Francesca Segal’s memoir is a moving and poetic one recounting how her twin daughters were born ten weeks early. They weighed only two pounds each and were kept in hospital for fifty-six days under intensive, supervised care. In the UK 60,000 babies are born prematurely each year. 11% are ‘very premature’ delivered between twenty-eight and thirty-two weeks. This is the category that the twins sat in. Every day that went on, their chances of survival became more likely.

This book educated me on such a shadowy world of parenting that few new parents face struggles of every day. It’s such an uncommon and distinctive narrative about the start of motherhood that’s very often concealed from society. ‘Taking my unready daughters from within me felt not like a birth but an evisceration.’ Francesca was told by nurses when she was and wasn’t allowed to mother her babies and faced the heartbreaking challenge of returning home to sleep at night without her newborn children. ‘Leaving my children each night is an amputation, over and over.’ 

One of the most warming elements of the memoir is how Francesca shows the power of female friendship in trying times when she befriends Sophie and Kemisha in ‘the milking shed’ through their related struggles. I loved reading their group WhatsApp conversations showing support and hope for one another. They faced setbacks and breakthroughs together. Francesca writes ‘Into my head drifts the phrase, It takes a village to raise a child. We as a culture have lost that village. In need, the women of the milking shed have built one.’ 

Francesca also formed a close-knit bond with the nurses and doctors on the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit). They threw a big celebration on the ward for World Prematurity Day complete with presents for Francesca and Gabe from A-lette and B-lette. (Before the twins were named Celeste and Raffaella on day twenty-two, they were referred to as A-lette and B-lette.) Their nurse Amelia, who was facing the hardships attached to having a long-distance relationship with her boyfriend, was one of the most significant caregivers for Francesca in her memoir. Francesca helped support Amelia through her romantic relationship while Amelia helped her back by guiding her through the intensity of birthing twins prematurely. 

Eventually, on day fifty-six Francesca was permitted to take her twin girls home to start her life as a fully-fledged and independent mother. I was absolutely thrilled that the girls fought through and came out the other side and they are now happy, bouncing toddlers. Francesca has since had another daughter who luckily arrived at a later stage in pregnancy than the twins!

I wish I could include some of my favourite, heartfelt passages but they’re too long to insert into this post. This is where book recommendations in podcasts get the upper hand. I’ll leave with this sentence Francesca uses to describe how it felt having the twins delivered so soon before they were fully developed. ‘The exquisite transgression of their forming selves exposed, caught in the act of becoming.’ 

Jameela Jamil - Tell Him. I first read this essay in the book ‘Feminists Don’t Wear Pink and Other Lies’ which was curated by Scarlett Curtis. It’s a collection of essays, poems and recounts by an array of inspirational women including activists, actresses, businesswomen and writers. From the first time I read it, Jameela’s essay always stood out as my favourite and made me think deeply about how we raise boys in our society, and how that impacts their opinions and views on women as they grow up. 

She first triggered my deep thinking by speaking of how women can 'infiltrate misogyny from their own homes', without even realising it. She believes it stems from dangerous imagery, song lyrics, peer pressure and violent pornography that lacks intimacy. This creates for them toxic masculinity where they’re unable to show a sensitive and emotional side. She sees men as being brainwashed into an oppressive and patriarchal institution. I had never properly thought about how through primary socialisation, we allow the young boys in our lives to learn sexism and disrespect of women.

I felt immediately empowered when she made a call for mums, sisters and aunties to soak up the sponge that is a young boys brain with ‘humanity and an understanding of women’. All we have to do is tell him the truth, that we starved for human rights, fought for our right to vote, have an extreme tolerance for pain, and that in a primitive age we were able to learn, hunt and keep ourselves and our kin alive. In this particular age, men fear mongered women with physical power as we had no real need for them apart from for their semen. She instructed how we need to tell these boys of how women in a modern world work the same amount of hours with the same qualifications for less pay. To tell him how women are still massively oppressed in other countries where they’re forced into marriage with men they do not love.

She wants us to tell him to cry, talk about his feelings, and not be scared of seeming weak. For us to be empathetic. To make sure he confides in us from a young age so he will look at all women and see you, and therefore feel love and respect. To tell him about the fun pleasurable part of sex and enthusiastic consent. To tell him the history of the word NO and how it’s new to our vocabulary. Be his friend Be his teacher. 

I strongly agree that if we all raised the young men in our lives this way, society would be an increasingly equal place. ‘Build a man who understands that we are only human and we have needs.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf7reJYs56E

I can honestly say that reading this book was a pivotal moment in my life. It came through my door on an afternoon in February, the day it was published, which was coincidently World Book Day. I read it cover to cover that same afternoon. It was the first book I’d read of it’s kind and since that day my outlook on the whole grey area of Sex and Relationships Education has been changed forever. It was that day that I decided I wanted to strive to make a difference in this sector to help Sex Education be more inclusive and accessible to everyone. It’s a human right to understand our own bodies.

