Ballad of a Fairy Tale Life: (For My Father)

Grew up in and around the West Midlands moving to London at nineteen to study for a degree in English, followed by teacher training. That was over thirty years ago, and since then she has lived and worked in London, starting with several years of primary school teaching, and after a break to have children, went on to work with fifteen- to seventeen-year-olds in alternative educational provision. Such experiences have been inspiring to her, with her children, pupils, and colleagues alike teaching her about the demands and rewards of growing and developing, as well as the power of creative expression. Now fifty-five she has recently retired and is considering what her new direction might be. Joy is a survivor of an unusual, at times bizarre, upbringing and a habitual writer. Her writing has been a constant companion for her—ever since she worked out that she could create her own realities to escape into, or help her cope with, or shelter her from, or improve upon, the given reality of her external world. Joy describes her writing as a secure attachment for her: it allows her to explore and attempt to make sense of an unsafe world; it lets her venture into what seems like the dangerous arena of emotional expression; it becomes the sublimation of her more destructive urges. Attachment therapy has been an essential framework within which she has been able to explore her life experiences; and these profound searches and discoveries have coalesced into the themes her writing is increasingly concerned with: the notions of individual identity, separateness and togetherness, and the search for shelter and safety, in an Eden in which things have gone disastrously wrong.