My Child and Other Mistakes, an interview with Ellie Taylor
She’s funny, she’s fierce, she’s talented and she’s a mum! Comedian, actor, and writer Ellie Taylor is a very busy lady - hugely in demand across television, radio, social media, and live work, of course. Ellie recently completed her latest stand-up tour, ‘Don’t Got this’ to sell-out crowds. We saw on our screens her filling in for Derry Girls actor Siobhán McSweeney on The Great British Pottery Throwdown and was shooting a show in Canada when we interviewed her.
Her first book MY CHILD AND OTHER MISTAKES published in 2021 and is now a Sunday Times Best Seller, garnering rave reviews across the globe. We feel incredibly lucky that whilst shooting, she tells us about her career, motherhood, and what inspired her to write her book.
My Child and Other Mistakes: how to ruin your life in the best way possible
You describe the impact of becoming a mum as seismic; I can really relate to that. What was your biggest challenge and what helped you get through it?
The first six months were very hard for me. I had expected life to change but never considered the evolution I would need to go through. I learned that you don’t give birth and are suddenly a mother. For me, it took time to become one. There’s a word I love which is “matrescence” - the emotional and psychological process of becoming a mother. Much like “adolescence” is the irreversible and wild process of becoming an adult, matrescence is the irreversible and wild process of morphing into a mum. Tumultuous, emotional, confusing. Learning that word felt like finally, I’d been able to pinpoint what I’d been going through. Now that’s the sort of stuff they should talk about in NCT…
Motherhood can be really hard at first, even the most prepared women can find it tough, yet women still struggle to talk about their difficulties as new mums openly. Why do you think it's important to share such stories with authenticity?
Because it’s too easy to assume you are the only one finding it hard. And I think especially in terms of PND which I think in hindsight I probably had. I’m not a doctor telling women “these are the 8 symptoms to look out for”, I’m not approaching it medically or professionally. I am a normal woman who had a shit time and has the fortune to be in a job where I get to process my life for a living. Not all women have the chance to sit down and write their story, to consider what they’ve been through in the same way I have. If I can vocalise my experiences I know that the chances are, that it’ll be the experiences of another woman out there too. Hearing someone else feels or felt the same way you do or did can be unbelievably comforting and validating. It brings me incredible satisfaction and joy when I get women messaging me saying that the book I wrote gives them exactly those feelings. They feel seen and held, and I am thrilled.
Have you always wanted to write a book about your journey into motherhood?
No. But when I was asked to write a book in mid-2020 it felt like a no-brainer it would be about motherhood. My child was one year old, I’d been doing a hell of a lot of parenting over lockdown so it sort of felt like my specialist subject plus I can talk about it endlessly.
Your book is incredibly funny but also provides us with some real honesty which I found really moving - I found myself crying and laughing throughout. Was it always your intention to share some deeply personal things about your experience?
Thank you so much. Absolutely, yes being honest was always going to happen in anything I wrote about my experience. There’s a place for a purely funny memoir about motherhood for sure, but I always knew mine would also be very raw and dark in places because that’s what it was like for me. Light and shade just as being a parent is day in, day out.
You have an incredibly varied and successful career. You returned to work when your daughter was three months old. Do you think women are judged harshly for returning to work 'early'?
Women are judged too harshly for every bastard thing they do but anything to do with children is even more acutely scrutinised. All you can do it plough on and do what’s best for you and your child. In the tv/movie industry we are under different pressures and constraints that people looking in perhaps don’t quite understand. I’m writing this from a hotel room in Canada where I am going to be away from my daughter for nearly a month. That’s not something people with more stable jobs have to consider doing. In this industry, our ‘normal’ will always look completely different to people outside it so there’s no point trying to judge yourself against them. Stay in your (parental) lane.
What has been your proudest moment since publishing the book? And since becoming a mum?
From a personal perspective, it will of course be the million silly things my daughter has learned or discovered. I take huge delight in her turns of phrases and use of new vocabulary. She’s also picked up some swearing from my Mum - I know it shouldn’t be funny, but crikey, hearing a three-year-old drop a spoon on the floor and say “oh…shit” in perfect context with perfect intonation is just mwah *does chefs kiss*.
Professionally, it’s been a really exciting couple of years and 2022 is shaping up the same way so fingers crossed it continues. And fingers crossed that we, as a family are able to navigate two demanding careers we enjoy while also having a little girl we adore.
How do you feel about your daughter reading the book when she gets older?
Absolutely fine! Although I’m sure she won’t want to read anything her boring, wizened old mother has ever written. I wonder if she becomes a mum herself one day, then maybe she will read it then. I hope she sees it for what it is, which is a love letter to mothers, and to her, my darling girl.
What is the one piece of advice you wish someone had given you before a baby?
It will be absolutely awful, but not forever. There is so much joy ahead for you. Just you wait.