hepburn should step onto the stage and take a bow.

Bow 1: Skilful narration

21 Miles is about Jessica’s endeavour to swim the Channel after 11 unsuccessful rounds of IVF, which she has written about in her previous book, The Pursuit of Motherhood. She gets a skilful narration point for telling the IVF backstory in a way that makes sense to those who don’t already know it but which isn’t repetitive to those who do.

Bow 2: Swimming

It’s an awesome thing that’s hard to describe. Jessica captures it both physically and metaphorically. “I can feel tears in my goggles but here in the pool, no one knows, not even the water, because water only knows tears as itself.”

Bow 3: Nature

It’s not just any old swimming but open water swimming that Jessica’s doing here. So the book is also about our relationship with nature. “Even though I feel small and vulnerable, as I start to swim I also feel something else. The words of a poem my dad used to recite to me when I was a child come unbidden into my mind: ‘And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid, But even so, honoured still more’.”

Bow 4: Humour

What can I say? This girl’s hilarious.

Bow 5: Food

As if it wasn’t enough to connect motherhood and swimming, Jessica makes this into a food story too. In so doing she integrates another of those themes that’s BIG for most women. Big love to Jessica for her fully-fledged fest of all things edible.

Bow 6: Skilful narration

She gets another skilful narration point for integrating such diverse themes into a coherent story.

Bow 7: Other women

Jessica invites women, ranging from scientist Baroness Greenfield (childless) to businesswoman Nicola Horlick (mother of six), to have lunch with her and answer the question of whether motherhood makes you happy. This is interesting, as it’s a question we don’t tend to ask. It’s also beautifully expansive as she finds a point of connection in each of the women’s baby stories and thereby binds them (us) together.

Bow 8: Reflections on motherhood

She might have missed the experience of motherhood but she had the meaning (to paraphrase TS Eliot). Through her quest she unveils insights that are fuller and deeper than those of many a literal mother.

Bow 9: Skilful narration

Jessica asks each of the women to give her one word to take with her on her swim and in so doing creates a poem. She deserves a skilful narration point for the very idea. When she has to dig deep in her swim, she recalls those words with each stroke. In so doing takes all the women she has interviewed with her and, by extension, all of womankind too. God bless you, Jessica.

Bow 10: Vulnerability

This vulnerability is all the more powerful because it’s shared before the wound has healed. “Sometimes I think the hardest thing about what I’ve been through – what we’ve been through – is that it makes it difficult to love because you’re so frightened of happiness being taken away.”

Bow 11: Living for the unborn children

A fellow swimmer, Nick, says swimming the Channel is all about the strength of the things deep inside you that are driving you forward. Jessica discovers her motivation. “Mille Gade swam the Channel for her children. I’m swimming it for me and Gertrude Ederle and the children we never had.” I find this both poignant and deeply inspiring.

Bow 12: Uterus-power

Jessica has her doubters, the greatest of which is Chris, who doesn’t think she stands a hope in Hell’s chance because she’s always complaining about the cold. But Jessica unveiled what the competitive sportsman couldn’t see – the gravitational pull of the womb.

Bow 13: Healing of family

It’s not part of the core narrative, but along the way Jessica grows in appreciation for her mum and dad and their own journeys into parenthood. It’s a beautiful reaching back as the stretches forward. After her swim, she goes for a picnic with her mum. “Because although neither of us quite had the family of our dreams, we do have the family of our reality and that will always be something to treasure.”

Bow 14: Control

There are plenty in our culture who make out we can control our destiny through a mix of positive thinking and grim determination. Swimming the Channel and making a baby give the lie to that. This book tells a more truthful story – about the dance between what we can control and what we can’t and is all the more inspiring for it.

Bow 15: Conclusion 1 – sadness

And so Jessica starts to reach her conclusions on her search for the meaning of motherhood. “Every single person in the world seems to have something that makes them terribly sad. And life is about making the best of your sad thing.”

Bow 16: Conclusion 2 – connection

“Connection is vital to human happiness and if you can’t get it ready-made by having your own children you need to create it in different ways.”

