Andy Coulson: Welcome back to Crisis What Crisis, the podcast that aims to guide you towards a more resilient life and whatever it might throw at you. If this is your first time with us, then please do hit subscribe wherever you're watching or listening, and please do leave us a review. It really does help make sure that these, I hope, useful conversations are shared as widely as possible.

Today's guest is a best-selling, award-winning author, an advocate for the marginalised and unheard voices in literature. We talk a lot on this podcast about how to find opportunity from crisis. This conversation will explore how Kit da Waal did just that by discovering and then putting to work a creativity that was hidden, buried really, for decades.

Kit da Waal: Fear was my main motivator to getting a life, getting myself together. And of course, it stopped being a motivator after I'd got a handle on my life. But it was definitely fear that stopped me- I wouldn't say misbehaving, it wasn't misbehaving, it was an answer to being- to the fear of dying.

Andy Coulson: After working on the front line of social services, Kit turned her own challenges into a powerful new career as an author in her forties with novels, including My Name is Leon, which was adapted into a brilliant TV drama. The Trick to Time, her childhood memoir Without Warning and Only Sometimes, and her new novel, The Best of Everything.

Kit de Waal: So, from sort of mid-forties to mid-fifties when I did have a bestseller, that was a period of get real, do the work, learn the craft, fail again, fail better, pick yourself up, and keep going.

Andy Coulson: She has emerged not just as a writer of profound and moving stories, but also as a tireless campaigner for inclusion and an inspiration to millions of would-be writers.

Kit da Waal, welcome to Crisis What Crisis.

Kit da Waal: Hello, great to be here.

Andy Coulson: Kit, you are a brilliant woman of words. So can I start by asking about one that we use a lot on this podcast, but which I think you have strong views on. The word is resilient.

Kit da Waal: Oh yes.

Andy Coulson: I think it's fair to say you are not a fan.

Kit da Waal: I’m not a fan.

Andy Coulson: Can you explain why?

Kit da Waal: I can, yes. I used to work in social services, where you would have children that had come into the care system particularly, and also adults who had come to the attention of social services or the criminal justice system.

But talking about children in particular, children would come into the care system with all sorts of damage, sometimes minor, sometimes major, and sometimes they'd been in care for years. And I would hear social workers say things all the time like, “Oh, children are resilient. Children are resilient.” And really for me, that was a code word for, “They've got no choice.” They're resilient because they have no choice. They have to get on with it. They can't say, “Oh actually, I think I'll move foster placement, or I think I'll go back to my mum.” They were utterly powerless.

And so their resilience wasn't born out of, “Here are these tools I have to get through this terrible time,” but it was, “I am totally disempowered. So I'm just going to have to get on with it.”

And that kind of resilience actually builds, certainly in children, vulnerable children, unhealthy ways of being resilient. “Oh, what I'll do now is I'll shut down. Or what I'll do now is I'll smear poo on the walls. Or what I'll do now is I'll steal.”

So of course, they look resilient. And looking resilient is one thing, being resilient is another thing. Because I think you can only be resilient when you have tools, when you have mechanisms. When you can say to yourself, as an adult, “Oh, this thing is happening. What am I going to do to feel better? What am I going to do to cope?”

Children haven't got access to that stuff at all. They've just got, “Oh, this is happening to me, I'm going to shut up about it,” or go deep inside and bury those things that often come out in adulthood in lots of unhealthy ways. Which is why you have children in the care system, over-represented in mental health services, over-represented in prisons, over-represented in lots of unhealthy places, as well as healthy places like the armed forces, because they know how to shut up and do as they're told.

And so you'll have lots of men and women going into the armed forces because that's their coping mechanism. Powerlessness, or at least being constrained by rules and regulations.

Andy Coulson: [0:06:14] So if we think then that resilience somehow distracts or minimises trauma, how else then do we characterise what is a very valuable part of the human condition if you like, you know, the ability to withstand?

Kit da Waal: So, in children I think it's different. And if we park children for a moment, because I think children certainly that are going through some kind of trauma need adult help and adult attention. But if we ignore children for a moment, I think the way that we cope with resilience, cope with trauma or build resilience, is first you have to recognise something bad is happening to you. You have to go, “Oh, this isn't right, I don't feel good.” You have to sort of say, “Right, now I need this medicine.”

For example, “I've got a cold. I need this medicine. I've got that wrong. I broke my leg. I need this to happen.” And I think what happens so often when we are in need of resilience is we've gone so far down the line by the time we're trying to cope with our crisis, it's become a crisis where there are probably five steps before, we could have caught it. We could have deviated, we could have sought help.

So I think for me, the way that we build resilience, certainly recognise it and then find out what works for you. And normally get some help, I would say. Always get help.

Andy Coulson: Very good. I'm going to do my best to avoid the R word then as we move forward. I will fail, I suspect. In fact, I know I'm going to

Kit da Waal: No, we will use it as a word, because it is true that you need to have resilience. You know, you hear this phrase, it's a phrase I hate but I'll use it anyway, snowflake. And it's talking about people who are very sensitive. And of course maybe there are some people who are oversensitive, and we cannot walk through this world crisis free, nobody. I don't believe anybody. There's no money in the world that will inure you against crisis. So you do have to have resilience and you do have to find a way to say, “This bad thing is happening, I'm going to find a way through it.” So you do have to have resilience.

Andy Coulson: Your name, Kit, is in many ways a sort of emblem of resilience, because your real name is Mandy.

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: But that all changed one day when you were I think 8 years old.

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: Tell us what happened.

Kit da Waal: I was standing on- this would have been 1968 or ‘66, I can't remember. I was standing on a little wooden table that had casters on it and I was singing I Can't Get No Satisfaction, possibly one of the best songs of all time. I was being Mick Jagger on this very shiny table with casters, and inevitably it went over and I hit my mouth on one of the legs.

And as a result of that accident I bit my tongue almost clean off. I mean, it was hanging on by a little thread. I had to get rushed to hospital and I had to have it sewn back on. I do remember that, that was quite traumatic. Lots of light and pain obviously, and also a surgeon trying to get his entire hand into my mouth.

