The Safe House Box contains 21 letters, one for you to open on every weekday of January 2023.

If you’ve been following the 21-day writing series on Time, Trauma and Vicarious Resilience, you know I use creative writing to help me in midwifery. I write mainly for student and newly qualified midwives, especially those feeling anxious or having a rough time. But this is just a front, I'm always just writing to figure out how to have a good rapport with myself when things are going to shit.

The Safe House Box is my next project.

The medical doctor and addiction specialist Gabor Maté once talked about how best to ‘stay sane in an insane system’, and that’s the kind of thing I want to explore. We often talk about ‘survival’ in midwifery, but this implies barely making it out alive physically. This can happen to maternity staff - we have an increased rate of suicide compared to the general public - but if you’re feeling this way I would suggest immediate help from your GP or Samaritans. The themes I want to explore are more along the lines of midwifery in its current state is meaning we are losing ourselves mentally and (I am conflicted about this word but can’t think of a better one), spiritually.

I know from the 21-day writing challenge that working things out happens better in company, but this is not the kind of work I am happy to publish on social media. Letters that you can hold in your hand feel like the right medium. During the challenge I quoted the TV show Joe Pera, which talks about how to ‘regrow your soul’, and that’s what I’m aiming for with this letter set.

I know many will say there aren’t any solutions out there until the NHS has more resources but I think there are at least some answers. I’ll be talking to psychotherapists and doing a lot of reading and learning because I want to figure this stuff out for me. I’ll do a better job of it and get further with the ideas if I know I’m writing for an audience.

This is not a profession you can do sensibly and just for money. Instead of ‘survival’, with all the stripping of sense of self that word implies, I’m interested in how you can stay being you in a dysfunctional system. Making the profession work for you is an art form, which is why this is an art project.