I was a pupil at [boarding school] from 1978 to 1984. I did have some happy times there, but on the whole boarding school was not a positive experience. It was certainly formative, and what it formed in me were ways of being in the world that have been both very helpful in my life and also rather debilitating. That is true of all life experiences. I would not have escaped the challenges of growing up by staying at home, so I don’t regret my time at boarding school. For many years I didn’t think about school all that much and rarely talked about it. I didn’t think about the impact that being sent away from home at the age of eleven had had on me. I didn’t want to acknowledge that some of it might have left a painful legacy. Writing my stories, allowing myself to remember what it was like for me, has been truly reparative.
The process of remembering and writing has helped me understand myself better. Today I have more compassion and patience for the parts of myself that I sometimes find hard to accept. By spending time thinking about my days at boarding school in so much detail, caring enough to make every moment, every experience count, I have given myself the care and attention that I did not receive during my years away at school. I feel a little shy and vulnerable sharing them [ ] so publicly. I’m not sure why this feels like the right thing to do, to publish them in this way, and yet it does. So here I am.