Then, at 31, she started to experience symptoms she couldn’t make sense of: forgetfulness, mysterious mood swings and bouts of weeping, and being woken in the night by sudden hot flushes. The sudden bursts of aggression made her feel like Piers Morgan. Her world was crumbling – but nobody could tell her exactly what was wrong. Something has awakened in me, the emergence of a surlier version of myself, someone more weary in the face of such temptations. This is the voice of my longsuffering, baseline soul, and it is assuring me of some facts. obsessed with this book!! it perfectly encapsulates what it's like to grow up online and be caught in the lifelong search for connection while capturing the changing culture and social media of the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. Harriet Gibsone manages to write about all the embarrassing and cringeworthy stuff we do and think and the reasons behind them—the things we seldom admit to anyone else, the things that no teen coming-of-age comedy has ever explored with half as much cringe, humour, and honesty as Gibsone. there's something so special and specific about her writing, the way she blends humour and relatability, while displaying a generous amount of vulnerable, is a skill so impressive that it floored me.

Until a diagnosis of early onset menopause in her late twenties, Harriet spent much of her young life feeding neuroses and insecurities with obsessive internet searching (including compulsive googling of exes, prospective partners, and their exes), and indulging in whirlwind ‘parasocial relationships’ (translation: one-sided affairs with celebrities she has never met). Social media is a hellscape: I mute or delete friends who have got pregnant by accident, or who post pictures of their weekend family utopias. I avoid seeing people who have children. My gorgeous niece and nephews’ birthday parties are painful; we can’t stay too long. Just read this from its giggly heights to its mortifying depths . . . I feel like I've been through something. Something really worth going through. -- Frank Cottrell-BoyceWaiting lists for specialists are long, and often women with POI bounce from GPs to pharmacists who have no idea about HRT and the condition in general. Together, on the Daisy Network’s Facebook group, we join the dots, share helpful articles and tips on how to combat symptoms, how to apply certain medicines, or simply unload our frustrations and sense of helplessness. Testosterone is currently a hot topic. I’m tempted to try it, for its confidence-boosting properties, but it also might make me hairy. It’s a relief to share this discombobulating diagnosis with these women, but on my worst nights I spend too much time online absorbing strangers’ trauma, and getting overwhelmed by my own. Honestly, I'm really struggling to work out whether I enjoyed this book or not. Is This Ok? is an autobiographical look at the life of Harriet Gisbone, a music journalist. The book follows her over a number of years and looks at how her use of the internet changes over time.

She writes her story in such an open way and with such a comic, albeit self-deprecating voice, that I found this book next to impossible to put down, I guess it was that window into someone else’s life that she herself finds so addictive. But it is not just her writing style and her voice that is so compelling, it is the brave honesty and the raw edge-ness that is piled into this book that makes it fascinating. When I started reading 'Is this OK?' I wasn't at all sure I'd make it to the end. I found the style rather irritating and I wasn't even sure at first if it was fiction or autobiography. Once I'd settled in, and as Harriet got older, I became a lot more interested in her life. Eventually my preoccupations with other people’s lives would expand to include those with a public profile, too – people on TV, in films, musicians and, in later years, influencers. I’d come to discover this has a name: parasocial relationships, the dynamic where a “normal” person feels strongly towards a famous person. The term originated in 1956 to refer to the relationship between viewers and television personalities, and has become more widespread over the past decade due to fanatical “Stan” culture and the superficial notion that we have 24-hour access to the lives of public figures via social media and reality shows. It’s not her fault that this is her life. She is just trying to promote positive birth stories so others aren’t afraid. But maybe they should be frightened? Women and babies still die in birth, and it’s not because they’ve not meditated hard enough; it’s because it’s seismic and unpredictable. And once the pain and blood of birth have finished, you are filled with psychological savagery on the other side. The first few days of motherhood are brutal. The level of high-functioning performance required is unparalleled. It’s like stumbling on stage at the start of the Oscars, your body bloodied and broken from a plane crash, and you’re handed a mic and told you’re hosting the whole gig, but if the jokes aren’t good enough, the audience dies. Suddenly staring down years of IVF, HRT and other invasive medical treatments, her relationship with the internet takes a darker turn, as her online addictions are thrown into sharp relief by the corporeal realities of illness and motherhood.despite being the former title holder of 'fittest girl in year 11' (huge slay), harriet is as insecure as the rest of us. throughout her journey into womanhood, she is increasingly drawn to comparing her appearance, behaviour and life with that of people she stalks online, be it alexa chung, her ex boyfriend's ex, her therapist's girlfriend, or mumfluencers with dreamy birth stories and notoriously unattainable daily routines.