I went home and I had a lisp, and I had a lisp for a long, long time. One of the words I couldn't say couldn't say was kiss, and I said to my little baby sister, I said, “Give me a kit,” and I got called Kit. As is the way in big families, where if there's something wrong with you we're going to pinpoint it and we're going to call you. That's resilient. And I just got called Kit for- well I got called Kit until the lisp disappeared, but even now certain members of my family will just call me Kit. Some will call me Mandy obviously.

Andy Coulson: So, the decision to use that as your professional name if you like, as your name as an author-

Kit da Waal: That was because Mandy is possibly the worst name in the world. Up there with- I mean my mother who just- she was a woman of the ‘60s, she was 20 in the ‘60s and she liked the names of the time. You know, the Jordan of the time. And Mandy, Tracy, Kim, Dean and Karen, they were her children. What's the most common name? Oh, there it is.

So I grew up, like I say, in the ‘70s, when I just got called Randy Mandy all the time because that was, you know, the terrible ‘70s when that's what the boys at school called me. And I’ve always disliked my name.

Andy Coulson: And you're a Mandy not an Amanda.

Kit da Waal: I’m a Mandy, yes. She didn't even give me the dignity of an Amanda.

Andy Coulson: My sister had the opt out to Amanda, she was a Mandy and hated it.

Kit da Waal: Yes, I know a couple of Mandas and it's not bad, but Mandy, it's awful.

Andy Coulson: It's a short step from Andy by the way, so we might want to move on here.

Mandy, Kit, I think you had the intriguing nickname Skins at one stage in your life, maybe we'll talk about that. So with your names, but also Kit with your heritage, born in Birmingham to an Irish mother and a Caribbean father, you have a number of identities. When you think about it from a crisis perspective, has that been a comfort or has that added another layer of difficulty for you?

Kit da Waal: I wouldn't say it's added a layer of difficulty. I didn't realise how much code switching goes on when you're mixed race. So if I was with my- I had two grandmothers. I had an Irish grandmother who we called Nana, and I had a Caribbean grandmother who I called Black Nana. That was just a normal thing to us.

And depending on who you were talking to, mother or father, white grandmother, black grandmother, white grandfather, we had a different vocabulary. We had a different way of behaving, we used to behave differently.

And similarly at school, I had a language for school, which was a very, very good, very academic grammar school. I had a language if I was being Irish, I had a language if I was being Caribbean. And I had another language which was what we spoke at home, which was a hybrid of all of them. And I didn't know that that was unusual. I thought everybody did that.

When I got to 14, we had the Birmingham pub bombings and it became very bad to be Irish. I wouldn't say I disguised being Irish, but I didn't go around telling a lot of people I was an Irish child. And of course, because I'm black or look black, nobody assumed I was Irish. I didn't like that. I didn't like it in myself that I kept being Irish quiet to get through.

Then of course it has never been too popular to be black. I wouldn't say we live in a racist society, but we live in a society where certainly if you're black, you will have some kind of racism in your life. That's never been a crisis for me, but it's certainly been something I've had to come to terms with and something I've absorbed and had to find a place for in my life. I've had to stop being angry about it.

Very occasionally I still get angry, but I remember spending a lot-

Andy Coulson: [What triggers the anger now?

Kit da Waal: What triggers it now? I'll give you an example and it's really ridiculous. I was at this event, let's say, and a woman- she was speaking to the group and she said to me, “What language do you speak?” And I said, you know, “I speak English,” and she said, “But why are you here?” I thought she meant at the event so I said, “Oh, I was invited with my friends over there,” and she said, “No I meant in England. Why are you here?” I said, “I was born here,” and she said, “Yes, but were you?” That happened last year.

Andy Coulson: Last year?

Kit da Waal: That was last year. Now, it was a very old lady and it was a very white organisation in a very white town, I don't think she comes across a lot of black people. And I was not rude to her in any way. Everyone was embarrassed and we got through the sort of awkwardness. That makes me angry because I can deal with it. I'm 64, I've had it all my life, I don't really care. What else is going on? And if that's happening to me, who can bear it, what's happening to other people? And how else is it manifesting?

This little old lady didn't have much power, she couldn't hurt me, it didn't really matter under the circumstances. But if that's coming out in those circumstances, what else is going on?

And I also despair that we haven't got better. I despair that we still have this happening. In my memoir I talk about certain things that happened to me when I was a little girl where I would get called certain names and teachers would be quite racist to me. As I say, I went to a very academic and very white, very, very white grammar school. And the assumption was I somehow shouldn't be there. “Why are you here? Are you really clever?” The assumption was that my friends were clever but I wasn't.

That was 1971, and we're now in 2025. And are we really still going through those motions of having, as black people, to demonstrate that we're worth something? Are we still having to go through an explanation of why we are here?

And obviously I've got all my answers. I could talk about the Commonwealth, I could talk about transatlantic slavery. I'm tired. I don't want to.

I think one of the things that goes on so often is that when you're black, you're asked to have the answers about racism. But that's like asking somebody to explain someone else's problem. It's actually not my problem to deal with racism, it's someone else's problem to deal with racism. I should be benefiting from your anti-racist stance, not taking my time, energy and resilience to educate you. That's your job.

Andy Coulson: Your memoir. It does give a very vivid sense of what it was to be kind of growing up in Birmingham at that time. Quite a divisive city in quite a divisive country at that time, more now than- well perhaps you're saying actually things haven't changed enough. But you would agree perhaps, more divisive perhaps than it is.

Kit da Waal: Definitely, yes.

Andy Coulson: And yet your memoir, there's not a lot of anger.

Kit da Waal: No.

Andy Coulson: And there's hardly a touch of bitterness. And what you've just described is not bitterness, it should not be characterised as bitterness, it's legitimate anger.

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: And disappointment as well. I can sort of feel it in your voice.

Kit da Waal: Yes, definitely.

Andy Coulson: But the memoir, you're not angry.

Kit da Waal: No, and I'm not at all- you know, we laughed, me and my brothers and sisters, and most people will say or understand that you can laugh through adversity when it's not funny. You know, you're laughing but it's not ha ha. So we laughed ha ha at what we were going through, we laughed about being hungry and poor and having two very difficult parents. So there was difficult times, but we would laugh at my parents, it's fair to say, not with them. And we had some very good times in amongst those difficulties.

