Wavewalker Suzanne Heywood

[Aboutcoffee]

Just finished this on audible. Has anyone listened/ read?

true story about a girl takes out of school in the 70s by her parents to sail around the world and they ended up sailing for 10 years. She basically educated herself as a teen while also helping her parents run a boating business. She made it to Oxford nonetheless. The parental self absorption and neglect is quite upsetting.

I read the extract from the Sunday Times and was completely gripped. I'm waiting for my favourite bookseller to get the paperback. Does it go on into her adult life?

It comes to an end really when she returns to the uk for university but there is a later visit back to Fiji as an adult. It really was gripping,

I've just finished it today, it's really good and almost unbelievable at times. It's narcissistic parenting at its peak! I would love to hear more about her life.

Hi all. I wrote Wavewalker and will be doing an AMA soon. I would love to answer any questions you have about the book or my experience of being trapped on Wavewalker for almost a decade then.

@SuzanneHeywood , how lovely to hear from you. I loved your book, it's riveting and I'm also sorry for the loss of your husband which I remember well.

I'm almost your age and backpacked around Australia about a decade after your visits plus I have parents who are still extremely self obsessed so the book bought back many memories from both my childhood and the Australian coast and sailing world.

I have questions and will keep an eye out for your AMA.

Thank you - I'm really looking forward to the AMA - it's scheduled for this week (Thursday 1 June) so do look out for it. And though I still miss Jeremy so much, publishing Wavewalker has fulfilled one of my promises to him - he made me promise that I would tell this story. Suzanne

@SuzanneHeywood Thanks for the notice of your AMA. And how nice to see you join this thread .

your story has really stayed with me. I am about your age too and as I read your teenage years I was thinking what I was doing then , just hanging out with friends and wondering what to wear to the disco on Friday night . I was quite angry at that point in the book where your parents wouldnot stop to let you see the friends you had made at school near Brisbane I think. And that time in NZ.

I’ll look forward to Thursday!

I finished this book today. I raced through it.

What an incredible story and heartbreaking in places. Such a strength of spirit to study under those conditions and forge your own way. And to write such a compelling story so many years later.

The characterisation of her parents was so vivid I was gasping out loud in places. Such self-absorption and complete lack of concern.

It's shocking isn't it. I'm sorry I missed Suzanne's AMA, I'll have a look for it.

I read Wavewalker and nominated it for my book club read and we were absolutely gripped. It’s an incredible read. I missed Suzanne’s AMA and I guess my question is around how she managed to maintain any sort of relationship with her parents at all, given how the treated her. Did the scales sort of fall from her eyes as she wrote the book and really reflected on her childhood.
I recall many years ago seeing an article in the Sunday times style magazine about her support system and her parents were featured, it seems that when really thinking about her ordeal the actions of her parents seemed so very cruel.

Thank you Caleche. It is a question I have asked myself - I also did some therapy after I lost my husband, and so I also asked the therapist this question.

What I now understand is that it is incredibly hard for a child (at almost any age, but particularly when they are young) to accept that their parents have not been good to them. As a young child, doing that means collapsing your entire emotional universe. (On top of that of course I was on a boat, with no passport, no money and no contact with any of my relations.)

Even as an adult it is hard, both because emotionally you don't want it to be true that your parents are bad parents (I still find myself trying to excuse them) and because there is a huge social pressure for most of us to have good relationships with our parents. Even now I have lots of people who say to me that surely I should be trying to have a relationship with my father (which is an odd question in so many ways, not least that he walked out on me in 2019 having disowned or abandoned me several times previously in my life, while I have never walked away from him).

For me the turning point was writing the book. Until that point I had not really confronted what happened on Wavewalker. Of course I remembered but that is different to reliving it - going back through my diaries and talking to people and really understanding what happened. And I was doing that while seeing my own children every day (who were a similar age) through the eyes of a mother, and realising that all the excuses I kept on making for my parents just didn't work.

But the final step was finding my mother's letter to me, which I mention in the epilogue of Wavewalker. That letter made it clear that whatever I might have done (maybe I was a grumpy teenager: I certainly was very unhappy), how she treated me was something being driven by her mental state, not mine.

So now I feel free. And I do wonder why I took so long - but it is so complicated. Maybe that is one of the big learnings in life - that you have the right to decide who to spend your time with and who to love - and you don't have any obligation to give that time or love to anyone who does not deserve it.

Hi @SuzanneHeywood I worked for your husband for a few years. It's hard to explain to people who didn't know him how magical he was.

I'll definitely buy your book, I hope you and your children are doing well.

Thank you for replying Suzanne. I think that can happen when you have your own children. You either gain great empathy for your own parents (most people) or you see their actions in a different light. I think middle age is a time when that reflection can really have an impact. As you say, when we are younger, we just want things to be ‘normal’, we want the ideal family (particularly after a difficult childhood) so we can excuse so much.

After your experience, I think it’s remarkable you managed to make the life you have and even remarkable that you managed to maintain a relationship for so long.

I can’t imagine that a relationship with your father would be anything other than utterly toxic and damaging for you and your family.

PS your book is perfect book club material as it raises so many questions around how we should parent, adversity and resilience etc

It’s a wonderful book, and your resilience and determination as a young girl was utterly astounding. I read it when it first came out, yet I find myself thinking about it often.

Thank you for sharing your story, and I’m sorry you lost your husband.

@SuzanneHeywood that's so interesting, thank you.

I'm writing a memoir at the moment and it's difficult to revisit painful things (subject matter is very different).

I'm trying to give myself some slack about not being able to just dive in and write on a regular basis, as it's emotionally exhausting.

Can I ask you how long you spent writing it? And how you overcame those difficulties.

I too am hoping for a feeling of peace and understanding when I've finished it.

@SuzanneHeywood Thank you for sharing your remarkable experience with us all. My husband and I have both just finished reading Wavewalker and it is both incredible and quite heartbreaking. Your resilience and determination to educate yourself was inspiring. Your story will stay with me.

@cornishone - it's great that you are writing. I took a long time to write Wavewalker. I started doing the research in 2015. It took me well over a year just to put together all of the facts of what happened - including finding many of the people I'd known as a child, but also going through documents (my diary, my mother's diary, our passports etc) and desk research. I started writing properly in 2016 but had to put the first draft to one side in 2017 when my husband became terminally ill and we agreed I should write his biography. That was published in 2020 (he passed away in November 2018), after which I returned to Wavewalker, which was published in 2023. So in all, it probably took about 5 years for me to write Wavewalker. I don't think it has to take so long but I am a very pedantic writer and I wanted it to be as good as I could make it. This is also not my day job and of course I was a single parent by then. Some of it was very hard to write (like the shipwreck) as I had to go back and relive those experiences several times to get it right. Good luck with your memoir - it is tough but ultimately hugely emotionally rewarding!