The Introduction and first chapter ‘A Sex Re-Education’ thoroughly shocked me and the cogs started turning. I was reminiscing my own Sex Education and realising that I was incorrect in thinking that due to being educated in the noughties that I’d be fully clued up on this topic. Surely in this day and age, I should’ve been taught all there is to know about my body? Right? Wrong.

There was so much information I had been deprived of. The Eve Appeal did a study in 2016 where 1,000 adult British women were asked to name female genitalia. Hundreds of them failed to the point where a staggering 60% were unable to identify their vulva. This statistic stuck out in my brain like a sore thumb and to this day I still haven’t been able to shake it. I was one of those women who couldn’t identify my own basic anatomy. I felt that I’d been done a massive disservice by the education system and by women-hood as a whole.

Sex education has not been working. Statistics back this statement up. As a society, we are too scared to teach people about one of the utmost important things to the human race. In science, sex is taught in terms of reproduction, purely to reproduce and create another generation. It’s a scientific approach. In PSHE it’s taught in terms of consent and safety. When will we teach teenagers about the pleasurable and fascinating side of our bodies? And what about the parts of the female body that aren’t directly for reproducing but still affect us on a monthly basis?

Lynn discusses in detail The Facts, The Hymen, The Clitoris, The Orgasm, Appearances, Periods, Pain, Fertility, Pregnancy and Menopause. So many of these essential topics are missing from the Sex Education curriculum, and there I could finally see it right in front of me. ‘The clitoris has been unmentioned, overlooked and deleted’ teachers won’t talk about it for fear of being inappropriate. Girls all over the world have their first period and don’t know what it is. Many women have never orgasmed. FGM (female genital mutilation) is more common than you’d like to believe. The hymen is seen as a symbol of virginity, but it’s not a ‘covering’ made to be broken on the first penetration. In fact, it’s not a covering at all. Women and men experience an ‘orgasm gap’ of 95% of straight men surveyed saying they usually always orgasm from sex compared to only 65% of straight women. The list of simple human biology we are unaware and uneducated about goes on and on.

I’ve learnt so much since picking this book up. I’ve now read an abundance of books about women’s health and I can confirm that women’s bodies are incredible. Reading this book has led me to become the Social Media Designer for my university’s Sexpression Society. I post on all our social platforms, educating about Sex and Relationships. We all deserve to know the truth about our bodies. I would recommend this book to anyone, men included, to educate yourself on the phenomenal things the female body can do.

And finally, food for thought, I’ll leave you with this: if you truly think that Sex Education has been equally based on women as it has on men, I challenge you to draw and label as many parts of the penis as you can. And then do this again for a vulva. I can assure you the results will be far from equal.

Last April I went into this book completely blind as to who this 'Dolly Alderton' woman even was and why her new memoir 'Everything I Know About Love' was being so wildly raved about all over my Instagram. I did the classic cliché we're constantly told we should never do. I bought the book due to its front cover.

From page one I was absolutely engulfed in nostalgia. Regardless that I grew up a decade later than Dolly, I still resonated with the culture of MSN which included logging off and back on to get the attention of the boy you fancy. She goes on and within the book grows up to tell anecdotes of her crazy university years, which are far from what mine are panning out like at current. Dolly attended Exeter University, which I had down as my insurance choice for university, and I have to admit at the open days I attended I never imagined it would be capable to accommodate such rebellion within its quaint campus and countryside feel. This is the part of the book where Dolly starts to engage in meaningless flings that she believes are passionate and become all-encompassing to her. She gets into some very low points of alcoholism, smoking, weight-loss and drug-taking in the hope of it being a distraction from her loneliness post breakup.

As Dolly grows up more, she starts to see her friends committing to serious relationships. Here comes wedding invites and hen do's galore, which she writes parody versions of in the book. This part of her life includes her best friend Farly getting into a long-term relationship in which Dolly feels herself being pushed out of the equation and becomes resentful towards this new partner. We've all been in a similar situation of being jealous of a best friend’s partner stealing the limelight from ourselves. When Dolly opens up about her feelings on love and relationships to her therapist and best friends, she learns important lessons about how to feel happy for others in love and how to embrace her own company and independence.

The last sections of the book are my favourite. When Dolly moves out to live on her own and realises, she is 'enough'. She appreciates all her friend's support and understands how the love she feels for them is even better than falling in love. She knows all the little details about them. 'Nearly everything I know about love, I've learnt in my long-term friendships with women.' One of the passages she has written in the 'Homecoming' chapter, about love being loud and jubilant but also quiet, I hope will be one of the readings at my wedding someday as I cherish it so much.

I just adore Dolly’s writing. Her storytelling is beautiful and the underlying message she conveyed on the varying types of love that can be found in many different types of relationships is an important one. I love her gradual shift from what she believed love to be at a young age to what it has become to her now. Whether it be family, friends, flings or soulmates, Dolly writes of how all types of love are paramount to an individual's own life story. Reading this book has taught me to appreciate all the loves I have in my life and I cannot wait to experience many more as I get older.