Andy Coulson: It strikes me that you- I don't know whether this is the Irish part of your heritage, but you seem to have very much adopted the sort of Van Morrison approach to life. I'm not sure he adopted it personally, but certainly when sang it, but you keep yourself on the bright side of the road, right? That shines through in the book. You don't gloss over it, but you do not dwell in the darkness.

Kit da Waal: No. And I-

Andy Coulson: Is that how you feel or is that how you've coped? And so when you're writing the memoir-

Kit da Waal: I think it's a bit of both. I think it's a bit of both because there's five of us, five brothers and sisters. And one of the reasons that we have all weathered our difficult childhood is because we talk about it endlessly. So there's not much distance between us, you know, like if there's five children normally in a family you will have one that says, “That didn't happen like that, or they weren't like that, or you're like this.” We don't have that. And I think it's because we regurgitate the pain, and we will laugh about it or we will explain it to one another. “Mum was like that because of that.” “Oh, I didn't know that,” because I was too young or whatever. So I think part of our coping mechanisms is to talk about it all the time.

I was with my brother yesterday and we talked about my father's love of good suits. We were poor and he used to spend most of our food money on looking good. And we laughed about it and we raged about it. And also one of the things that we've all been able to do is see our very, very difficult parents as young people. My mum was 32 and she had five kids. My dad was 35, he had five kids. He didn't want one and he had five. And I just think, “God, I can just about cope with my beautiful, well-behaved two,” let alone five very cheeky, very intelligent, more intelligent than they were, children on no money, and both two immigrants who didn't really know how to navigate life in the UK.

So they were at a massive disadvantage. Then they have these five children, they've got no money, what money they have is misspent. We're all cheeky, we're all very clever, and we're laughing at them and they know it. And you know, I just think what a shame, what a shame for them. No wonder they found it so hard.

Andy Coulson: Let's just paint a little bit more of a picture if that's okay. Because you've described it as a household of opposites and extremes.

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: And you've described your parents as living sort of entirely separate lives in front of you. Just tell us a little bit about them and their backgrounds, how they come to be together.

Kit da Waal: Yes. My mother's Irish, she's from Wexford, and my father's from Saint Kitts in the Caribbean, and they met on the buses. He was a bus driver, she was what was called a clippie in those days, because you had one of these machines that you click through the tickets.

And she loved him. I mean, she adored him. Very handsome, six foot four, very dapper, loved himself, and very beautiful. My mother thought he was Harry Belafonte or, you know, Sidney Poitier of the time. And my mother was five foot two, not a looker, but, you know, attractive enough. But my dad had the pick. And he noticed her one day, which he would later on say was his downfall. But he noticed her, and possibly she was pregnant in about three months.

And this is the days of no blacks, no dogs, no Irish. So there was nowhere for them to live, so they lived in one room in a very miserable part of Birmingham. My dad was very ambitious so they moved very quickly to a middle-class area of Birmingham.

But they were the most unsuited pair in every way. Six foot four black, five foot two white. My mother was very romantic and she wanted desperately for him to love her. That would have been her salvation, certainly from her mental illness. And my father was just treading water waiting to go back to the West Indies. He came for two years. In his mind, “I've come for two years. I'll make some money, I'll get some nice suits, I'll go home a conquering hero.”

He comes over, within a year he's met an Irish Catholic who doesn't believe in birth control and it's, “Let's have kids,” from my mum's point of view. So he's like, “Oh my god.” You know, never thought about not having sex, but he certainly didn't want the children. And there you go, you've got these two wedded together in every single way unsuited, but they both decide to stay together. My mother would never have got divorced anyway, and I think my father was just waiting to go home for his whole life. He was waiting to go back to the West Indies.

Andy Coulson: And he did at one point, but he came back.

Kit da Waal: He went home for a holiday and hated it. Because in the intervening twenty-five years, he had actually become Victor Meldrew. And he was miserable. He was- it was too hot, the food was too spicy, cricket wasn't good on the telly. And so he came back thinking, “I've spent my life waiting to go home. I'm now, you know, Eric Morecambe and I'm English and I belong in England, but I've put no roots down.” He had put no roots down with us, he had put no roots down with my mum, but he had become English against all the odds. He didn't belong in the West Indies, he never felt he belonged to England, and I can honestly say it was the death of him.

He declined when he came home. He never ever was the same because his dream had been ruined by the reality. All his friends were in England for a start. What was he doing in the West Indies? So he was a very deflated man when he came home.

Andy Coulson: Can we talk about your mum some more? As you say, the bus conductor who fell in love with the driver. The mum of five with an incredible work ethic. And a sort of instinctive carer.

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: People off the street that she would see struggling, a pregnant girl sitting in a bus stop or the tramp standing on the side of the street, all came, all pooled into your kitchen.

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: And she was the one as well struggling to put food on the table for all of you. She was the one sort of driving that mission. And of course, the Irish Catholic who becomes a Jehovah's Witness. But underneath all that you've now come to realise that she was properly struggling with mental illness.

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: How would you sort of characterise that now from this distance?

Kit da Waal: I would say probably, and obviously I'm not a psychiatrist or any health professional, but I think she was probably bipolar. She had moments of intense joy and extreme activity. She would make these meals that would feed twenty-five, but she'd make them sort of once a month and the rest of the time we didn't eat meals at all, we snacked.

And she would lavish us with attention and love and extreme buying of toys, and then there was nothing. All that would be withdrawn and she would have deep depressions.

Her way of coping with her upset at my father not loving her, at our poverty, and her just struggling to bring up five children was that she used to smash milk bottles. She would load a plastic laundry basket with milk bottles, and the stack of milk bottles would grow and grow and grow until it reached the top of the basket. She would drag the basket outside to our backyard which was made of concrete, and she would smash them one by one. And you could almost see the stress in her deflate and deflate and deflate as she- and you could feel a sort of, “Ah, I can release now.”

And that was her coping mechanism, this very bizarre thing. We thought it was normal by the way, we thought everyone smashed milk bottles as an outlet. It's only sort of when you get to about 15 you think maybe that's a strange thing, but that was her way of coping.