Bow 17: Conclusion 3 – something else

Jessica recognises that however much women want to have children, they need to have something else as well. I am sure this is true. There is, at the heart of motherhood, and ambivalence. We want our children, but we also want to get back to our “something else” – our work, our silence, our creativity, whatever it is. If we don’t have a something else, it will be very difficult to let our children go as they grow up. So the something else is at the heart of motherhood as well as the heart of life.

Bow 18: Skilful narration

Jessica manages to keep the story twisting to the end. In almost the last chapter, she reveals she had asked each woman what they would eat for their last supper. When she has finished her swim, she eats that food as a celebration. It’s a surprising detail, all the better for being held back and which celebrates the symbolic power of food as well as nicely concluding the theme.

Bow 19: Climax 3 – relationship

There are three endings to this story, each of which had me in tears. The final (surprising) climax is the last word – love – which Jessica’s partner, Peter, giver her retrospectively as her Channel word. This is a story about what 11 failed attempts at IVF can do to a relationship. (It’s also NOT a story about what 11 failed attempts at IVF can do to a relationship and Jessica gets a bonus skilful narration point for the way she manages to tell the story while empathically not telling that story in deference to Peter’s desire for privacy.)

Bow 20: Climax 2 – She did it!

She bloody well did it! Listen to that sound. It’s the sound of all my eggs rushing down my fallopian tubes to stand on the edge of my uterus cheering. Well done Jessica! Bloody, menstrual bloody, well done!

Bow 21: Climax 3 – mother

For me, the most profound part of the book was when Jessica’s mother gave her childless daughter the word “mother” to swim the Channel with. I could have cried her a Channel. I almost did.

I hope you’ve not got backache from all the bowing, Jessica. But you’ve swum the Channel, so you should be OK. What more can I say? Thank you.

Other times it was a walk, a scoot, a dwardle and a climb.

In the early days, your eyes would search for me in the playground and light up when I was found. “Mummy!” you would cry and you would sprint into my arms.

More recently my eyes would search for you, bag adrift and tie awry, a giggle down Oxford Road with a gaggle of friends.

Sometimes, I would be distracted and hasty. A call from work. An engrossing thought. A resentment of the 3.30pm curfew that cut across productive afternoons.

Other times I would gaze at you on the road ahead and feel again that first amazement: “Are you really my son? Are you really my boy?”

Each day would bring a different conversation, each day a different mood. But the route was well-trodden and the rituals were clear: hiding in the wasteland, crossing with the lolly-pop man, looking for the ice cream van, climbing along the handrail by the neighbourhood office, walking along the Silver Street wall…

One day, amongst the demands of work and requests to play with friends, we walked home together for the last time. When that day was, I cannot say but today is your last day at primary school so that day has passed, for sure.

And so I grieve. I mourn the interruption: the gazing, the scooting and the dwardling. I feel the loss of the small, repeated acts of ordinariness – the 10p sweets and muddle of bags.

Thank you for the school run, my son. Celebrate. Enjoy. Take pride in growing up. And please also know that whatever your day, someone is waiting for you. Wherever you play, there’s someone who delights in you. However you meander, you’re being brought safely home.

We think we’re talking about the 11+ or goalies or whether it’s better to learn classical piano or bass guitar – but what we’re actually talking about is who with think we are.

One of the great challenges of parenting is the invitation it offers to continually reassess your identity.

Maybe you’re someone who has always considered herself to be a nice person. Taking care of people’s feelings and helping them feel good is what you do and who you are and what you always have been…

…and then you have a daughter whose brain is wired in a way that means empathy does not come naturally to her. She tends to blurt out exactly what she thinks and isn’t able to understand that it’s hurtful, not to say shocking, to be on the receiving end of her comments.

One reason why this situation is difficult for the mum is that it challenges her identity. Can she continue to think of herself as an empathetic person when she has a daughter who isn’t?  How can she have faith and confidence in her daughter, as a mother surely needs to do, when her own sense of self is built on her belief that she doesn’t hurt other people – and that matters?

