How to engineer a miracle

Let me tell you the story of how a mouse can make you homeless.

Back in 2015 I was living in Thanet with my 14-month-old baby and my 6-year-old daughter. I was also hosting my mother and my sister with her son. So, my kids and I were sleeping in the living room on a mattress on the floor. One night, while I was breastfeeding, I heard a squeaky noise and I saw it staring at me. I jumped up, with the baby still hanging from my breasts, and started googling ‘how to get rid of a mouse.’ Apparently, the options are quite limited and ineffective, with a crawling baby who puts everything in his mouth.

Thoughts on immigration

 Some of you know that I moved to the UK with my daughter from Greece back in 2014 and my son was born here in Kent the same year. I think the journey of an immigrant really starts in a way after arriving to a new country. I love the UK. I love the rich culture and history. I love the nature and the people. Yet sometimes I feel like an outsider and it's hard to know if I'm being discriminated because I'm an immigrant or because I'm autistic. I am wearing a sunflower lanyard because I stutter when I talk with strangers and at the supermarket tills, I felt people were looking at me wondering if I can even speak English.

Generational Gap

 I come from a mixed generations family. My brother is 16 years older; my sister is 14 years older, other sister 8 years older. I am from a second marriage of my mother. My father was 20 when I was born and my mother 40. My children’s father is 7 years younger than me and my partner 17 years older than me. I was 27 and 33 when I had my children. Living in such a mixed environment I never realised the generational gap issue before. For me it was mostly about an unspecified lack of communication. To be honest that is exactly why I had the need to become a writer. I felt no one was listening. But now I think that for my daughter it is a real thing.