Like I say, she had to have these terrible depressions. She cried. I've never known a woman cry on tap. She could cry like she breathed, and I don't mean just the odd tears, she would be forlorn. She would be in distress and it would come and go. It would come in an instant and then the tears would be dried in an instant and she'd be laughing about something.

It was a long time before I would ever characterise that as a mental illness. I just thought this is my bizarre mother. It was more than bizarre, it was something she probably needed medication for.

Andy Coulson: And her decision to step towards becoming a Jehovah's Witness, you think was an attempt to kind of fill the undefined gap in her life.

Kit da Waal: Yes. She wanted to be loved unconditionally. She was never going to get that from my dad, but she would get it from God, she thought.

Andy Coulson: What impact did your mother's faith- because as a child, you and your siblings were all drawn into it as well. Not your dad, I don't think, he resisted.

Kit da Waal: Not my dad, yes.

Andy Coulson: But the rest of you as a family were living the lives of a Jehovah's Witness. No celebration, no birthdays, no Christmas. You describe it as being a sort of joyless life.

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: But more seriously, this kind of clock that's ticking towards Armageddon, the predicted end of the world in 1975. On one level you can sort of- you're sitting now even with a faint smile on your face, but as a child that's utterly terrifying. That's like the worst disaster movie is your reality.

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: What impact did that have on you?

Kit da Waal: It was the most damaging thing, I think. Not the poverty, not the crazy mum, not all the things that happened, not the racism. That was the most damaging thing that ever happened to me. The idea that- because obviously, Jehovah's Witnesses believed the end was going to come in 1975, and if you were bad you would die at Armageddon.

Well, I thought I was bad. I had a fag at 10, I fancied boys, I'd stolen 10p off my mum, out of my mum's purse. I was all those bad things. I had bad thoughts, I thought. Obviously, they were just childish thoughts and childish behaviour, but according to the letter of the law of Jehovah's Witnesses, and there are many of those, I was bad. So when they were saying bad people would die in 1975, that included me.

And I lived my life waiting for the angel of death to notice me and come for me at Armageddon. I believed it 100%. I believed it after I'd stopped being a Jehovah's Witness. I probably believed it until I was in my mid-20s. I’d have said I didn't, but I can remember- you know, you'd hear in the Bible, it says there will be earthquakes and there will be plagues and there will be things one after another, and then the end will come. It's a chapter in Revelation.

And sometimes there would be an earthquake in China, I was 19, and I’d think, “Is this the beginning of Armageddon?” That was coming unbidden from the brainwashing that had gone on. Of course, intellectually and on one level, I think, “Don't be ridiculous.” But deep down, my conditioning tells me, “Earthquake, that's Armageddon. Plague and pestilence, that's Armageddon.”

And so I grew up thinking I would never get old, I would never have children, I would never get a job, I would never go to college, I would never have all these expected life events that most people have. To find myself at 64 is a miracle of my life, of my thinking.

Andy Coulson: That thought is still inside you.

Kit da Waal: It's still. I never ever ever expected to get old. I find it amazing that I'm old and the end hasn't come.

Andy Coulson: [It’s astonishing. It’s like your entire life actually, the backdrop has been crisis or a coming crisis.

Kit da Waal: A coming crisis.

Andy Coulson: So even when you reached the end of 1975, did you-

Kit da Waal: Oh no, it was just late, it was just late.

Andy Coulson: And you're of an age then where you sort of reset yourself and recalibrated that way as well.

Kit da Waal: Well, okay it hasn't happened in ‘75, so perhaps Jehovah's Witnesses were wrong about the date, not about the event, the event will happen. So it's ‘76, okay it's a bit late, ‘77 it's a bit late, ‘78 quite late. So my mother-

Andy Coulson: So, it's tapered but it's still with you.

Kit da Waal: It's still with me. My mother died five years ago as a Jehovah's Witness, and it was still late. It was still- she died in 2018, it was just late. From 1975 to 2018 she was still saying it was late.

Andy Coulson: Were you ever able to have the conversation with her?

Kit da Waal: No. I know what you're going to say, no, no, no. If you went near that conversation with my mother, like, “Mum are you joking? It's beyond late now, do you think you could possibly be wrong?” She would have thrown herself onto the bed and wailed, and it was not worth the distress it would have caused her to confront her with the obvious truth that it is not going to happen.

So we were always, all of us, very, very respectful of her beliefs. And she used to try and preach to us still and we would very respectfully change the conversation. Because it is her belief and I do believe everyone has the right to their beliefs even if I think they're ridiculous.

Andy Coulson: The way you are such a brilliant storyteller, and the sort of duality that we all have and hold in us, is a theme I think in a lot of what you write, certainly the way you characterise. And it seems like you made that decision about your mum. You can see her, all bits of her and the fact that one bit of that is anchored in, let's just say something that is perhaps not fully tethered to reality, that's okay.

Kit da Waal: Yes, it is.

Andy Coulson: And there are other parts that-

Kit da Waal: I think yes, and I think seeing people in the round is for me what life is about. I used to work in criminal law, and met some very dangerous men. Mostly men, but some women as well. Those very dangerous, very bad men loved their mum, looked after their neighbours, loved their children, bought things for their children, would be kind to strangers, were polite to me. Bad people can do good things, and very good people can do bad things. And I think- not that you would ever condone the badness, you can see the badness, you can say that's wrong, you can condemn the badness.

Andy Coulson: And punish the badness.

Kit da Waal: And punish the badness. And some people absolutely deserve to be in prison, and should be in prison, and should pay for what they've done. And then there's the human side where that person also should eat, and not be tortured, and not be punished again and again and again for the same thing.

So I think I would like people to see me in the round. I would like to not be condemned for some of the things I've done or said when I was 15 or 20 or 25. And I think we all deserve to be seen as a fully human person with terrible flaws and beautiful goodnesses.

Andy Coulson: Wonderful. You left home at 16. Give us a sense of your sort of state of mind then, Kit.

Kit da Waal: Well, when I left home, so it's 1976 and Armageddon is late. And I do believe I'm going to die when Armageddon comes, and obviously it's on its way. So I left home thinking, “Right, you're going to die anyway. So what bad things can you do? What shall I try before I die?” Because if I'm going to die for having a fag-

Andy Coulson: You might as well fill your boots.

