About the Author
History
Donegal, Ireland, 2022
From birth, I lived on our family farm in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. Watching soldiers walk the streets while learning about the latest bomb explosion was our daily reality. Desensitised to the country's strife, I was a busy child on the farm and happily chatted with everyone who appeared through our courtyard gates. Without a tap of fear, I could stand on a stage and recite poetry at my school, at a regional contest, or deliver a theatrical performance when feeling the need for drama.
When I was six, we immigrated to Ontario, Canada. In the next 12 years, I lived in 12 houses. From the moment I stepped into the first new school until I left my last high school, I never spoke aloud in class besides asking to use the washroom. Yet away from school, I was a foghorn who bossed my four younger siblings about and led us on wild adventures at the various farms we occupied.
Regardless of where we lived, books brought a calming escape from the latest changes, and each page fed my nosey curiosity. Without an ounce of grammar wit or sense of craft, I crudely wrote to hold onto the pieces of my transient life. All the while, my parents steered us through the world as best they could. Mother and Father, the heart of every social circle, were natural champions and the most colourful storytellers to grace the crowds which always formed round them.
After racing out through the exit doors of my third high school a final time, I swiftly flew back to Northern Ireland. Hardly more than a child, I got married and quickly learned that being a rural Irish wife wasn't in my makeup. Fortunately, my former husband remains my friend.
Instead of marital domesticity, I chose a road that was precarious and sometimes lonely. Often fearing there weren’t enough pennies to keep my tiny daughter and me afloat, I worked around the clock in menial jobs without a drip of formal education. While living from hand to mouth, I learned the hardest yet greatest truths.
Then, a baby brother came from Canada to visit and he stayed. Hardly more than a boy, he’d look after his niece while I left a few evenings a week, first to perform in a theatre group and later attend night college in Derry. Without him, I don’t know how I would have engaged in the enriching opportunities that changed my life and my child’s.
The night courses paid off. This hard-fighting, taxi-driving mother was accepted into the Queen’s University of Belfast. Studying inside those hallowed classrooms remains one of my life’s most extraordinary times.
My brother's twin and my parents also returned to live in Ireland for a few years. Then they all left the complicated province, a place that had immensely changed from the time my parents last lived there. My daughter and I found the empty spaces they left behind heartbreaking.
Now old enough to fly home to her father every year, my daughter and I returned to my family in Canada. I began working at a women’s shelter, and still hang my coat there on weekends. I am raising a second daughter alone and also work as a brain-injury rehab facilitator. My child is a character like her grandparents. That dynamite duo are still a massive support to me and my girls. They help me make this better life possible. And to this day, when I reach out to my baby brothers, they are always here for us.
I began writing Take This Body Home nineteen years ago, along with a collection of short stories. I felt stunned after learning I was long-listed for Gloria Vanderbilt’s short fiction prize. Maybe dreaming of writing for an audience wasn't crazy.
I live with my rascal child in a small Ontario town. My grownup daughter lives nearby with her wee family. I am beyond blessed. Now, I pray my book resonates with folks like so many stories touched me when I needed them most.
Vanessa