Margaret (Peggy) Reynolds charts her own journey to adopting a child and explores what drives a woman to become a mother.
Single, in her mid-forties and having experienced a sudden early menopause, Reynolds asked herself, ‘What is it that I would like in my life that I could have now, and could not have had before?’ The realisation came quietly, and clearly; she decided to adopt a child.
But the preparation for adoption was arduous and the scrutiny intense. There were questions about past lives, about her own childhood, heritage, capabilities, expectations and identity.
What makes a mother, and a home? How can the legacies of childhood affect the experience of parenting? And how might the pervasive nature of childhood trauma be overcome by a mother’s determination to love?
In conversation with Jenny Lacey.
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Margaret Reynold’s The Wild Track: Adopting, Mothering, Belonging is published by Doubleday. Buy a copy from Waterstones, our bookselling partners.
Jenny Lacey was for many years an award-winning radio presenter, working for LBC and for the BBC. She was the BBC’s Education Correspondent for the South West, and became Managing Editor of BBC Radio Gloucestershire and then BBC Radio Bristol. She received the Variety Club Independent Radio Personality of the Year award for her work.
Margaret (Peggy) Reynolds is a writer, academic, critic and broadcaster. Her previous books include The Penguin Book of Lesbian Short Stories, The Sappho Companion, Victorian Women Poets: An Anthology and a series of study guides on contemporary writers, Vintage Living Texts.
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