Why I wrote “I Am A Wolf Tonight”?

I have been asked in interviews about my book especially how and why I wrote “I Am A Wolf Tonight”. I always respond in the same way – I never intended to write memoirs! I actually wanted to write fiction books and had at one point entertained the idea of writing fiction for children. A few years after Jonathan died, whilst at home looking after my two sons, I started thinking about writing and decided that whilst I was at home I should bring that forward and begin now. I even completed a writing course to show how serious I was about it. But whenever I sat down to plan my fiction book, I felt unable to do so. I had a complete blockage. All I could think about was what I had endured over the past few years. It played on my mind all the time – and was getting in the way of my creativity and planning for my fiction book. I decided then to write it out – my whole cancer loss journey – not necessarily as a book at first – just to put things down on paper. As I did so, I realised that as traumatic as the events were, it did seem to play out like a drama. And there was so much detail to cover. I decided that I would write a first draft and see how it looked and make a decision after that. And the rest as they say is history!

This book is not just for those who may have lost a loved one to cancer. It is for anyone who has ever had to deal with a traumatic external event while also dealing with their own internal struggles. And in doing so, in order to survive, they have had to get in touch with their animal side, their “inner wolf”. At the time that Jonathan had been diagnosed with cancer I was still undergoing my own mental health struggles for PTSD following the birth of my second son. To then have to deal with the illness and death of my husband after three weeks would have been more than enough to break many people. It should have broken me. Instead, I went the other way and charged back at life. And in many ways that attitude is what led me to the title of my book.

In the early stages of writing my memoir I had been playing around with a lot of titles centred on the theme of grief, coping with grief and so on. But nothing felt quite right or even if it did, the title was already taken by another author. There was a BBC TV drama that had been aired a few years ago which I had enjoyed watching called Dr Foster. The central character played by the talented actress Suranne Jones, was a woman who had found out her husband had been cheating and this, along with other revelations, leads to her descent into a spiral of panic and depression. But at some point she gets herself back together and in a pivotal scene with her husband and his mistress decides to tell the truth to all around her. When she is accused of being a “bitch” she responds by saying that she is a wolf – in other words she has gone beyond being a difficult woman – she was now her husband’s worse nightmare. The reference to a wolf inspired me . A wolf has connotations with strength, resilience and survival and is something that can also create fear in others. In my book I am a woman that has been pushed to deal with a lot of trauma and upheaval and my way of doing this, of trying to survive was to adopt the persona of a’ bad wolf’ and to deal with all that is thrown at me with fearlessness, drive, anger - often motivated by pure adrenaline and not much else. When I tried the title it felt right – so it stuck!

I have gained so much hope and inspiration from reading books and watching TV programmes about others in a similar predicament to me before I wrote my memoir – a wonderful example being Ricky Gervais’ character as a depressed but equally sarcastic and rude widower who lost his wife to cancer in the excellent series Afterlife. His character copes by being fearless in confronting the people around him. Seeing a character going through grief depicted in that way, in a way that was more closely aligned with my own experience of grief made me feel better – less alone and less isolated. I hope my book can also help others, especially those who feel they are carrying a heavy burden after their loss. I hope this book can help them lighten that load a little with the knowledge that you are not on your own, and you can survive, whether badly or not!