A father who is passionate about rugby might have a similar difficulty if he has a son who hates sport and who feels – and looks – clumsy in his body. If the dad has developed his own sense of masculinity through being a flanker on the rugby pitch, his son challenges him to recognise there are other ways of being a man.

Time and time again, I find being a parent causes me to question the ideas I have about myself. Did I really take such pride in getting full marks in spelling tests?  Is my identity rooted in something as flimsy as that?  It would seem that is. Why else do I feel uneasy if my child doesn’t do the same?

We all emerge into adulthood with stories that we tell ourselves about who we are – clever, middle-class, well-liked, sporty, funny, musical, whatever….  And these stories are important. They give us confidence and a way of navigating the world of work into which we thrust our adult selves.

But if we have kids who aren’t well-liked or sporty or whatever our particular thing is, it raises a question. How would we have survived without that story from which our identity was formed? It’s a deep question. And it’s what we’re all exploring as we chatter away about whether what school our child is going to, whether our daughter is gifted and talented, whether our son has special needs..

Birmingham Rep will be the venue for Fertility Fest – the first event of its kind in the UK.  Produced by Jessica Hepburn and Gabby Vautier, it will bring together 20 writers, visual artists, theatre-makers, film-directors and composers alongside some of the country’s foremost fertility experts.

We will be talking about, and sharing art around, the diagnosis of infertility, IVF, donation, surrogacy, the male experience, egg freezing, involuntary childlessness and alternative routes to parenthood.

I will be crying

I will be there (speaking at 11.30am).  I think it’s highly unlikely I will manage to be there without crying. (I say that to prepare myself as much as anybody else.)

Other people might want to talk about the effects of fertility science on future generations and how far as a society are we prepared to go in our pursuit of parenthood. I want to be there because I want to stand in the same space as people whose deep longing to have children remains unfulfilled.   Grieving is inevitable.  There is no escaping that. But whatever else we feel, we do not need to feel alone.

• Book tickets for Birmingham’s Fertility Fest, which includes a performance of The Quiet House by Gareth Farr.
• Book tickets for London’s Fertility Fest on Saturday, 11 June 2016.

Day 26

One day I shall look back at this time

At the waiting

And the counting

And the bleeding

And the longing

The trying

And the not-trying

The loving

And forgiving

And I will say that it made sense.

I know the time will come again

When my womb will be holding

The secret hope,

The possibility of miracle;

Origins so awesome

That only God can know.

But today my vulva

Is tender-lipped

Heralding blood.

And today is the day

I have to live

Right now

Learning to embrace

My own body and grieving dreams

With the fierce

Unconditional

Over-whelming

Mother’s love

That is present

That is ready

That is now.

Jo Ind

My response is that I’m the last person to claim  that I “have it all”.  On the contrary, my life feels very precarious.

Yes, I do earn a living (just about), look after my family (just about), squeeze in some time for my own creative work (just about), put in some time with my charities (just about) – but it could all come crashing down at any moment.  I am hanging on in there by a thread.

This sense of the fragile eco-system – of doing nothing very well – is something I will be talking about with ChaplaincyPlus on Thursday 11 February.

ChaplaincyPlus supports professionals in Birmingham’s city centre, creating a space where people can consider what it means to work soulfully.

CityWomen, which is part of ChaplaincyPlus, will be hosting the event at St Philips Chambers, at 1pm.

I will be in conversation with Sarah Thorpe, who convenes CityWomen.  What we really want to tease out from those who are there, is how they manage the just-about-ness of it all.

Is the precariousness nature of our lives a symptom of trying to do more than we should be, or can hanging on in there by a thread be all all part of the glory?

• Order tickets for the free event Changing Patterns of Work – A Conversation with Jo Ind.

• Evelina London Children’s Healthcare (through my contract with Digital Life Sciences)
• Birmingham Children’s Hospital (through my contract with Maverick Television)

Both jobs involved doing workshops and interviews with children, play therapists, psychologists, doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and support staff and then using that information to create the style and voice of the website’s content.

