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Without any obvious ‘next of kin’, I turned to a group of female friends to help. It proved revelatory
At the start of 2019, I found myself in an A&E in east London with a high fever and struggling to breathe. But the symptoms weren’t my only problem. The woman behind the hospital check-in desk asked for my next of kin. Suddenly, I realised I had no name to give her. My mum, who’d raised me without a partner, was fighting for her life after a transplant, part of her gruelling cancer treatment. I was also single for the first time in a long time. I blinked back tears as I sent a message to a group of friends asking whether it was OK for me to give one of their contact details.
This wasn’t just any group of friends. As my mum was being prepped for her risky transplant a couple of months before, I had the bleak realisation that I might soon be very alone in the world. My relationship was breaking down, soon to be over, and my mum was no longer able to be a parent. I’d stumbled across a vlog on YouTube about something called a “women’s circle”. It sounded somewhat hippyish, but also comforting.
