Monday Moments: Fractured, Fabulous Selves

Welcome, readers! This month marks the start of our new theme: ‘Fractured’.

The word ‘fractured’ can bring up a sense that something is broken, fragmented, or even incomplete. But, for me, ‘fractured’ is the whole that’s created from the parts we’ve been given.

For my page this month, I wanted to explore identity in these terms. The image above is taken from Beyond Boundaries, a series of public murals inspired by Frida Kahlo that’s currently displayed across Tate Modern and Bankside. I went to see the exhibition myself and this artwork, titled Here And Now, by the artist, Sharloola (@sharloolart), struck me. The accompanying description read: Here And Now is a mural exploring the question of what makes a person who they are…[bringing] together a mosaic of scenes, symbols and fragmented memories that reflect [the artist’s] sense of self and the histories that have shaped it.

As a working-class, northern writer who has found herself far from home, I often feel as though I’m straddling worlds. The culture that shaped me is at odds with the things that surround me now, though that’s not to say I’m not content where I’m at, or dissatisfied with what I had to begin with. I’m proud of where I’ve come from and, at the same time, happy to be where I am. People often use the word ‘escape’ to explain it all away, as though education and earning potential somehow eradicates the life you were born into. The life that made you. But I am who I am because of everything that came before. That’s the story of each of us.

We create who we are and we’re all a ‘work in progress’. We keep what we like and shed what we don’t, and that’s how we grow as people. And it’s important we don’t try to smooth things over. We are all fabulously fractured. Brilliantly whole because we’re built from fragments.

The pieces I’ve chosen for my page this month serve as a reminder of this. Each is fiercely and unapologetically authentic, and I want to thank the writers below for sharing these parts of themselves.

First, Lesley Anne Armour writes about the power of lineage, and an inherited – and innate – sense of belonging to a people and its culture.

Inherited Spirit

I carve the sun into the chosen. I am part of the sacred, travelling from the northern islands with my tools giving life and meaning to sacred stones. I am blessed by the goddess herself as I attend the ceremonies of the people of this isle. In the far north-west, I stood in the most magnificent ring of tall stones that shine and twinkle in the sun, sending shadows like hands reaching through eternity as the stones themselves perfectly aligned with the Cailleach, the sleeping woman in the distant hills: the Cailleach who brings the seasons. We ask her to be kind this year. In the lower country, I carved my marks on the great stone that looks at me with her long nose and sometimes enigmatic smile. In the south, the great sun stones on the yellow plain stand commanding the rolling landscape. I work in veneration. My tools I will pass to my children and as I teach them my skills, the sacred will pass through their hearts and veins. We must not forget our heritage.

I’m a north-eastern woman born and bred (as is often said), and I love my hometown of South Shields. The coast is where I often sit looking out from Marsden Bay. I look to the east, though, and I dream of the west. I yearn for the west coasts of Scotland and Argyll. My heart is divided. My soul is the adventurer, the compass that directs me to seek out stone cairns and feel the joy of stone circles. To feel the power and mystery of the ancients. To stand on the beaches where Irish saints and Gaels once stood after perilous journeys to make this new land their home. To explore an ancient church and scramble up a green and craggy fort where Gaelic kings were crowned. I stand in awe. From my maternal family, my Scots ancestry travels through my heart and veins. Remember my heritage? How could I forget?

© Lesley Anne Armour, 2026

Connect with Lesley on Instagram: @seasand_lesleyanne and Facebook: @Lesley Anne Armour.

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In the following poem, Gloria Maloney explores the fragmented nature of childhood.

Fractured Memory

Sitting on my own, immobile on the chair, waiting to go home
No one gave me permission to play

Carousel rides, spinning top twirls
Treetops high, swinging up and up, lost in space
In a Nebular Nursery of new stars waiting to be born

A warm fuzzy feeling glows and sparks through me as I
float amongst the gas clouds, catching tiny stars in my hands

Teacher’s voice invades my subconscious, sweeping over me
like a February frost
‘Are you still with us today? Get off the chair’

But she told me to sit on the chair because I wouldn’t play
Mixed messages muddy the brain pool
Repressed words cogitate, swallowed down into muteness

Trouble in Paradise Nursery
I daydream in my own skin

Did the teacher tell me to sit on the chair?
Or am I an unreliable narrator as I grow older, looking
back at the child on the chair

My inner child pokes my soul, smiles and speaks
‘I always like to play’

© Gloria Maloney, 2026

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Finally, a powerful prose piece by K.L. Hood, who writes about the adoptee experience and its impact on selfhood.

Fractured Self

Adopted from Cardiff as a three-month newborn baby, I was sent to London to live with my maternal aunt and her partner, who died tragically shortly afterwards. My biological mother had severe mental health and learning difficulties, which meant she was unable to care for me in the way a baby requires. Regardless of whether adoption is in the child’s best interest (as it was mine), I have found through my own experience and other people’s accounts of their experiences that we cannot help but feel a sense of rejection, and that rejection walks silently by our side throughout life like a secret shadow whispering disparaging remarks silently in our thoughts. Although I accept this may not be the case for all adoptees, it is the case for all those that I have come across. For the majority of my life, I never really understood what I was struggling with or why, and it exhibited itself in adolescent and anti-social behaviour growing up but, as I have aged, I have undoubtedly wisened and pulled myself together as best I could.

Despite being adopted by my maternal aunt, I had little contact with family barring a handful of relatives, including my brother and our grandparents that raised him. I met my biological mother just three times, which wasn’t entirely her fault. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit she attempted to reach out numerous times, which I spurned in a juvenile and misguided attempt to prescribe her a taste of her own medicine, due to the fact I couldn’t understand or process my circumstances without bias towards the hurt or rejection I felt.

My father’s identity was unknown and the only person potentially able to provide answers passed away in 2014 due to a bicycle accident long before I had matured and healed enough to understand and be grateful that she tried to give me a better life than she could provide. Hindsight is such a wonderful but terrible thing, isn’t it?

Subsequently, there are countless questions about me that will undoubtedly remain unanswered. My time of birth is unknown, so I will never know my rising sign, and will never complete my birth chart. Who is my dad? Am I like my absent family? What is my heritage? Are my conditions inherited?

Consequently, the lack of close familial bonds and lost knowledge most people are privileged enough to possess have formed my fractured identity and sense of self for most of my life, and continues to throughout adulthood – albeit significantly less lately. Partly due to researching the family I know of, and my daughter receiving a DNA test which revealed my heritage is not solely UK-based as imagined, led to my father’s side of the family and has put me in touch with some cousins in the UK and Australia I never knew existed.

Nowadays, I live in hope that one day my fractured identity will fuse back together like a bone, or I’ll stop caring – whichever comes first.

© K.L.Hood, 2026

Connect with K.L. Hood via Instagram: @k.l.hoodwrites, Facebook: @Kirsty L Hood and X: @klhoodwrites.

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Header Image: Here And Now (c) Amber Hall

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Issue 30, featuring Gillian McAllister is out on Friday 11 September. You will find it in libraries and other outlets. Alternatively, all current and previous editions can be found on our magazines page here.

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