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Catching Up
Will we ever catch up with those dominant, formative members of our family? For Gill Jackman, becoming grown-up seemed an impossibility. Until those in front of her died and she became a psychotherapist and years later a colleague pointed out that she'd overtaken them. This deeply moving memoir of a sixties childhood with a war-damaged father and a would-be hippy brother shows us how.
17 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 24, 2020
About the author
Gill Jackman
6 books3 followersWorking backwards, I'm 64 and have just retired after 26 years as a psychotherapist. I've been writing forever, most recently as part of a writing group run by Lindsay Clarke which I was part of from 2005 to 2018. This particular novel was inspired by a devastating love affair which ended in tears and madness in 2004.
Prior to that, I trained as a counsellor in the 1990s – this led to a great deal of concern about the dumbing down of this training, about which I have written extensively (see www.counselling-southwest.co.uk). Many of these concerns have made their way into The Fantasist's Assistant as has a far deeper understanding of the way in which the experience of loss is massively impacted by the history of the client's past losses.
I got into counselling through working as a support worker for young people who had just left the care system. I have a particular fondness for angry teenagers, being extremely angry myself.
In 1987 I did a masters in Creative Writing at Lancaster University with David Craig and am still in touch with my colleagues from that time: Alison Macleod and Hugh Dunkerly, though Dorothy Nimmo has died. In 1985 I became a single parent so have had to earn a living for both myself and my daughter. I completed my BA at Lancaster in Independent Studies: Women and Literature in 1984 while becoming embroiled in the Rajneeshee movement. Lancaster was full of them. Oh – page nearly up: I left school at 17, went to FE college late and I still go to the Glastonbury Festival to work every year. The Fantasist's Assistant is about as far from chick-lit as you can get.
Prior to that, I trained as a counsellor in the 1990s – this led to a great deal of concern about the dumbing down of this training, about which I have written extensively (see www.counselling-southwest.co.uk). Many of these concerns have made their way into The Fantasist's Assistant as has a far deeper understanding of the way in which the experience of loss is massively impacted by the history of the client's past losses.
I got into counselling through working as a support worker for young people who had just left the care system. I have a particular fondness for angry teenagers, being extremely angry myself.
In 1987 I did a masters in Creative Writing at Lancaster University with David Craig and am still in touch with my colleagues from that time: Alison Macleod and Hugh Dunkerly, though Dorothy Nimmo has died. In 1985 I became a single parent so have had to earn a living for both myself and my daughter. I completed my BA at Lancaster in Independent Studies: Women and Literature in 1984 while becoming embroiled in the Rajneeshee movement. Lancaster was full of them. Oh – page nearly up: I left school at 17, went to FE college late and I still go to the Glastonbury Festival to work every year. The Fantasist's Assistant is about as far from chick-lit as you can get.
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