I have gone through similar processes to make digital content for adults – West Midlands Academic Health Science Network, HEWM Learning,  Modality Partnership, NHS local – but, though I have enjoyed it, it has not made my heart sing in quite the same way.

When I make content for children, I have a child continually in my mind.  Going to work, turning on my computer, travelling, meeting, grafting…I am holding the needs of children in my heart.

For some reason, this makes me happy.  Children are the best clients.

One day I shall look back at this time

At the waiting

And the counting

And the bleeding

And the longing

The trying

And the not-trying

The loving

And forgiving

And I will say that it made sense.

I know the time will come again

When my womb will be holding

The secret hope,

The possibility of miracle,

Origins so awesome

That only God can know.

But today my vulva

Is tender-lipped

Heralding blood.

And today is the day

I have to live

Right now

Learning to embrace

My own body and grieving dreams

With the fierce

Unconditional

Over-whelming

Mother’s love

That is present

That is ready

That is now.

On Tuesday, 24 February at 7.30pm, I will be leading a workshop on sexuality for Birmingham Changing Attitude. We will be trying to find constructive ways of talking about sexuality in churches.

The next morning – Wednesday, 25 February at 11am – Katrice Horsley and I will be celebrating the re-opening of the Oxfam Bookstore in Kings Heath by telling stories and opening a conversation on motherhood and creativity.

“First sex, then babies,” is how I’ve been remembering it.  But whose to say it happens in that order?  Chickens, eggs…you know.

Either way, it would be great to see you there.

Griffiths writes in a Romantic way

Griffiths’ subject matter is Romanticism. She therefore writes in a Romantic way. If you don’t realise that and start saying: “Hang on a bit, that’s a bit of an outrageous claim isn’t it? Where’s the evidence for that?” you’ll end up getting very irritated indeed, which would be a shame when you could be out in the forest playing.

Romanticism was the movement that originated in Europe toward the end of the 18th century, partly as a reaction against the industrial revolution.  It gave us the poets William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Blake and John Clare.

Romantics criticised reason

Romantics criticised an over-emphasis on reason, the enlightenment, materialism and the bourgeoise. They celebrated nature, the imagination and the artist and gave us the concepts of genius and faerie.

Griffiths argues that we need a resurgence of the vision of Romanticism to heal our consumerist, urban, health-and-safety-crazy culture which deprives children of animals, nature and the freedom to roam.

Kith means native country

Kith, she says, does not refer to friends and extended family, as most of us understand it in the phrase “kith and kin”. It comes from the Old English cydd, which means native country, one’s home outside the house.  Her claim is that in being deprived of nature, children are deprived of their kith and feel an ache for it, a nostalgia, a longing for belonging.  “In West Papua, a mountain may be referred to as ‘mother’ to all the children who grow up in her foothills,” she says.

She says: “Romanticism, now, here is necessary as a way of understanding childhood, not as a passing interest in the past but because Romanticism comprehends what is perennially important, beautiful, valuable and good in the human condition, and finds these treasures within us all.”

Romanticism for the twenty-first century

Griffiths is re-imagining Romanticism for the twenty-first century. She is re-creating the childhood vision of Wordsworth, Blake and John Clare in a culture of Play Stations, SATs and Amazon wish-lists.

And she does it well.. She writes of woods and wonder and fairy tales in a way that re-awakens deep longings.  I welcome the words “kith” and “childscape” to my vocabulary because thinking of childhood not just as a time but as a place with its own contours and geography within the mind, is a vivid, almost tactile way of understanding it, which helps us to honour our children and treasure our beginnings.

I wish Griffiths wasn’t so silly

I just wish Griffiths wasn’t so silly. At times it seems she would rather stick her tongue out at modern, urban lifestyles than enter into a reasoned discussion about them.

“Why are some many children in Euro-American cultures unhappy?” she asks.  (Am I the only person who hadn’t noticed that they were?) “Why does the dominant culture treat young humans in ways which would be illegal if applied to young dogs?” (Whaaaaat?)