Kit da Waal: I might as well fill my boots and have a couple of spliffs or more, and some tablets. And I wonder what that does, and how does that feel? So it would be fair to say I had five years of sex, drugs and rock and roll, and it was absolutely great. And all the time I'm thinking, “Okay, Armageddon hasn't come, what else can I do? Armageddon hasn't come, what else can I do?” And by now I'm drinking, I'm taking drugs, I'm partying like mad and enjoying it, but overdoing it.

And I was overdoing it because I thought- I was cramming it in because it was going to end soon. There was no breaks on me. I used to go to my friend's house and we'd sort of roll a spliff, and as soon as that spliff's rolled, I'm rolling another one. I was known for ex- excessive smoking.

Andy Coulson: This is where your other nickname came from?

Kit da Waal: Yes, Skins. I did roll the best spliffs in the world, I have to say. I was known for them. And I loved it, but I was overdoing it. This wasn't a weekend spliff, this wasn't a weekend tablet. This was like, “Come on, come on, come on.” And of course, inevitably that catches up with you. And I had some very, very tricky times, a very bad mental crisis.

Andy Coulson: You say that you lost your mind.

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: Just bring that to life for us. How does that manifest itself?

Kit da Waal: By now I'm probably seven stone, you know, I'm really thin. I'm not eating because I'm just taking drugs most of the time, staying up. I've never slept well and by now my insomnia is in overdrive and the only way I can get to sleep is to be stoned.

I had a couple of friends who committed suicide. I had some very good friends who had lost their minds, been sectioned. And I sort of saw, not sort of saw, I saw my horizon. That was where I was going, and I knew it. I was going to have this crisis, I was having a crisis. And one day in particular, I felt as close to madness as I would ever, ever want to feel.

I'm living in a- I wouldn't say it was a squat, it wasn't much better than a squat, but I was living in horrible circumstances. I'm a mess, I'm an absolute mess. I left home at 16 and my mother was extremely disappointed with my choice of life or non-life. But where do I want to go when I'm in that crisis? And it was a proper crisis where I thought, “Okay, you're mad. You’re now, you're officially-” and I remember having these thoughts. “You are officially barmy. You need to be looked after. What are you going to do?”

I was living on one side of Birmingham and my mother, I knew, she worked nights at a maternity ward on the other side of the city. And I walked from probably eight or nine miles, probably two o'clock in the morning, crying, walking the streets for my mum. That's what I wanted: this woman who I had made fun of all my life, who I thought she's not stable, who had not fed us, who had, you know, she was just a difficult woman. That's who I want. In that moment of crisis, I want my mum.

I went to see her. and I go onto the maternity ward and I find her and I burst into tears and throw my arms around her and I said, “Mum, I've gone mad.” And she said, “No you haven't. No you haven't. Come and sit down,” and she made me a cup of tea. And she said, “Now, what's gone wrong?” I said, “Mum, I'm just- I'm mad. I know I'm mad.” She said, “You're not mad.” She goes off, she does a bit of work, she comes back, she gets released early from work because of me. And she took me home and she nursed me back to health.

She had no training, she had no wisdom. She was not an educated woman by any stretch of the imagination. Her most senior job was a nursing auxiliary in a hospital.

And yet she knew that it in that moment what I needed was love, care, food, calmness. I couldn't sleep, she would sit with me, she would talk nonsense as well. That was really clever of her. She knew that because my head had gone, and I was up- I was just, you know, my mind was free flowing in the universe. And she started telling me about a little baby that was born. “Oh, and it had. black hair and it did this and it was seven-” And I was listening to her and having a break from my own internal nonsense and nightmares.

And she talked to me back to mental health. She never condemned me. She never said, “No wonder you've gone mad. You've been overdoing it.” My father, who had no vocabulary for emotions whatsoever, his answer to me becoming home in a state was to make me food and put food on the table and say, “You need to have some porridge.” And it's his way of saying, “I love you. I will look after you. I'm here.” And between the two of them, these two uneducated, really quite baffled people showed me love and compassion in my moment of crisis with no condemnation, with no questions asked. With no, “You deserve it,” which I did, with no, “I hope now you've learnt your lesson.” That was never said to me. It was pure love and compassion and something I will be eternally grateful for. It could have been very different. My mother could have said, “You haven't followed Jehovah's ways, you're not coming home.” My father could have said, “There's no room for you and I don't want a junkie living in my house.” But no, both of them, yes, “You’re ours, come home.” A lot of people don't have that.

Andy Coulson: There's a couple of things there that I'm interested in. One is, I'm hesitating because I think I'm about to use the word resilience. But what is it in you that led you to recognise that what sounds like a psychosis was underway, drug induced by the- a strong chance.

Kit da Waal: Yes, definitely.

Andy Coulson: There's something in you at that age that says, “No I've got to sort this out, I've got to stop this.” That ability to see, “Actually I know where I'm heading here and I've got to change direction.” That's a resilience isn't it?

Kit da Waal: Yes, I think it is.

Andy Coulson: That gets close to the definition of resilience. So where does that come from? When you look at your upbringing and you know, again a question we ask a lot on this podcast, do you attribute that to biography and biology? A bit of both or one or the other? Where are you on where that thought had come from?

Kit da Waal: I can only say I was frightened out of my wits. I think catching it early, which I did, and I didn't, I should have caught it like six months before but caught it just before it really kicked in, I wasn't sectioned or anything.

Andy Coulson: Seeing others, and the consequences.

Kit da Waal: Seeing others. I was frightened out of my wits. I would have epitomised what was happening to me as intense trauma and fear. I was really scared. Maybe my resilience came from recognising that knowing I had somewhere to go, you know, in that moment of fear, if I’d thought I can't go home and there's nowhere for me to go, maybe I'd have just had another tablet, another spliff. Maybe I’d have just thought, “Well, what am I going to do?”

I knew I had somewhere to go. And I think maybe that's down to biography. My parents had never condemned me. I knew I had four brothers and sisters. I could have gone to any of them and said, “I've got this problem,” and they would have said, “Come in, you belong with me.” And part of resilience I think is maybe knowing there's a route out, you can afford to have this desire to get better or this place to go. My resilience is going to be tapping into forms of support.

