Why this book exists
A focused place to understand what is happening
Winsome is sixty-seven, and she has not had anyone inside her house for eleven years. Not a friend, not a neighbour, not the grandchildren she loves and sees only at her daughter's. When the boiler failed two winters ago she went without heat for five weeks rather than let an engineer through the door. What is behind the door is not squalor as people imagine it and not filth. It is things, an accumulation of years, in rooms that were once used for living and are now used for storage, along paths that have narrowed steadily until the house has become a set of corridors between piles. Winsome knows exactly what people would think, because she thinks it herself, every day, in the words they would use. Lazy. Dirty. Mad. Selfish. She has told herself for.
The writing is designed to reduce shame, bring the underlying pattern into view and give you practical ways to respond without pretending that every life follows the same formula.
