Just talking about some of those barriers, some of them were in more control of, I'd say,

particularly around letting go of the picture of how we thought we'd be, letting go of that should.

You know, we should do this, we should do this.

But the finances is such a complex barrier, isn't it?

And I know you've got a whole chapter in the book about that.

What are some of the things?

If someone is listening and they are thinking,

I cannot think of a way that I am going to be able to live my life,

pay for childcare, if we're not in a dual income family, what can someone do?

I think the first thing to say on this is at the end of the day, sometimes it's not physically

possible. And unfortunately, that is the economic climate that we're in. And anyone who is in

that situation should not feel that they are failing because they're not

able to provide that for their children. Secondly, there are things you can do, but again,

you have to be able to repaint that picture of what you thought your life would look like

and what it should look like and what it may look like in the future. So for me, I needed to essentially double my

income. If I wanted to stay in the house, I'm in a tiny little house, but it's got two bedrooms,

one for me and one for my son. And if I wanted to stay here, then I needed to double my income

because I had to cover all of the bills and everything on my own.

And because I'm a writer, journalist, the magazine that I work for, Country and Townhouse,

let me work completely flexibly. I do part time for them. And then on top of that, I just needed to somehow conjure up another income. So I took on copywriting, freelance. I was working every single minute of the day

whenever Jack was asleep. And now I often work into the evenings. Large parts of this book were

written in the middle of the night because it was important for me that we could stay in this house

...