After an extremely traumatic birth in which every step is aided by a penetrative arm or metal instrument, cranking my insides open, willing him to leave me, my baby is brought out limp and lifeless and resuscitated before I haemorrhage and am sent to surgery with tears. The golden hour doesn’t happen, the milk doesn’t come, no meditation would have curbed the violence of the events in the hospital ward. Initially this book was a relatable and fun read, about the author’s self doubts and insecurities and her obsession with stalking people online, all told in a witty, self-deprecating style. Unfortunately, as the book continued in the same vein throughout, with little hope of personal growth or development, it began to feel repetitive, long-winded and dreary. In this book, Czerski looks at both the physical properties of the ocean and the way they have influenced animal and human life. In lucid chapters she discusses such phenomena as the water walls and strata that sit deep beneath the surface, how different regions of ocean breathe carbon dioxide in and out; a marine ecosystem that is based on organisms so small 61 per cent are invisible to the human eye; and the societies – from Iceland to Polynesia – that have found different ways to live with and from the seas. This engine, she shows, is extraordinarily complex and we don’t understand exactly how it works. Picador has landed Is This OK? Becoming a Woman on the Internet, a memoir of contemporary womanhood from Harriet Gibsone. A few months pass and, at my 28-week appointment my midwife generously asks about a birthing plan, and we are encouraged to draw up a list of requirements to ensure tranquillity and focus. Like a projector showing a Glyndebourne live stream and access to a qualified reiki instructor, for example. But not me. Not little old low-maintenance, delicate angel me. “Just get the baby out of me alive!” I jest, nervously, and she looks relieved. Her social media output suggests her child’s birth was a slightly intense poo in a paddling pool, while ours was murderousas a writer myself, I found myself relating so heavily to Harriet's experiences with people she obsesses over online and thinks are too amazing and beautiful and talented to ever live up to. she's constantly acutely aware of her own feelings of imposter syndrome, feeling too basic, untalented, and stupid... always comparing herself to those around her who seem to be able to have original ideas and know how to pull the right words from their brain always at the right times, while she's too busy looking at these people for the right opinions so she can then somehow try to craft her own work and tweets. based on this book alone, however, it's exceptionally clear that Harriet is absolutely not a fake: she's the real deal and she's got the talent to prove it—even if it writing about her own life in this way is what took her to truly find it. Cheeks pink with a post-orgasmic flush, her hair damp and tangled, the woman in the small square photograph is surrendering to an expression of total euphoria. In her arms is a tiny creature, so new and unformed it is still practically an internal organ turned external. It’s a special baby. A healthy, happy baby. It’s Deliciously Ella’s baby. Music Journalist, self-professed creep and former winner of the coveted ‘Fittest Girl in Year 11’ award, Harriet Gibsone lives in fear of her internet searches being leaked.

And yet I took care of my son during pregnancy just as she told me to; I did gentle yoga, meditation and ate whatever my body asked for, the good and the bad. We never had the bliss or rapture of that photo and I don’t think I’ll ever catch up, especially as Ella has a nanny (shout out to Janet). I stop showering and exercising, preserving my energy for basic tasks such as “putting on the same massive grey jumper as yesterday” and for wallowing in my own disgustingness. In spite of my greasy hair and unusual temper, my husband Mark still cares about my wellbeing, and encourages me to be persistent with the GP so we can get an official diagnosis. After a year of puzzled doctors and lots of blood tests, I am summoned to an endocrinologist in a hospital in central London. the first: her early twenties, as she juggles her young career as a music journalist with incessantly stalking pretty much everyone who enters her orbit online.The word “threat” is well chosen. Gibsone’s early romantic and sexual relationships are troubled. Some verge on abusive, and she turns the pain they inflict inwards. She torments herself with hunger, alcohol, and generally abnegates herself to meet others’ needs. Though drawn to music and art, she is not yet able to claim the power to create for herself. It’s comforting to know that this book is proof of her ultimate success in that respect. But it comes slowly. At first, instead of nurturing her own creativity, she makes a career out of tending to that flame in others. She becomes a music and culture editor at the Guardian, where she remains a contributor. My baby,” I cry, as he is raised from between my legs and immediately moved on to a table. The doctors huddle around his body. Mark is devastated. The baby is unresponsive, blue and limp. “It’s OK, it’s OK,” I tell Mark. I am as high as a kite from the epidural, but I am certain, from the depths of my soul, that he will survive. Mark puts his hand on my shoulder. “It’s OK,” I smile. Terribly,” I reply. I refuse the drugs, leave the appointment promising to meditate and exercise, and decide to take matters into my own hands.