Just before Christmas, our CEO Natalie was down in Hampshire recording an audio version of her first book, Out Of Control; Couples, conflict and the capacity for change. She reflects on the experience here:
It was my last work week before Christmas and I was in Hampshire to record the audiobook version of Out Of Control, with the brilliant Elliott at Monkeynut Audiobooks. This book was published in March 2019, the same year that we piloted the Own My Life course with five domestic abuse services across England and the same year that Own My Life became a registered charity! It was a momentous year, followed immediately by the COVID pandemic, which completely changed how we worked. The world shifted to a fully online model for a while, and we’ve stayed like that since then, delivering transformational online training that practitioners consistently tell us is the best they’ve ever attended (find out more HERE).
Recording the audiobook was intense! In turns, hilarious and then, at times, overwhelming. The book deals with some really difficult topics; abuse perpetration, the impact of abusers on their children, sexual violence, and pornography. In writing it I sought to bring light and keep the tone as light as is possible when dealing with the darkest and weightiest of subjects. Humour punctuates the text and I share my story throughout.
My children are now both adults, but they were teens when I wrote the book. I wrote Out Of Control with no knowledge (because I am not a wizard with a magic portal into the future!) that in November 2023 my ex-husband, whose abuse of me is shared throughout the book, would have been convicted of multiple rapes and will likely spend the rest of his life in prison, nor that Own My Life would be instrumental in this happening (you can read more about that HERE).
Reading aloud in the recording booth how my son had, on more than one occasion, nearly died as a baby hit me differently now he is an adorable and beautiful 19-year-old who seems so far away from the tiny baby; his premature birth caused by my ex-husband. Realising that, in the six years since I wrote the book, annually there are now 1-million more people using foodbanks was a shock. The overwhelming onslaught of suffering that rise in people represents, made it hard to continue reading aloud. At other points, the large numbers of swearwords made for hilarity; there were quite a few c-words and in a quoted excerpt from Stan Goff’s book, I wondered with Elliott whether bleeping it out might leave that section sounding like an excerpt of morse code. A particular highlight was a musical interlude of theme tune for the eighties cartoon Gummiebears (sadly this will not be part of the audiobook).
On my final day of recording, I was asked onto LBC radio before arriving in the recording studio. A day prior, guilty verdicts came in for 50 men who had raped Giséle Pelicot, at the invitation of her husband Dominique Pelicot (also found guilty of raping Giséle). I spoke about how hard it can be for women to know they are being abused by a husband or partner, for Giséle Pelicot, she had been drugged by her husband. For other women, there are so many barriers to naming what is being done to us as “abuse”. This is partly why I wrote both Own My Life and Out Of Control, to enable everyone to name abuse and know how to respond. I shared some of my story on LBC. So many people want to believe that Dominique Pelicot and the men he recruited to rape his wife are an aberration, something totally removed from any of our lives. While the scale of the abuse in that situation was extreme, the horrifying reality is that we will all know men who have raped.
The radio interview ended and I wept in my hotel room. Giséle Pelicot’s courage remains deeply moving and stands in such great contrast to the absolute depravity of what she was subjected to by so many men. The reality of men’s violence can feel almost unbearable.
And yet, I had to get back into the studio and record two final chapters from Out Of Control, in which I talk of hope, and how it is found as each of us do what we can to make a difference to women’s lives. And that is what I did.
Sometimes the darkness feels overwhelming. And in those moments we have to keep moving forward and we may discover that the light is greater than the darkness. And sometimes the way the light gets in is the way we love one another and sometimes the light gets in through singing along to the Gummi Bears theme tune in an audiobook recording booth.
The text version of Out Of Control can be purchsed HERE and the audiobook will be available on Audible and all audiobook platforms in March 2025. You can sign up to our mailing list HERE to be kept updated about this.
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