She asks us to imagine the outcry if so called ‘public’ houses displayed signs saying ‘No Jews unless Accompanied by a Gentile’ and then says that is the experience of kids. “It’s really ugly.”   (If I were to say all the things I think about that statement I wouldn’t have space to write anything else in this review.)

She should have stuck to what she is good at

Griffiths critique of “Euro-American” culture would be more persuasive if she was more accurate. She writes about exuberance, for example, and quotes the nineteenth century author Landmann who claimed exuberance was a trait in children that bordered on abnormality.“Whereas Laudmann asserted that exuberance was a character fault, society now calls it a medical disorder: ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder).”

In making out the judgement of our mental health professionals has become so distorted they can’t tell the difference between exuberance and the disturbed inability to pay attention that gets classed as ADHD, she goes too far. That’s a shame because the phenomenon of ADHD and the prescription of Ritalin is indeed a worrying feature of our society that is worthy of examination and debate, but to my mind Griffiths almost blows her credibility on the issue by being ridiculous.

I think Griffiths would have done better if she had stuck to what she is good at – re-kindling a vision of Romanticism – and resisted her critique of the dominant culture, where she needs to be more balanced, accurate and rigorous. She may well say that balance, accuracy and rigour aren’t dominant features in Romanticism, to which I would say: “Fine. Be Romantic.  But leave the critique to those who do it well.”

Let yourself be wooed by faerie

I enjoyed Kith when I gave myself permission to skip over its more irritating moments, allow myself to be wooed by faerie and simply ask:  “What aspects of the Romantic vision do we need to rediscover in our Churches?”

The themes of Romanticism, says Griffiths, are passion, imagination, heroism, a dislike of social convention, a sense of justice, a sense of quest and chivalry, a desire for integrity and the authentic, a will towards self-determination, a willingness to see the sublime, a concern with the particular and local, a need for freedom, an innate love of nature, intuitive creativity, a sense of inner, epiphanic, spontaneous time, an interest in the daemonic, a belief in faerie, an ability to endow the ordinary with mystery, an anti-mechanistic world-view and a sense of wildness and the transcendent.

I would like a more Romantic church

Yes. I’d like all of those, please. There isn’t one of them that isn’t right at the heart of Christianity (once the concepts of daemon and faerie within the Romantic mind are properly understood).

Now…reading Kith has got me imagining… I wonder how many of the children in our inner-city church have been in a forest…let’s see if we can find a way of spending some time there….

• A version of this review appears in Third Way.

“They don’t ask ‘Have you had a good autumn?’ Or ‘Have you had a good spring?'”  I would mutter as I sat at my desk working all through July and August.  “What is this ‘summer’ thing?”

But that was before I had a little boy. That was before early September brought the ritual of  ironing name-tapes into sweat-shirts and getting feet measured for Jack Nano shoes.

This week, as I get the grey trousers down from the loft and hunt in the back of the cupboard for Tupperware,  I am amazed that despite working for four of the past six weeks, they have felt relaxed simply because days haven’t been truncated by 8.55am and 3.30pm deadlines.

Oh the things we have done!

Oh the things we have done! We’ve been to Barbados, been to cricket school, been to three festivals and to the Paralympic Games.

We’ve made bread, made birds of paradise, made new friends and made-up songs,  stories and and jokes (don’t ask).

We’ve paddled in pools, swam in a river and bobbed in the waves of the Caribbean Sea.

We’ve travelled by plane, by tube, by train, by bike, by taxi, by bus and by campervan singing along to Supertramp at the top of our voices.

We’ve laughed, we’ve danced, we’ve sung, we’ve cheered, we’ve Mexican-waved – and we’ve got very, very muddy.

Six glorious weeks

They have been six glorious weeks in which we’ve stretched and flexed and doodled and meandered, got lost and re-united, discovered and re-discovered.

Arch and I have called it “adventuring”.  “Where shall we adventure to today?” we would say as we set off on another school-free day.

Another name for it is “summer.”  I get it now.

And there was me thinking I was giving it to Arch. In fact he was giving it to me.