Hello!

A Re-introduction

Me in Toronto at Victoria College by the statue of Northrop Frye

Hello! There are quite a few more of you reading this substack than just a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I’d (re)introduce myself.

My name is Beatrice, I’m twenty-six, I’m a writer, and I live in Oxford with my husband and my two very small children (a 2-year-old and an almost 6-month-old). That’s probably all you really need to know about me, but in case you’re curious, here’s a bit more detail.

I always dreamed of becoming a writer of some sort. I fancied myself a poet or novelist in primary school and all through high school, but at some point I decided I wasn’t good enough to do that, and switched my aspirations towards an academic career in English Studies. I was raised in Italy but moved to England when I was 16. I studied English at Durham University, and then did my MA (also in English) at Oxford University.

This takes us up to the time the pandemic started. I met my husband while doing the MA at Oxford, but we were separated during the lockdowns. I also found out that I didn’t have funding to do my PhD at Oxford, and so turned down the offer. I felt pretty lost, and it was definitely a challenging time in my life. I decided I’d become a teacher instead, and was accepted into a teacher training programme in London. By this point my now-husband had proposed, and we were about to get married. He quickly finished his PhD in theology, and immediately got offered (to our utter surprise!) a job in Toronto. On the first day of our honeymoon, we decided to take the job. I turned down the teacher training program, and we made plans to relocate to Canada.

That summer, I got pregnant for the first time. I was three months pregnant by the time we reached Toronto (which is roughly when the picture above was taken). We adjusted to big city life, made friends, and I spent my time tutoring and applying again for PhD programmes. Shortly before I had my son, I was offered a pretty prestigious scholarship at Notre Dame for my PhD. We were scared to take it, but decided to give it a go. The way my husband put it was, that he wanted to invest in my dreams. I gave birth in April 2021, and after just three months we had to say goodbye to our Toronto apartment and all our new friends. By August, we had relocated to South Bend, Indiana.

My time doing the PhD at Notre Dame was, in hindsight, quite miserable. There are many reasons for this, which I won’t go into here (I’ve written about some of those reasons for Public Discourse). Exactly a year from the day I found out about my scholarship, I got pregnant the second time. My son was only ten months, and I was very tired and very scared. I ploughed through the end of the academic year while throwing up several times a day (I had extremely severe and incapacitating hyperemesis gravidarum). I know it’ll sound dramatic, but at one point I genuinely thought I was going to collapse and become an invalid. I finished the semester, but by this point I was quite deeply disillusioned with my academic dreams.

After we came home to England for the summer, my husband and I kept having conversations about what we should do. There was a lot of agonising, then finally, while on a weekend away, I just knew it was over. If I’m talking about it like a relationship, it’s because that’s what it felt like. Leaving my PhD programme felt like breaking up with a boyfriend I’d been with for years, but who just wouldn’t propose. I gave and gave and gave, and got nothing back. I was done waiting around. I think I cried every day for weeks (I was also heavily pregnant at this point) but I stuck to my decision and withdrew.

This takes us up to last August. We moved back to Oxford, where we first met, and settled in a lovely commuter village with lots of old friends. I was miserable and hopeless, and continued to be extremely unwell, physically, until I gave birth. I had our daughter in November, and a few literally and metaphorically dark months followed. Recovery was awful, sleep was nonexistent. The day was over by 4pm outside, but my day continued until 3am, which is when our daughter decided to sleep for the night for four months straight. I am only just coming out of that daze. I’m only just recovering.

But something happened in the middle of all this. I started writing again. Not fiction this time - though one day I’ll get back to it - but essays. I never fancied myself an essayist, but once I tried it, there was no going back. My very first article was published in April 2023 (exactly a year ago as of when I’m writing this post). Since then, even in the moments that felt the most hopeless, I haven’t looked back. I’m still occasionally regretful about my abandoned academic career, but I also love what I do now. I wrote my favourite article that I’ve worked on so far, while in labour with my daughter. I’ve written while pregnant and throwing up constantly; I’ve written completely sleep-deprived; I’ve written heartbroken and with two small children screaming at me. It brings me great joy. I feel so grateful that I get to do it.

So thank you for being here. I love writing on substack, because it allows me to get out all the thoughts I can’t fit into a magazine or newspaper article. It’s more personal, more eclectic, more spontaneous. I love reading your comments, I love seeing my story reflected in other people’s stories. I just love how writing and reading can make us all feel a bit less alone.

Whew, that was intense! For something lighter. Although literature and religion is my big passion, I also love writing about parenthood and sex-realist feminism. And on an even lighter note, I do have hobbies outside of writing (mostly on standby with two small kids, but I’ll get back to them one day!). I absolutely adore cooking and baking (I’ve also published a couple of recipes with Hearth & Field) and aim to get back to making sourdough regularly. I love music and used to play piano a lot (another thing I want to get back to!); my favourite thing to play is the opening piece in Joe Wright’s 2005 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, ‘Dawn’. I love long walks in the countryside, James Taylor, Carole King, and sourdough chocolate chip cookies. I adore Parks and Recreation and Motherland; controversially, my favourite Jane Austen adaptation is the 2020 Emma adaptation. Oh and of course, I love Jane Austen. Her novels are the reason I love literature and the reason I love writing.

There’s probably more I could tell you about myself, but this will do for now. My toddler is screaming to get out of bed even though he didn’t nap (getting my kids to sleep is what I realistically spend 80% of my time doing), so I better get going. Once again, thank you for reading Literary Convert. I’ll be back next Saturday with another post.