AMA with author Suzanne Heywood - Thursday 1st June

[NicolaDMumsnet]

Hello,

We’re pleased to announce that author Suzanne Heywood will be doing an AMA tomorrow evening (Thursday 1st June) in the wake of her latest book Wavewalker.

More about the book:

Aged just seven, Suzanne Heywood set sail with her parents and brother on a three-year voyage around the world. What followed turned instead into a decade-long way of life, through storms, shipwrecks, reefs and isolation, with little formal schooling. No one else knew where they were most of the time and no state showed any interest in what was happening to the children.

Suzanne fought her parents, longing to return to England and to education and stability. This memoir covers her astonishing upbringing, a survival story of a child deprived of safety, friendships, schooling and occasionally drinking water... at seventeen Suzanne earned an interview at Oxford University and returned to the UK.

From the bestselling author of What Does Jeremy Think?, Wavewalker is the incredible true story of how the adventure of a lifetime became one child's worst nightmare - and how her determination to educate herself enabled her to escape.

The AMA will open for questions tomorrow evening at 5pm.

As always, please remember our guidelines - one question per user, follow-ups only if there’s time and most questions have been answered, and please keep it civil.

Suzanne has signed 50 copies of the book exclusively for Mumsnet users. You can purchase your signed copy here.

Hi - great to be doing this AMA today!

Hi Suzanne!

What was the hardest thing about living out at sea for so long?

Thanks

Hi Suzanne, thanks for doing this! I haven't (yet!) read the book but have read many of the interviews and extracts. You're obviously incredibly driven and have been so successful professionally - do you think that would be different if you'd had a more conventional upbringing? How much did those difficult experiences drive your path later in life?

The hardest thing in the end was trying to get an education. I managed to get myself registered with a correspondence school, but of course on a boat you don't have an address, and my father would often decide to change course or not to wait long enough for me to get my post when we reached a port. There was also limited space on the boat and I was expected to work most of each day for my parents who ended up running the boat as a floating hotel to earn money.

Hi Suzanne, one of the things that struck me the most about your story is mentioned in the blurb above - 'no state showed any interest in what was happening with the children'. Looking back on that, does it make you angry? And I wonder if you think parents would 'get away' with it to the same extent today, or do you think UK/other state officials would show more interest into what the effect was on the children involved?

This is question I have pondered a lot. I honestly don't know, although I am now working with some charities that are trying to help girls get an education and they tell me that it is incredible how driven some children can be to get an education when it is denied to them (for example girls in Afghanistan). I would not recommend my upbringing to anyone - and have not replicated it with my children (I have three). I also know many kids from similar backgrounds (usually less extreme) who have not been successful. However, having escaped I do think I gained resilience and that has been hugely helpful in my working career and dealing with all the things life throws at you more generally (sadly I am widowed).

Hi, I've not read your book but I will do! I am what you'd consider a free spirit and travel a lot with my son. It was a dream of mine to travel Europe with him when he reached 7 for a year, but covid stopped us. He is now 9, which I feel is too old to take him out of formal education, so I will not do it. What were the positive experiences you had?

Hi, I read an excerpt from your book in the guardian and was so moved by your experience. Looking forward to reading the whole book! How did you reach the decision to share your experience and did sharing change the way you felt about it?

The issue of no-one intervening is a very important point for me. It is one of the reasons for writing the book - along with hoping that it would inspire others to fight difficult circumstances and get an education. I think we romanticise extreme childhoods but don't reflect enough on the consequences for the children. Today I think kids are often more connected - I was very isolated - so it might be easier for them to reach out for help from say extended family. However, I hope my story if it becomes widely known will also encourage people generally to be aware of how vulnerable children are if they are raised outside of society and be more willing to step in.

Hi Suzanne,

Can I ask how your experiences informed your approach to parenting? Positive and negative!

Sorry - second question if I’m allowed! Oxford admitted you based on potential, which seems incredibly progressive and they were obviously right! How can HE embrace more children on potential and not just traditional academic metrics? Should they?

Thank you! I postponed telling my story for a long time as I knew it would jeopardise my relationship with my parents - who always aggressively defended their choices (or refused to discuss them). But when my children reached the same ages as I was when I struggled most, I realised how incomprehensible to me as a mother my childhood had been. However it was only when I wrote the book (which took me a long time as I am very pedantic!) that I really faced into how challenging my childhood was. I now understand that I probably had a bit of Stockholm syndrome about it - but when I finally had the courage to read my own diaries from the time it was very clear what had really happened.

Hi Suzanne, I listened to you read your book on Audible. It was great. It really stayed with me.

Did your brother have as much work to do on the boat as you? Why did your parents think he needed someone to meet him at Heathrow when you had to make your own way ? How is your relationship now?

On the Oxford question I should say that multiple other universities refused to consider me given how odd my educational record was. Oxford based its offer on two essays I wrote and an interview. That method meant that I could show them how much I knew - I had read every book I could find on my subject (Zoology). It would have been much more difficult for me if they had made me sit a test because my education was so patchy. I worry now that it is harder for Oxford to make a wild card decision, like they did for me, as they are much more structured about letting in diverse candidates. And while I hugely support that in many ways, it makes it harder for them to make a gut decision, which is what they did for me.

