Keeping Mum
Sussex Life|March 2018

Former Sussex Life columnist Grace Timothy tells JENNY MARK-BELL how motherhood changed her identity for ever – and why the ensuing crisis led to her first book, a wryly funny memoir

Jenny Mark-Bell
Keeping Mum

FOR beauty writer Grace Timothy, giving birth was rather like being born again. Grace was a bright young thing, “a swearer, a drinker, a very occasional smoker”, commuting from Brighton to a glamorous magazine job in London, when she found out she was pregnant at 28. Within just a few months of this unplanned bombshell her whole world had changed: she and her husband Rich moved back to her family home in Chichester while she wrestled with hyperemesis gravidarum, the extreme and potentially life-threatening sickness that has afflicted the Duchess of Cambridge’s pregnancies.

Sussex Life readers first met Grace in September 2013, when she started writing a mother and baby column as her daughter approached her first birthday.

Her column was effervescent and witty: while she sometimes reflected on the crazy juxtaposition between her old world and the new, she sounded like she had parenthood absolutely down pat. What readers couldn’t know is that she was suffering a major identity crisis brought about by the question posited on the back of her new book: if becoming a mother means the person you were before has gone, who exactly is left in its place?

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 2018 من Sussex Life.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 2018 من Sussex Life.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 8500 مجلة وصحيفة.

المزيد من القصص من SUSSEX LIFE مشاهدة الكل
TAKE YOUR TIME
Sussex Life

TAKE YOUR TIME

Dean Edwards’ new cookbook features delectable recipes that you can slow cook or stick in the oven. Here’s a selection of the best

time-read
7 mins  |
November 2020
Decorative art
Sussex Life

Decorative art

Not simply functional, treat your walls like an extension of your personality

time-read
3 mins  |
November 2020
ON THE FRONT FOOT
Sussex Life

ON THE FRONT FOOT

The rugby legend took the reins at Sussex County Cricket Club in 2017, rekindling his love for a sport that first won his heart on the village cricket fields of North Yorkshire

time-read
8 mins  |
November 2020
NAKED AMBITION
Sussex Life

NAKED AMBITION

In the 1980s, Christine and Jennifer Binnie partied with Boy George and Marilyn and bared all as performance art collective The Neo-Naturists. Now they are working together to gain the recognition they feel they deserve

time-read
5 mins  |
November 2020
ROCKET MAN
Sussex Life

ROCKET MAN

Astronaut Tim Peake has come a long way since growing up in Westbourne and attending Chichester High School for Boys: 248 miles above Earth, to be precise. But, he says, life on the International Space Station has a lot in common with family caravanning holidays

time-read
6 mins  |
November 2020
Revolution man
Sussex Life

Revolution man

Lewes’ most famous resident Thomas Paine may be the greatest propagandist who ever lived. But how did a humble customs and excise officer ignite the touchpaper for revolution in not one but two countries?

time-read
8 mins  |
November 2020
THE DIARY
Sussex Life

THE DIARY

17 exciting things to do this month in East and West Sussex

time-read
8 mins  |
November 2020
All in a day's work
Sussex Life

All in a day's work

Meet Tim Dummer, who has helped keep Midhurst’s Cowdray Estate shipshape for an impressive five decades

time-read
3 mins  |
November 2020
My favourite Sussex
Sussex Life

My favourite Sussex

Bruce Fogle is an author and a vet with a practice in London who has lived in West Sussex with his wife, the actress Julia Foster, since 1989. He recently became president of RSPCA Mount Noddy near Chichester

time-read
2 mins  |
November 2020
10 OF THE BEST Meat-free restaurants in Brighton and Hove
Sussex Life

10 OF THE BEST Meat-free restaurants in Brighton and Hove

Brighton is often rated one of the most vegan-friendly cities in the UK. What these restaurants prove is that plant-based food doesn’t have to be puritanical – at all of these places you’ll find big flavours and a desire to push the envelope

time-read
4 mins  |
November 2020