Recognising where I was, I think is fluke. I don't believe- I think I'm just very lucky. Very, very lucky.

Andy Coulson: It’s so interesting. So you're living your life at that stage and before, and this is also, never mind the drugs, a driver of your state of mind.

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: kind of roof of ultimate judgment that you're living under, right? I'm going to die because of my behaviour. And then you come to the realisation that the direction of your life is only going to end badly for you.

And I think what you're saying is that what got you through was knowing that you could go back under that roof.

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: Where actually, you weren't going to be judged. Your mum for all of her sort of belief system was not a judgmental person.

Kit da Waal: Absolutely. What she did, and again it's a tribute to her. So she's a very, very uneducated- she was not a bright woman, very uneducated Irish immigrant, one of nine, brought up herself in poverty. Every day, when all I can remember of my childhood is my mother saying to me, “God, you're beautiful, you're so clever, you're all so clever, you're all so beautiful.”

This is in the days of intense racism against black people. She had no equipment for anti-racist strategies. This was an innate thing in her that said to her, “My children are going to grow up black and Irish, I need to give them something.” Now, she may not have had that thought in those words, but she knew that we would need to go through life as a resilient person and to cope with what was coming. We needed to have some inner sense of confidence and inner sense of loving ourselves. And she gave us that every day.

And so I knew she loved me. And I knew I could go and find her in that maternity ward on this miserable day and she was not going to say, “Off you go.” She was going to go, “You’re mine, we're going to sort this.” And I knew it.

Andy Coulson: So, there's a lesson for those listening. Whatever door they're walking towards or walking through into difficulty or crisis, that judgment bit.

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: If you're in the sort of orbit of someone who is in difficulty, the ability to help without judging. It's golden, isn't it?

Kit da Waal: Yes, I think so. And meeting people where they are, rather than where you would like them to be. I was certainly not in a place my mother wanted me to be. But she saw me where I was, and no doubt she would have loved me to become a Jehovah's Witness again. No doubt she would have loved me to have been different. But she just saw me where I was. And she said, “We'll deal with that thing. We won't deal with what I'd like you to be and where I'd like you to be. But I will come and I'll travel all that way, and I'll find you where you are and I will help you where you are, no matter what happens afterwards.”

Andy Coulson: The fact that you didn't then immediately, having accepted that help, having kind of begun your recovery, the fact that you didn't then jump two feet into her faith. It could have been very, you know, a lot of people would have thought that would be the natural thing to do, right?

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: You've saved me so I'm now you know, this is, I'm all in. But you didn't. Yet more demonstration of resilience. I hesitate to say it, and I'm not going to ask you to respond. Let's avoid that word.

We're shooting forward a little bit here, Kit. But, you know, it is a handbrake turn in your life. You begin a career in law. How are you able to- again, I'm looking for a sort of practical lesson for others here, I think. Having begun to emerge from your crisis, and I'm sure it wasn't easy and I'm sure it was gradual, but how did you switch mindset?

Because it's a dramatic switch of mindset. How did you do that?

Kit da Waal: Fear. Fear was my main driver. I decided- I knew what had got me into the state I was, so I thought- overnight stop drinking, stop taking drugs. There was no sort of, let's wean yourself off, it was like, bam, I'm not going back there. And I knew I had to get a job, and I just thought, “Clean up,” is what I thought. “Whatever the straight person's answer to the world is, I will do that. I will get a job. I will get a flat. I will behave myself. I will not drink. I will not take drugs.”

Fear. Fear was my main motivator to getting a life, getting myself together. I didn't dare go near sex, drugs and rock and roll. That was like, “Whoa, no.” So that was my motivator. And of course, it stopped being a motivator after I'd got a handle on my life.

But it was definitely fear that stopped me- I wouldn't say misbehaving, it wasn't misbehaving, it was an answer to being- to the fear of dying. So, I just stopped doing the things that I believed had led me into a mental health crisis.

Andy Coulson: That's incredible strength of mind being demonstrated by someone who had a broken mind.

Kit da Waal: Yes. But fear is a really good motivator, I think. You know, when used for good. You know, many people today would say, “I fear debt, so I'm going to save. I fear loneliness, so I'm going to try and find a life partner,” or whatever it is. Fear is not necessarily a bad motivator to do things. But it's a bad motivator to stay where you are. It's not- to turn your life around I don't see fear as a bad thing. Because it's something you say. “I don't want that.”

But very often, it's not enough to keep you somewhere. You have to then begin to love where you are and go towards something rather than running away from something.

Andy Coulson: So, you're a legal secretary. Tell us how you then came to work in and around social services and in adoption, specifically.

Kit da Waal: I was working in criminal law, and I moved to work into- I did actually a research project for Children in Need, looking at mixed race children who were brought up in white environments and how that impacted on them.

And inevitably I ended up working with children in the care system and foster carers. And a lot of people when you work in criminal law, lose their children to the foster care system if they go into prison or they have problems in their lives. So I knew a lot about the care system, and I adopted two children. I sat on the adoption panel, which is the panel that decides who gets to adopt children and who- which children should go to which families. And I loved it. It was really, really- it was lovely. It was not great seeing people in crises every day, but I think I did see there but for the grace of God go I. You know, my life could have been very different had my parents with all their faults not stayed together, or if my mother had had one of these mental health crises and we'd have gone into the care system.

And I really saw I think how them staying together through thick and thin and even though they weren't suited had kept my family together, and I certainly knew I could have had a very different outcome.

Andy Coulson: I'm in danger of oversimplifying, but it seems that you took- again, your ability to sort of see the whole picture and focus on the positive. But it seems that you decided to focus in on that part of your life that you've described so eloquently, where amongst a lot of madness in your family, in your upbringing, you focus on, “No actually, what I got is exactly what I needed from my mother. I was cared for at the right moment.” You seem to have lifted that bit out and decided, “Right, how can I put that to work?”

Kit da Waal: Yes, yes.

Andy Coulson: You're putting your crisis to work is a theme, right? Which is beginning to emerge.

Kit da Waal: Yes, I think so.

Andy Coulson: But is that what then led you to say, “Right, and now not only do I need to work in this area, I also need to make this a fundamental part of my life. I'm going to adopt two children.”