Thank you. No I'm afraid my parents had very old fashioned issues on gender. And in addition, my mother had a clear 'favourite' and it was not me. The issue I now realise is that I would not comply with her - and she hated that, and sadly I think she hated me (I would like to think that is not the case but it is hard to avoid that conclusion). So I was expected to work for several hours every day cooking and cleaning and running chores for my mother but my brother was let off much more lightly. He was also always 'protected'. So I had to look after him when my parents left us behind in New Zealand and I was expected to meet him when he came back to the UK (though no-one had met me).

I don't blame my brother for any of this - he didn't ask to be the preferred child. But I am very conscious never to have favourites myself as a mother.

Good question on how it affected my parenting! When I became a parent I had to stop and think very carefully (and talk to my late husband) about how I would parent, as I did not want to replicate my own experience. What I concluded (and in a way it is obvious!) is that the most important thing is to give unconditional love, and to make that clear. I also tried to copy the small amount of kind parenting I experienced as a child. So my father in good times would play with me, and we had some crew members who were kind (particularly Mr Ray). I was also looked after briefly in New Zealand by a lovely lady called Pam. So I kind of distilled all that into what I thought a parent should be. I'm sure I haven't been perfect - my kids are at uni so they are not here to comment but I'm sure they would agree - but there is no doubt that I love them and would do anything for them.

Would you ever like to recreate the journey? Not the 10 year one!!!! But the one the you all originally set out to do?

There were lots of positive experiences and hopefully you will see that in the book! I saw amazing places (both natural places - like sailing past an exploding volcano, or seeing whales and dolphins) and human places - meeting people from so many different cultures. I also learned lots of skills - particularly practical skills, that it is easy to miss in modern society. I can tie knots, change the oil in a car etc etc. It means I'm not daunted by practical challenges.

But I still think you are right about not taking you son when he is older. Go on short trips with him and you will get many of those benefits. And he will still get to enjoy friends and an education and the stability children crave.

I think longer trips are possible - but with younger children and done with thought about safety (our trip was NOT safe!) and schooling and social opportunities.

No I don't feel any need to do the original trip. I actually think it was all just an excuse to get sponsorship! I think there are many ways to honour history, and recreating a route is a rather extreme way to do it. I do however still love travelling and have travelled a lot (for holidays!) with my kids.

I am afraid I don't have a relationship with my brother now. I have always hoped that, once he became an adult, he would want to understand my experience but he has always refused to do so. I can understand why - it might require him to change his own view on his own experience. But I am sad that he feels that way and hope that I might have reacted differently if he had approached me with a similar need.

I'm really looking forward to your book. I watch so many videos of people who have embarked on some amazing sailing journeys and I have wondered what it must be like to be away from your friends and support network so your experience will be interesting to learn about.

Thank you DreamsInBlack! It is worth remembering that those stories are almost always told from the point of view of the parents, not the child. And while it is absolutely possible for it to be good for the child (if the journey is shorter, if the child is younger, if there is education and social opportunities and a functional, loving family), it is not always the case. Sadly I have now been contacted by numerous other children who have grown up in extreme parenting situations and have suffered from it, even though they would all say that their parents made it look like those experiences were wonderful!

This is so interesting, I hadn't heard of you or your experience before but just been reading one of your abridged articles and will now read the book. Funnily enough I wondered initially if you were a friend of mine whose parents did similar (though lot less extreme) when they were in their early teenage years, sailing across the world taking them out of school and away from their friends. Even at that age, when of course I would have been a lot less emotionally mature and was probably naively jealous of them missing school (!) I thought it was a really selfish thing for their dad to do (like you it appeared to teenage me that it was very much his dream that everyone had to go along with). As a social worker now I find it fascinating/disturbing how as a society we don't address the emotional abuse and neglect of children when parents have money/power/cultural cache.

Anyway to my question were you able to forgive or find some peace with your parents?

Thank you @Tinkeytonkoldfruit . That is a good observation. From the outside of course, parents like that are better able to conceal what is going on and to show a good front.

I don't feel the need to forgive my parents - or to retain the anger I had towards them. Neither will change the past now. In fact I wrote to my father (my mother passed away in 2016) to say that I didn't need an explanation, or an apology. All I needed was for him to accept that my experience was what it was, rather than expecting me to pretend I experienced something different.

I wrote that letter for myself really because he walked out on me and my kids in 2019. I didn't expect him to accept that olive branch and indeed he has not replied.

My other realisation as an adult is that you don't have to have a relationship with your family if they don't care about you - I am lucky that I have other people in my life who care about me and would want to understand my experiences.

I read the extract of your book in The Guardian and was a. appalled and how unthinking and callous they were towards you b. How resilient you were forced to be. My heart went out to you as a child. I am so sorry you were put in that position, and glad that you made it out.
I'm a parent and I can't imagine being so disinterested in my children's lives.
I have no questions for you, just sending lots of sympathy and good wishes.
Also, absolutely beautiful music in the book promo video! (Could not find who it was by!)