Hello Wall - Hormonal Heart Poetry

Intro — Girls on a Train Life always seemed to happen when I was travelling. Trains, platforms, doorways, cafés — places where you’re meant to just pass through, but somehow I never just passed through. Things happened. People collided with me, or revealed themselves, or broke, or cried, or tried something they shouldn’t. And I was always there — a girl on a train, a girl in a doorway, a girl in a café — noticing, reacting, protecting, absorbing. These are just some of them. Memoir Blast — Girls on a Train 1) The Man on the Stockholm Train I was on a Swedish train with my daughter, eight years old, hyper‑vigilant like me, ND like me. The carriage was full, except for one man — the only man — who told me I looked attractive in my red dress. I thought he was odd, but harmless. Until I looked again. Until I realised what he was doing. Until the rage hit my throat but I swallowed it because my daughter was right there. ND balance Rage or leave! I got us off the train without alerting he...

  Memoir Blast — The Deck‑Chair Collapse I was eighteen, heavily pregnant with Courtney, still a young girl really, and I sat down on one of those old‑fashioned deck chairs — the canvas kind. The fabric tore. I fell straight through. Stuck in the frame, caught in the mechanics, unable to move. My dad, Paul, and my brothers all three had to lift me together, pull me out carefully, piece by piece. I was mortified. Mortified at the beach. (The beaching - becoming stuck, bulbous) Mortified at the body I thought I had become. I was young, beautiful, full of life — but society had already taught me the wrong math: chair breaks = I’m huge stuck = I’m too big pregnant = don’t move, protect the baby needing help = I’m less than They lifted me gently because I was precious cargo. But all I felt was shame for breaking a chair. Hearing the comments, the looks, the tone — society had shamed me long before the canvas tore. Heavy bones. Busty — what a reference. Bigger. Tall, taller. Even my shoe...

  INTRO T here are stories that don’t arrive in a straight line. They come in fragments — a field, a room, a label — each one carrying a different part of the truth. None of them are the whole story, but together they reveal the shape of a life lived under pressure, adaptation, and quiet resilience. These pieces are written from the outside looking in, because sometimes distance is the only way to see clearly. They are not confessions. They are observations. A way of mapping what happened, how it felt, and how she finally found the language for it. 1. “The Field, the Fence, and the Girl Who Carried the Backpack” Blog‑post intro idea: A moment that looked ordinary from the outside but was actually the beginning of the end — the day you realised you were carrying more than snacks and suncream. You were carrying the marriage. Draft blog‑post / chapter seed: I used to think that marriage was a shared weight, something carried between two people. But the truth arrived quietly, in a wild...

  INTRO There are stories that don’t arrive in a straight line. They come in fragments — a field, a room, a label — each one carrying a different part of the truth. None of them are the whole story, but together they reveal the shape of a life lived under pressure, adaptation, and quiet resilience. These pieces are written from the outside looking in, because sometimes distance is the only way to see clearly. They are not confessions. They are observations. A way of mapping what happened, how it felt, and how she finally found the language for it. 2. “Purgatory Rooms: The Spaces We Build to Avoid Ourselves” Blog‑post intro idea: A piece about the house, the room, the clutter, and the way ND brains turn physical space into emotional pressure. A chapter about how you learned that the room wasn’t the problem — the avoidance was. Draft blog‑post / chapter seed: There are rooms we live in, and rooms we survive in. I didn’t know the difference until I found myself trapped inside one — a ...

  INTRO There are stories that don’t arrive in a straight line. They come in fragments — a field, a room, a label — each one carrying a different part of the truth. None of them are the whole story, but together they reveal the shape of a life lived under pressure, adaptation, and quiet resilience. These pieces are written from the outside looking in, because sometimes distance is the only way to see clearly. They are not confessions. They are observations. A way of mapping what happened, how it felt, and how she finally found the language for it. “The Field, the Room, and the Door That Finally Opened” She didn’t realise the story began in a field. It looked ordinary enough — a carved wooden fence, a backpack slung over one shoulder, the kind of day that should have been nothing more than a walk. But he ran ahead, searching for something he couldn’t name, and she stayed behind, carrying everything that kept the day functioning. Snacks, water, emotional labour. The invisible load. F...

  The Glass Coffin: Understanding the Metaphor She didn’t draw the image. She found it — a simple Miffy –style illustration of Snow White lying in a glass coffin. A childlike picture, flat colours, clean lines, nothing dramatic. She kept it without knowing why. Only later did she understand that she had recognised herself in it long before she had language for the feeling. The glass coffin wasn’t a fairy‑tale sleep. It was fragility. It was containment. It was the perfect metaphor for a girl who had survived childhood trauma not by becoming stronger, but by becoming careful. She thought she would grow bigger, rise up, become a bear. But trauma doesn’t make children fierce. It makes them adaptive. It teaches them to hold everything together for everyone else. It teaches them to stay small so they don’t get hurt again. The glass case showed what she couldn’t see at the time: she didn’t have much to function with. She protected what little she had. And when life hit her, she didn’t cr...