Kit da Waal: No. I mean, I'd like to say that I was that nice about it, but I wasn't. I never adopted my children as anything other than I want to be a parent. This was a selfish act, if you see what I mean. I wasn't thinking, “Oh, I'm so nice. Let me take two poor little children out of the care system.” No, I knew I couldn't have children, I wanted to be a parent. There's loads of children in the care system. It was a no brainer.

When I found out I couldn't have children and I was offered IVF, I was like, “No way, no way. I know where there's children, I know how to be a parent.” And IVF was not something I ever wanted to do. So my adopting my children, like I say, it was pure selfishness. I have got love to give. It wasn't, you know, “Oh, let me make their terrible lives better. It was how can those children- how can I find a vehicle to love someone, to give this affection to them?” And it is my utter privilege to have those children in my life, it’s not the other way around. I'm so grateful to them. If the idea that my children would ever think- be grateful to me for adopting them, oh I really don't like that.

Andy Coulson: Yes, a round of applause is not what we're looking towards here, but I will challenge that a little bit if I may. And no one would ever characterise the pursuit of having your own child through IVF as a selfish act. There's nothing that is selfish about it. But making the instant decision, “I can't have children,” which is a traumatic thing to discover, I'm sure deeply upsetting. But to so quickly switch to, “So I’m going to adopt.”

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: I think you're being a little ungenerous on yourself.

Kit da Waal: It didn’t feel like that. To me it was just yes, you know, let's go. I had a moment of realisation, and perhaps not long enough grief processing in recognising that I couldn't have my own children. But it was just like, “I know where there's kids.” It's like there's the sweetie shot. You know, let's go. And I adopted Bethany when she was two and a half, and then four years later adopted Luke who was one. And my God, you know, the joy and the privilege of those kids, they're so great. You know, my kids are great.

I always- I used to teach- I used to speak to adoptive parents about what it was like to adopt. And I used to say this is how you have to think about adoption. You walk past the school playground and there's loads of children playing in the playground. And when you see your children playing in the playground, you have to think, “They're the best kids there.” And if you don't think, that don't adopt. You should not- there's no sense of second best. There's no sense that they're not mine.

In fact, I'll give you an example of that. My son is a great sportsman, and he was really, really good at cricket. So I'm standing with the sports teacher watching my son batting, and my dad was really good at cricket. So the teacher says, “Oh, my goodness, Luke is a proper batsman.” And I said, “Yes, well you know, my dad was really good at cricket. So I'm not surprised.” And then about an hour later, I thought, “What has my dad got to do with Luke?” He never met him. They share no genes. He has inherited nothing from my father. But so embedded is that child in my psyche of being mine, that I thought somehow my dad's genes had gone into Luke's hand so that he could hit the ball.

That's not to say that Luke doesn't know he's adopted. He does. He knows his history. I write- used to write, I don't do it anymore because he's 24, but I used to write every year a letter to his birth mother and say, “Here's Luke, here's a photograph of him.” I've never met her, but it goes to this letterbox thing where she could go and collect the letters if she wanted to. Just to acknowledge that she had a child that she lost, and I have the privilege of that child in my life, and some respect is due to her and so I sent a letter to her every year.

So I know he's biologically not mine. In every other way that is possible he is mine. And as I say, one of the privileges of my life is to know those two children.

Andy Coulson: And they're both old enough now to appreciate what a force of nature their mother is.

Kit da Waal: Yes, I think so.

Andy Coulson: We were lucky to have Lemn Sissay on the pod before to talk about his own very difficult experience within the foster care system. In particular I know it begins with his mother being pressured to put him up for adoption, which tells its own story about the systems that we had in this country at that stage.

You've worked within foster care and adoption and must have come across countless stories like Lemn's. Each one must have an impact on you, I imagine. How have you managed the professional trauma, if you like, of being so involved in that work?

Kit da Waal: I try my best to talk about it as often as I can. So I talk about the failings of the care system, as well as the many, many good people that work within it, but the failings of the care system. Children in the care system have less money spent on them than prisoners. In this country every local authority is the corporate parent of every child in care. So the local authority should act like the parent of those children.

The local authority does not act like the parent of those children. They don't care for them enough, they don't care for them in the right way. They don't care. Care is a word that is a very active, emotive word. Looking after someone and making sure they have clothes and food is not care, that's a very arm's length activity. Care goes into deep affection, knowledge, wondering about that child when you're not with that child, and that's what they don't do.

So I try my best to talk about the failings and the way that those children deserve better. And that's my response to it, to say those children deserve better.

Andy Coulson: And when they come of age, to say it's goodbye it's a little bit of an overstatement but actually in some ways it's not.

Kit da Waal: It's absolutely what happens.

Andy Coulson: Once you're out of the system you are out of the system. And there are people within that system who do their best. Lemn is a very good example of how- I think he's built a- around Christmas actually, he's built an amazing initiative that is all about trying to keep a bit of a bridge for those people who are finding themselves in the early years of being outside of the care system.

Kit da Waal: We spoke before about one of the ways I was able to recover from my mental health crisis is I went home to my mum and dad. Well, if you have no home to go to when you're having your mental health crisis you are more than likely going to fall further. It would be unlikely that you're going to pull yourself out with no help. I knew I had a home, I had two parents, and I was in touch with four brothers and sisters, all of whom would have helped me, did help me.

And for so many people in the care system, you've got to this age, you've made a mistake, you're falling through the cracks. Well, you are going to fall because there's no one there to help you.

Andy Coulson: Kit, let's move to when you're in your early 40s. You've been working within law around adoption, all the things that we've been discussing for over a decade. And then you decide to start writing.

You've been writing though. I think your first published work actually was a manual for adoption and fostering, am I right?

Kit da Waal: Yes, yes.

Andy Coulson: But what was the catalyst?

Kit da Waal: [1:03:20] I'd adopted Luke who was not a well child, and I'd given up work for the first time since I'd started work when I was 20. And I just- I was a great reader.

Andy Coulson: Quite late in life, you were a great reader.

Kit da Waal: Very late. Well, very late, I think in my early 20s I found books as a way of coping with my fractured mental health. And I just thought, “Oh, I've read loads of books, great reader, I'll write a book, it'll be really easy. It will be a bestseller, it will be in Waterstones in about six weeks’ time, and that's the way it's going to happen.”

