I have always loved conversation.

Not the kind that circles the weather and stays politely on the surface, although I can do that too. I have learnt to gauge when people only want a weather check, a passing comment, a safe exchange that asks nothing deeper of either person.

But what I crave is the other kind.

The kind of conversation that opens something.

The kind where people talk about life, about meaning, about the quiet things that shape us. The things we carry. The things we fear. The things we believe, question, doubt, or hope for. I love conversations that go beneath the surface, where thoughts are allowed to breathe and people are not rushing to close the door on discomfort.

Sometimes I envy those groups of people who seem to gather and talk about everything. Books, ideas, politics, philosophy, society, people, pain, purpose. All the things that ripple through existence and make us human.

And then I tell myself I do not belong there.

I tell myself my societal status would stop me from being welcomed into those rooms. That people with better educations, better careers, better lives, would have no reason to regard me as someone worth speaking to. I tell myself I am on the lower echelons of society, and that I only have myself to blame for that.

I should have finished university.

I should have pursued a career.

I should have made something of myself.

Those words become their own conversation inside my head. A harsh, unforgiving monologue of inadequacy and shortfall. A list of everything I think I failed to become.

And then there are the words that other people have added to that monologue.

The father of my children once reinforced everything I already feared about myself. He said he married his wife for the conversation, and wanted me for the sex.

There are some sentences that do not simply hurt in the moment. They sink into you. They find the softest place and make a home there.

Because how do you fight back from being told, in so many words, that your mind is not the valuable part of you? That your thoughts are not the thing someone wants to sit with. That your voice, your curiosity, your depth, your inner world, are somehow less worthy than your body.

It creates a deep pain.

One that does not always look like pain from the outside. It can look like silence. It can look like self doubt. It can look like staying away from rooms you secretly wish you were brave enough to enter.

I find myself wanting to defend myself.

I want to say that I can have conversations. I want to say I do educate myself. I read, I listen, I question, I try to understand. If I do not know something, I will do my damnedest to find out. Not because I want to sound clever, but because I care. Because I want to understand the world I live in. Because I want to understand people. Because I want to understand myself.

When I was at school, a teacher told me I was not very good at English.

My writing was different. It did not follow the correct format. I did not seem to fit neatly into the shape they expected words to take. And when you are young, being told by an elder, a teacher, someone with authority, that you are doing something wrong does not just make you want to improve.

It makes you doubt the way your own mind works.

I did work hard to improve. I listened. I tried. I learnt. But those words still planted something in me. A lack of faith in my own ability. A quiet suspicion that maybe my thoughts are too messy, too strange, too unpolished, too far outside the expected lines.

And that doubt follows me.

It follows me into writing.

It follows me into conversation.

It follows me into rooms I have not even entered yet.

But I want to be more than my pain.

I am more than my pain.

I can speak about history and geography with reflection. I can speak about life, society, people, behaviour, places, patterns, and meaning. I often say, “This is only my opinion, and that does not mean I am right.” Because of course I am not necessarily right. Opinion is just that. A thought shaped by what you have learnt, what you have lived, what you have noticed, and what you are still trying to understand.

But to avoid stagnation, you have to know that your beliefs are not concrete.

They can shift.

They can soften.

They can be modified through enlightenment, through listening, through conversation, through being willing to hear another perspective without seeing it as an attack.

That is a skill I do have.

I may believe something to be true, but over time, with effort and reflection, I can also see where my opinion may have been built on missing pieces, misunderstandings, or even falsities. And there is something deeply human in that. To think, to question, to adjust, to grow.

That is not weakness.

That is thought in motion.

And maybe that is what my writing has always been. Not incorrect, not inadequate, just thought trying to find its own shape.

Something came to mind today as I was thinking about all of this.

My soon to be seven year old is already a great conversationalist.

Today we talked about hantavirus. Not in some heavy, frightening way, but in the way children often arrive at things. Curious, concerned, full of questions, full of thoughts. Even at his young age, he had his own opinions forming. His own worries. His own way of trying to understand something bigger than him.

So we talked.

Lightheartedly, but honestly.

I found out as much fact as I could, not to frighten him, but to ease his concerns. Because children are sponges for information, and I realise more and more that there is a duty in that. A duty not to sway them towards what I believe simply because I am the adult. A duty not to use their trust as a power move.

