The Electricity of Every Living Thing: A Woman’s Walk In The Wild To Find Her Way Home

Every night, beach-worn, Bert curls up in bed next to me, and I often wake to find two bright eyes on me, just savouring the glee of being close. He strokes my face and whispers, 'I love you, Mummy.' and then wriggles his little body nearer, insinuating himself under my chin. And I realise, quite unexpectedly, that Bert is the only person in my life whose electricity exactly matches my own, whose touch is as native to my skin as air or water. There was a time when I couldn't bear this, when I wanted to be separate from him. That has passed. We have negotiated, between us, some kind of balance. I admire his patience with me, his willingness to adapt. But then I admire, too, my own adaptations. I begin to believe that I'm not so terrible after all.

THIS. This is what I'll remember this book by, with tears in my eyes. I can't ignore all the walking, the struggle with it, all the paths and maps, I loved all of it. But this. This paragraph. A woman finding it hard to establish a connection with her baby boy. Finding touch to be a tickling, burning or shuddering thing, unbearable if not used to the person, loving Bert but not in the way other women love their babies, grieving when he and her husband find it hard to accept her and need time away form her and her still finding her way to them and making them love her for who she is. I did not find many experiences of hers foreign to me, I understood so much of her struggles and her thinking. I won't ask myself a lot of questions though, for now I am just happy with books like this as an inspiration for my own life and my own ways of coping. I hope I find people around me as accepting as her husband and find the peace she managed to attain at last.

Katherine May, I am forever grateful to you for writing this astonishing book, I loved it!