One afternoon a few years ago, after a searing romantic disappointment, I sat at the piano and, unexpectedly, poured out all my feelings into a song. It felt incredibly therapeutic - a way of capturing and dealing with the heartache of the time, of turning lemons into lemonade.
As the years went on, that mythical, faraway shore of Childlessness (by circumstance) seemed to be looming closer and closer, and one night, alone, in the middle of an unending lockdown not long past my 43rd birthday, I realized my boat had, finally, pitched up on that shore. I wasn't going to have children - it just wasn't going to happen - and so I was going to have to let that dream go. I sat down at the piano again, and this song was the result.
Joanna Rubery