I am convinced that knowledge is far greater than power.

If I give him facts, he can arrive at his own opinions. He can question. He can reason. He can understand that thoughts do not have to be forced into him, they can be formed inside him.

And maybe that has been at the core of my parenting all along.

All of my children have their own characters, their own opinions, their own thoughts. Not because I told them what to think, but because I tried to give them the platform to think for themselves. I gave them facts where I could. I gave them room. I allowed them to arrive at their own beliefs. I have allowed them to disagree with me, and challenge it thoughtfully without the need for derogatory comments. And trust me some of their personal ideas are not conclusions that always sit comfortably with me.

And whilst I may often feel lacking, I am immensely proud of that.

I am proud to have armed my children with knowledge, but more than that, I am proud to have given them space. Space to think. Space to question. Space to disagree. Space to become.

Because one day they will carry those thoughts forward. They will walk into their own rooms. They will hold their own conversations. They will not need to shrink themselves to fit someone else’s idea of what they should be.

And perhaps that is one of the greatest things I could have given them.

Not answers.

Not certainty.

But the permission to have a mind of their own.

I am still amazed by the comments I often get from people about my children. How mature they are. How insightful. How much of an asset they are to me.

And maybe, in those moments, I need to remember something.

A person who is lacking does not create space for other minds to grow.

A person with nothing to offer does not raise children who can think, reflect, question, and converse.

So perhaps I have been building the very rooms I thought I was never invited into.

I have been building them around my own kitchen table.

And sometimes, when someone says they like talking to you, it feels like a door opening.

You place trust there.

You think, maybe this time, I am being seen.

Maybe this time, someone wants the part of me that thinks, feels, questions, notices, reflects.

Maybe this time, conversation is not a tactic. Not a way in. Not something used to soften you before someone takes what they want.

Maybe this time, I am more than what someone can get from me.

And when that turns out not to be true, it does something to you.

It makes you question your own judgement. It makes you wonder whether your longing to be understood made you vulnerable. It makes you feel foolish for believing that being listened to meant being valued.

But still, even after all of that, I crave conversation.

Not because I need to prove I am intelligent enough.

Not because I need to earn a place among people I have decided are better than me.

But because conversation is one of the ways we stop being alone inside ourselves.

There are fears that grow louder when they stay internal. There are thoughts that become distorted when they only echo around one mind. There are worries that seem enormous until they are spoken aloud and met by another human being who says, “I understand,” or even, “I see it differently.”

Conversation can soften fear.

It can bring reason to panic.

It can give shape to thoughts that were previously just noise.

It can take the solitary and make it shared.

We all need that. We all need places where the inner monologue is interrupted by another voice. Not a voice that mocks us, reduces us, corrects us, or uses us, but one that meets us.

A voice that says, “Tell me more.”

A voice that asks, “What do you think?”

A voice that reminds us that our minds are not too much, too little, too uneducated, too damaged, too ordinary, or too far beneath anyone else’s.

Maybe I have spent too long believing that deep conversation belongs only to certain rooms, certain classes, certain people with certain qualifications.

Maybe I have forgotten that thought is not owned by status.

Pain thinks.

Love thinks.

Survival thinks.

Motherhood thinks.

Addiction thinks.

Recovery thinks.

Grief thinks.

Hope thinks.

A life lived close to the edge still has depth. Perhaps even more so.

And maybe the very fact that I crave these conversations means there is something alive in me still reaching. Still curious. Still wanting to connect with the world beyond the smallness I have been placed in, or placed myself in.

I do not want to spend my life trapped in an internal monologue of all the reasons I am not enough.

I want conversation.

Real conversation.

The kind that lets the frightened parts speak.

The kind that lets the unseen parts be known.

The kind that reminds us that even when society has labelled us, even when people have reduced us, even when we have reduced ourselves, there is still a mind inside us asking to be met.

Maybe that is what I am really craving. Not just conversation, but a life where my mind has somewhere safe to go.

I do not crave conversation because I think I am above ordinary life. I crave it because ordinary life has left me with extraordinary questions.

This is how I want my life to be. Not grand, not polished, not impressive from the outside. Just full of rooms where my mind is welcome.