Twelve Moons: The most beautiful and inspiring memoir you’ll read

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Would highly recommend reading over the course of a year, which I had done so up until a holiday in Northumberland which felt the right setting to finish the book. An exquisitely and bravely written memoir following the lives of a single mother and her four beautiful daughters, during a year of the pandemic.

Over the course of the year, the moon becomes her fellow traveller through dark times, and companion through joyful ones - and even when the sky is wreathed in cloud, the moon is still felt in the pull of the tides. I shared this book with a good friend, a mum like me whose everyday mothering strays from the conventional. Considering the moon phases over the course of the year is something I had never consciously done before.The challenges of bringing up a young family in isolated Northumberland are laid bare with brutal and heart-rending honesty.

Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. The biggest thing that riled me was Giles' constant references to her ex-husband and the almost pining quality to these sections.

Beautifully describes the shame, vulnerability and then strength that comes from becoming a single parent. Navigating single parenthood, advocating from her girls and herself - an endless battle to be heard - is isolating and exhausting. There are plenty of us out there, raising anxious, poorly, neurodivergent children; dealing with schools, agencies and well meaning people who just don’t understand. Giles also struggles with the latter and her writing is honest, sad and funny as what must be an exhausting and draining life is explored. I actually moved away from the North East in the middle of reading this, and found myself so racked with homesickness for the wild coastlines of Northumberland, that I ended up putting it down for five months before I had the strength to pick it up again.