Andy Coulson: Hang on. We had Paul McKenna on the podcast not long ago, whose new book is all about manifesting. So you manifested all this.

Kit da Waal: Well, I was a fool, basically. I was an idiot, I had an ego.

Andy Coulson: Well, you weren't a fool, because you were completely- it’s what happened.

Kit da Waal: Well, I never- well it happened.

Andy Coulson: You imagined your book on sale in Waterstones.

Kit da Waal: Yes, but that was my first book that I imagined on sale in Waterstones. And my first book was absolutely atrocious, and I could not believe that I couldn't do it. I was like, “Hang on a minute. I've read all these books, I'm really good at English, I can spell. How can I not write a bestseller?” And believe me, my first two novels were not bestsellers. They were not fit for consumption, I'm glad no one's ever read them. No one ever will read them.

And so from sort of mid-40s to mid-50s when I did have a bestseller, that was a period of get real, do the work, learn the craft, fail again, fail better, pick yourself up, and keep going. I had no respect for the craft of writing, and I had to learn that respect the hard way.

And I wrote My Name is Leon in an attitude of the utmost humility. I thought no one is going to read this book. No one has read the previous two, no one will read this one. It's a book about a little 9-year-old boy in the care system. People don't care about boys in the care system, why is anyone going to read this book?

But I loved it. I loved it and that was important to me. I knew I'd done a good job for those children in the care system and it was my ode to them. It's what I owed them. So I just thought, “Oh I've written this little book,” and it was very different to, “It's going to be in Waterstones and a bestseller,” it was more like, “My mum will read it, my sister will read it, my friends will read it.”

Andy Coulson: So, you’d lowered your expectations.

Kit da Waal: Massively.

Andy Coulson: You send it off to an agent.

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: And then- I'm sure all these things didn't happen immediately, but a bidding war starts over the book.

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: There is no doubt that what you've done is created something that is wanted.

Kit da Waal: Yes, and I was baffled. For these auction meetings you go and meet different publishers, and I'd gone from, “No one wants to read your work,” to, “Oh no, we love it. Please come to us.” And I'm thinking, “Hang on a minute, what's going on?” You know, I almost felt like there was something going on that I should be aware of, or someone's taking the mickey. My agent said, “No, it's a really good book,” and I was like, “Yes, but is it?” You know, and people were bidding for the book and the bids were going up and up, and I said to my agent, “For God's sake, take the bid before they read it again and realise they don't want it.” She was saying, “No, no, I think we can do better.” I was going, “Just accept it, please.” I was desperate to be published by that point.

And she was great, you know, she was a mover and a shaker, she knew what she was doing and she got a very, very good deal for me. But I would have taken the first one, I'd have bitten their hands off, and she said, “No, we're going to keep our pad dry.”

Andy Coulson: So, on the day that that deal is signed, how did that feel?

Kit da Waal: Utterly unbelievable and wonderful, but I didn't believe it. I still didn't believe the hype, still thought, “Oh you're going to get found out.” You know, someone will read it again and go, “I'm going to withdraw that offer.” So it was a bit weird. It was a long, long time before I believed it was true. A long time, maybe a year before I just thought, “Oh.”

Andy Coulson: The moment of seeing that book, holding it in your hands for the first time, is that seared in your memory?

Andy Coulson: And in Waterstones.

Kit De Waal: Oh yes, I went to my little local Waterstones in Leamington Spa, and it was in the window, and I took a photograph of it and I thought, “That's what I wanted.” Actually what I wanted was I wanted to be on the three for two table in Waterstones, that was my- my absolute joy. And I didn't get to be on the three for two table for a long time because I was in hardback in the window. They didn't put me on the three for two table because it was too much of a big book. I am now on the three for two table occasionally, and it's a joy. I love the three for two table, it's a- it's a milestone in my life.

Andy Coulson: Amazing. And then comes another one of those moments that I think supports the idea that what you do when you've found a moment to emerge, you dig out that little gem of opportunity from crisis, as you immediately share it. You've been a huge advocate for amplifying marginalised voices in literature, and you donated part of your advance from My Name is Leon, your first successful book.

This isn't something that you're doing ten years into your successful writing career, this is something that you do off the bat, to use a cricketing analogy. And you create a scholarship to the MA in creative writing course in the Department of English and Humanities at Birkbeck.

Kit da Waal: Yes.

Andy Coulson: You do it immediately. So what's that all about?

Kit da Waal: I don't know. I wanted someone to feel I think the joy that I'd had. And I knew that the only reason I had become a good writer is because I'd learned the craft. I wasn't one of the people, and I'm sure they exist, that just pick up a pen and write a bestseller. I had to learn the craft of writing. I know for people from my background, impoverished, you're not going to have the money to do an MA in creative writing, which was then £9,000 a year. Who has got £9,000? And anyway you are working, and anyway, you know, no one from my family goes to university.

So I knew all the barriers there are for people to learn the craft of writing, and I really wanted to give someone from my background or any difficult background the chance to go to university without that debt. The opportunity to go and learn the craft from some- to a university I had a great respect for, from someone I knew who taught on that particular course. And also just the joy of learning something you love.

When you're a writer and you love the craft and you have this great respect for the craft, being taught well is fabulous. And having the opportunity to be published is fabulous. And I really just wanted someone to feel what I felt, have the joy that I'd had.

Andy Coulson: Tell us about your new book. Also a story anchored in empathy, I think.

Kit da Waal: Yes. It's a story about kindness and the unexpected opportunities that come our way to show kindness. It's about a single parent who has a great tragedy visited on her, and how she emerges from that tragedy, and a relationship that she has with a child that changes her life both for the good and for the bad, and how she navigates that relationship and how she navigates loneliness, and comes to realise that very often the relationships that sustain us aren't blood ties. They are people that come into our lives that change us hugely but they may not be related to us. They might be what's termed a stranger and yet they can get straight inside. They can get deep inside so that they do become friends of the soul.

Andy Coulson: Kit da Waal, you are amazing. Thank you for joining us.

Kit da Waal: Thank you for having me, it's been great!