Looking back on this project it doesn’t feel true anymore. Real, even. It started off as one thing in a moment of time, but became a thing that spanned from 2018 - 2022, before and during the pandemic. Didn't time feel different before the pandemic? SKIN was made through some of the most challenging years of my life which were completely intertwined with my relationships to my mum and my daughter Amber. During which a lot did and didn’t happen. A messy project due to the complex relationships of classed intergenerational trauma entangled in the contemporary; we are still living and breathing it everyday. Paternal connection and family narratives define our early years, and keep most therapists in a job. And like most woke millennials, I know if it's not one thing it's your mother. And oh the joy of being an aware mum constantly looking at your kid thinking, I have probably fucked you up kid, whilst being a fucked up kid.

 

Regret, accountability, guilt and class confusion asks us to show up in full black and white and pin point the binaries; right or wrong, carer/cared for, the hurt and the hurtful, privileged or unprivileged. All void of the greyscale which truly defines all relationships, but especially that of mother and daughter. All the bits in between that leak into each other, co-existing in a liminal space; ever aging and decaying, as no one is getting any younger.  

 

I was finally able to move out of my mum's house at the age of 36, after facing lots of barriers which meant that it was long overdue. I was desperate to make a home of my own, and have autonomy in my motherhood. However, within 5 months COVID-19 had locked us down. I felt stifled and trapped, punished and overstimulated in a face mask. All my freelancing work disappeared in the swab of a test. And with it, plans to redevelop and tour my first show CHAV, with which SKIN is intersected; an idea that was born in 2018 through my research and development. 

 

Now to be a teacher, best friend, entertainer, motivator, cleaner, chef, all whilst desperately trying to keep my own shit together. Tinkering at finishing a PhD, online lecturing/workshopping, having therapy, waiting on an ADHD diagnosis, and trying to do the fucking work, whilst the world outside felt like is was constantly undoing the work; Boris partied like it was 1999, we clapped for the NHS, the US police were killing black & brown people, and the pandemic could 

kill us all. None of us has really recovered from the pandemic, we have just all stopped talking about it. 

 

SKIN then was pulled together during this time as part of my practice as a research PhD, and the work reflects making in the confinements and parameters of a pandemic. It makes me feel really sad now; the unsaid means the silence of the missing feels loud. If I was to embark on this project now it would be something very different. The final draft was sent to my then supervisors in 20.. 

 

In April 2021 mum had to have intensive chemotherapy and I became her main carer. The world was starting to open up a little, with some of the stricter pandemic rules laxing, however, mine was closing back in. Cancer wards were strictly controlled zones and rightly so, but this meant I was terrified of giving my mum, or any other cancer patient COVID. The dynamics of the cared for and the carer shifted, this was a hard transition for us both. I don’t truly believe that she has really processed that trauma, nor any in her life’s journey. But that is another story which is not an arts project. 

 

The last audio with Amber is dated late 2020, by September 2021, just as my mum's chemo had come to end, Amber started to experience very real violence in the world. Which meant that she could not attend school and was too afraid to leave the house. When overwhelm really took over, she was unable to talk. A void of beautiful blue eyes. The term used was selective mute, which I hate. There is nothing selective about it. She did not choose not to talk, the outside world got so scary and her feelings were so big that she could not talk. This was a lot for a kid who never shut up. And it was a lot for me. We had always talked so much; Debated, joked, argued, sang and just in general loud silliness. I realised how much I had invested in how we communicated and I deeply hated our silence. 

 

I couldn’t really recover from the pandemic, caring for my disabled mum, and a very unwell daughter, so I gave up the PhD after seven years from 2015-2022. Two years later I had a formal NHS ADHD diagnosis which has helped me to understand a lot about how I make work and why I could not do certain things on my own without support structures in place. And also, how trauma affects the ADHD mind; not just the lived experience of a world not designed for them (me), but also how traumatic experiences intersect with ADHD responses. But again, that’s another story and probably an arts project.  

 

Amber went through a habit of saying the phrase ‘Say Less’ which is a slang term meaning I understand or I agree, or say no more. It became a bit of a habit and she would say it when asked a question or at the end of a sentence. But to me it felt like suppressed emotions, not saying the real things: hurt, guilt or shame. Or maybe, I was, as I always am, projecting? I was defo taught to say less, but then also asked to say more, but only about the things were someone else’s truth not my own. 

 

Amber is now 18 and has consented to me writing about her experiences, but is this ethical? Can you give true active consent to your mum? I honestly don’t know if you can. And importantly, I don’t feel that 18 is old enough to know whether you are truly ok for your dickhead mum to share your stories in a play or whatever. So as her mum, but also as my mum's daughter, I have censored a lot as an autobiographical artist; my truths and memories of our shared experiences and trauma touched on but not explicit. A very different version of; Say less fam.

This project exists because of these three women who pushed me, hurt me, loved me, crushed me, questioned me, taught me, supported me, silenced me, smothered me, held me, made me. And they are the women that I struggled to be honest with the most. Saying what I think to those women need to hear is inherent to me, even if I don't agree or it is not my truth. A perceived protection for others and myself but in truth it is harmful to us all.

 

So I say this with all honesty to all the daughters, but especially my own, Say More, Fam.