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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin writes entertaining fiction about identity, mental health and social justice. She has published three novels and a short story collection with Inspired Quill. Her debut, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. Her new novel, Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home, is rooted in her work as a clinical psychologist in a long-stay psychiatric hospital.

TELL ME MORE

The camera never lies

4/7/2021

10 Comments

 
A black-and-white photograph links two of the three point-of-view characters in my new novel, Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home. In Henry’s interpretation, it shows a father, his glamorous teenage daughter and his young son on holiday at Blackpool, a popular English seaside resort. Matty’s version has a ragged edge and shows only two people: an unknown woman in a polka-dot dress holding the hand of a boy with the Eiffel Tower sprouting from his head. If these two renditions of the same events can be reconciled, perhaps brother and sister will be reunited. Perhaps Matilda Windsor will make it home.
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As outlined in my recent guest post, Resettlement revisited in my novel Matilda Windsor Is Coming Home , on the Mad in the UK blog, my novel is based on my own experience of working in a long-stay psychiatric hospital. Unfortunately, although I can describe that period from thirty-year-old memories, I have few photographs of my own to illustrate my words. I do have permission to use some from the county asylums website, but I’m saving those for a post on the Literary Sofa in a couple of weeks. I took this photograph, of the hospital where I used to work, after the long-stay wards had closed.

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Photos were taken – albeit not by me – at the workshop I delivered last week at the newly-opened Secret Garden Studio in Nottinghamshire. I loved working with a small group of talented writers, and I’m sure I learnt as much as they did.

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What was the topic of your workshop, Anne? I’m glad you asked: it was the 99-word story which, despite my initial scepticism, I’ve been practising for over seven years. This week’s prompt from the Carrot Ranch was to write about an old photograph.

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I wrote my story before reading Charli’s complete post, so was pleased to find I’d echoed her theme of healing in my flash. Her posts are often poignant, but this, about the cruel consequences of armed combat, is especially so.

The camera never lies

Mary’s bedroom floor is awash with paper. She tucks a lock of russet hair behind her ear and plunges in.

Her therapist said her childhood memories didn’t sound happy. Mary wades through school reports and twentieth-century diaries for the evidence to prove her wrong.

A photograph of two girls in polka-dot dresses, seated with their mother on a tartan rug. Decades on, Mary hears the stream gurgling behind them, smells the meadowsweet, tastes the fairy cakes, feels the sun warm her face.

The woman cuddles the raven-haired daughter. Mary weeps for the redhead, beyond the reach of mother love.

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Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
10 Comments
Charli Mills
5/7/2021 06:59:58 am

Way to use the 99-word format to encourage writers, Anne! Looks like a cozy nook for writing. Feels amazing to be getting out again, doesn't it? Strange, too. What an austere looking place you once worked. Your forthcoming post will be an interesting read with more photos. Your flash digs down to the marrow of wounds. The deepest is that of missing out on a mother's love.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
9/7/2021 05:12:52 pm

It's a lovely setting for small groups and very relaxed. And great to borrow your genre for the morning.
I think my asylum was one of the smaller ones, and even more austere inside.
I think even worse than missing out on mother love is not realising you've missed anything, and so continually trying to fix what isn't fixable, just has to be borne. The bread and butter of therapy, and my character is making a start.

Reply
Norah Colvin
5/7/2021 12:34:44 pm

I read your article on the MAD in the UK blog, Anne. The change over from institution to community housing must have been difficult for those in the profession as well as in 'care', I assume, Anne. I wonder if the same happened here. When my sister was hospitalised with manic depression at the same time as she was ill with breast cancer (in the early 1990s), I didn't see much evidence of 'care'. She and the other patients seemed to be drugged into zombie-like trances. It seemed so sad to me and I would have dearly loved to have taken her away from it all to somewhere 'safe'. Sadly, the cancer took her away in a few years to where there would be (hopefully) no more pain. She certainly looked more peaceful in death than she had in the years before.
Apologies. I've gone a bit morbid, but that's where your post took me, so to speak. I think she, like most of my siblings suffered for that lack of (appropriate) parental love too, though she didn't have the russet hair than some of us others have/had.
As always, a flash with depth of character and a post with much to contemplate.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
9/7/2021 05:25:25 pm

Thanks for reading that post, Norah. Yes, it was difficult for some of the staff who'd been there a long time although others were keen to contribute to creating something better. It must have been distressing seeing your sister suffering and not getting much help. And such a burden for her with both physical and mental trauma. I think generally medication is overused because it's cheaper and less demanding for the staff than therapy. There's a lovely quote from a psychoanalytic paper I can't properly remember along the lines of staff would give medication when THEY could no longer bear the patient's distress: "it was always the patient who took the medicine, not the staff". And yes, the legacy of early childhood emotional neglect.

Reply
Norah Colvin
11/7/2021 12:13:28 pm

Interesting quote, Anne. Thanks for sharing it.

D. Avery link
5/7/2021 11:03:53 pm

Parts of that childhood seem idyllic, but dang, she isn't going to prove the therapist wrong, it seems.
My mother worked in our state capital when the Iron Lady's buddy, Reagan, was in office. The state mental hospitals closed and suddenly we had street people, many becoming familiar to my mother in the Social Security office and to others who worked in the city. Like Naomi who wore a tinfoil helmet to protect her thoughts. Even now driving by the old brick buildings in Waterbury, there's an aura and you wonder how people lived there, but they were housed and fed, by golly.
I have finally finished MWICH and am mulling. (I may need to read it again; May seems to have taken until early July to come to a close it seems and I read in three big bites, spread out and should have just waited and read it all at once.) By the way, I hope Janice is in the next Matilda story or perhaps you will give her her own book.
Somebody said on zoom they didn't care so much for Henry, but by gosh, he did change, and grew on me. {Would you say he went into a cave, what with being left alone by Irene and catching fever?}

Reply
Anne Goodwin
9/7/2021 05:38:21 pm

It was standard in my work to ask people about their childhood and mostly they say it was happy, without having anything to substantiate it. They often didn't know they'd had an unhappy childhood.
Yes, I have met those people with the tinfoil, mostly to keep out the rays – quite enterprising I'd say.
I think, apart from some flagship projects, deinstitutionalisation in the US was more brutal than here. Nearly everyone from the old asylums was rehoused and supported, but unfortunately any savings were never reinvested in mental health.
Thanks for reading Matilda Windsor. Of course I'd love you to go back to the beginning and start again but don't feel obliged to.
Um, I'm sorry I don't yet have a follow-up story for Janice, but something might come to me. Yes, Henry is the least popular of the three point of view characters but I think someone stuck up for him at the launch. And yes, I think he definitely went into a cave – although we need charity to give us the final word on that.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
9/7/2021 05:39:18 pm

Charity? I meant Charli!

Rebecca Glaessner link
6/7/2021 02:49:02 am

Opening old and hidden wounds is always a tough path to travel. I commend this character for her determination, but grieve for her the journey that comes after. I feel that her strength of self will pull her through though. If she began so sure of who she is, she can find that again. Powerful writing Anne.

Reply
Anne Goodwin
9/7/2021 05:41:31 pm

Thanks, Rebecca, and I agree with you. Withthe right support, I believe we canlive with ourselves better when we confront the truth. But yeah, a lot of pain ahead.

Reply



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