The Seven Year Replacement Cycle
On being brave
On average (and average is doing quite a lot of heavy lifting here) the human body has replaced all its cells within a seven year cycle. I like this idea of rejuvenation and release from the seven years previous, I like the idea of an entirely new body being gifted to you repeatedly until you die. Lately I’ve felt stuck. For all my moves towards a different type of writer life, a more authentic writer life, a slower life, I have not quite had the courage to throw over some of the parts of my previous life, a previous way of being that was about should and must and not really what I wanted. I hand in my tax return this week and had had my lowest income year in a good long while. Partly this was choice - I chose to take the book contract and prioritise writing the book, the advance for which, though very welcome indeed, did not cover the time spent writing it, hence the drop in wages. But also, I am still being drawn in to doing free and low paid work out of a sense of duty. This is the third year in a row where I have vowed to do less. I think I need permission to have a fresh start, not a new year resolution fresh start, but the gift of a new me who will perhaps be a little braver than me. I am going to embrace my seven year skin shedding like a snake.
What was I doing seven years ago? When I scroll through my iPhone photos a version of myself appears, a thinner version, a version of me that was not long left my job as a microbiologist. In these photos I am moving forward with my life, shedding a life that I couldn’t return to. I look confident, but I know me and I know that slight hesitance, I can almost see the ticker tape of not good enough not good enough who do you think you are not good enough rippling past her eyes. Here I am delivering leaflets for my small animal care business in the rain and my hat is soaked through and my glasses steamed up and I’m laughing to see myself like this, but also a man just shouted at me for putting a leaflet through his door and I’m really feeling like I might be doing the wrong thing, though you wouldn’t know it to look at me. Here I am walking dogs for a living, and visiting cats, and here I am on a train to Hull to have a Creative Writing PhD meeting and here is my husband and I on our last visit to the IVF clinic where we will be told our options have run out and we must consider double donations or adoption, or life without children. You cannot see this decision in the photograph, just two tired individuals smiling for the traditional pre IVF clinic selfie. Here I am in my houndstooth coat and little red hat looking at a mermaid in a box at Hull Maritime Museum and feeling a connection to it, feeling so badly put together with wire and string.
And see, here is my authentic self taking that feeling and creating this poem, and the poem is about moving away and up and maybe this is what I am always doing:
Self Portrait with Maritime Museum Mermaid, Hull
by Wendy Pratt
The plaque reads Early 18th century mermaid.
Probably Fake. She is blackened with age.
There is an X-ray of her body, which shows
wires for a skeleton, whale ivory for teeth,
glass eyes. Her skin is monkey skin,
her tail is a fish tail. Chimera mermaid.
Her little breasts are flat, drooped. Old-lady
mermaid. She has no hair and her mouth
is open to its fullest extent, a constant,
soundless scream to the people whose eyes
she looks straight into.
When I take the photo of her, I don’t realise
that I am in it too. Overlaid, my hounds-tooth
coat and red hat, my mobile phone, my face,
have shadowed her. My face is laid over hers,
so perfectly, that I can’t see my own eyes.
We are a little freak show, all wire and fakery,
empty of biology and withering in a box. Only,
someone put this thing together with skill,
if not love, and someone painted those glass eyes
with care and filled the little head with tiny teeth
and fooled the world. And people still pour past
the little box and look, see? The plaque
cannot be sure that she is fake at all.
I move away, untethered. I leave the freak show
and swim up to the rafters to be with the skulls
of Right whales and Narwhales. We don’t
even think of the IVF clinic today. I am thirty-nine.
My husband cries, finally, over our lost babies.
We hold hands. I am swimming away.
Here I am with a radical new hairstyle, and another, and another, and here is a photograph of a rich person’s house and the dog that I am looking after there and a view to the sea and a desire, a need to sit down at the table on the patio and write. To just write. Here I am raising money for charity, and trying to do some good with our loss, and walking and walking and standing with my face in the wind, letting the sound of the sea and the battering north wind blow me, letting it move my body. And here I am writing abstracts for industry journals because it was, at least, writing of one kind, I write them at a makeshift table in the living room, and watch the rain fall outside and feel grateful I’m not walking stubborn dogs in it. And here, wine in the garden, and the cat and the dog and catkins and buds, and cow parsley in the lane. And with five rabbits in an enclosure that takes up half the garden. And here is the blackbird skeleton I found while digging, so like a neolithic burial, or a foetus on a scan, and this blackbird skeleton will be the jumping off point for a poetry collection that will come out seven years after its discovery. This year, in 2024.
And here, my graduation at Manchester, my MA in hand, my dad and my mum smiling. And nights out, and baking and flowers and another radical hair style. And a book launch. And a video of me reading a poem, and I am young, and beautiful and didn’t really know that about myself. Here are pictures for a new column in a well read magazine that I had won by putting myself forward, though I felt like an imposter, and here a sculpture in the university art gallery on the day I had decided, but hadn’t told anyone, that I was giving up my PhD. And my first, semi professional author photos.
And all the other little things, my notebooks, my pen collection, finally a proper desk. You can’t see, from looking at the photos that I ever doubted myself. Only I know I did. I imagine everyone is like that really. I read this fantastic post this week by
It really resonated with me. and thanks to
pointing me in her direction on instagram, I came across Megan Macedo and this film about her own journey to being herself and trusting her individuality. It made me rethink my own journey, how far I have come now, and how I want to go forward.All this change that I didn’t realise was happening, all this growth that I couldn’t see over those seven years. Every stage of growth in those pictures took a bravery that I had forgotten I possessed. I left a well paid job, I ended a PhD, I started a business, I ended a business I jumped and jumped until I began to see a writing career building.
Now, I think, it is time to jump again and trust myself.
Book Your Place on the Weekend Write Alongs
Introducing The Weekend Write Alongs
A day to put your own writing first, with guest speakers, Q&A sessions, writing prompts and space to write, all through the convenience of zoom, all facilitated by me, Wendy Pratt.
Following on from the success of my facilitated morning writing group, The Dawn Chorus, I have decided to launch a series of day long write along events with a focus on inspiration, community and accountability.
I have three sessions open for bookings now:
Saturday 27th January 2024 10am - 3pm UK Time - Guest Speaker author and poet Polly Atkin.
Book your place here:
Saturday 17th February 2024 10am-3pm UK Time - Guest Speaker founder of Valley Press publishing Jamie McGarry.
Saturday 30th March 2024 10am - 3pm UK Time - Guest Speaker judge of the Nan Shepherd prize, agent and founder of Portobello Literary Agency, Caro Clarke.
The day begins with a meet and greet, followed by a talk by the guest speaker, then a chance for yo to ask your own questions. After this we'll have some optional writing prompts and you will have space and time to write before we meet again to talk about how we've gotten on.
This is a pressure free environment for your to work in. You do not have to share anything, you don't even have to have your camera on if you'd prefer not to.
You can work to the optional prompts or you can bring a longer term project along to work on, it's really up to you.
If you're looking for regular events where you can be a part of a writing community, working at your own pace in a nurturing environment, this may be for you.
January 27th is our first event with guest speaker Polly Atkin.
There is a theory, that everything we need to be is inside us already, it's not so much becoming someone else as unwrapping layers to find those things were always there and available to us anyway. Thank you Wendy for writing this post, I am sure most people who read it will identify with it.
Sometimes it’s only when we look back we realise how brave we are. I love that poem. You/we are doing well. Xx