I woke up today on this Sunday morning, reflecting on the different childhood experiences I had compared with my eldest son, Jac. In many ways we are the same, but our experiences are very different.

Jac is now 17. When I was 17, my dad was living in London, as he had been for three years on and off. My sister had left home and my dad had rented out the spare rooms of our house. I had essentially been looking after myself from about 14. My mum had died when I was around 18 months old, drowned in the River Don, the river that cuts through my home town of Doncaster.

I remember my seventeenth year vividly as yesterday, receiving a letter my sister wrote to me which told me that my mum had actually thrown herself off the bridge in Sprotbrough and taken her own life. I remember opening the letter next to the front door and dropping to my knees uncontrollably, the letter falling from my hands, my life, my reality broken and any idea of a childhood shattered in pieces as I wailed with a lack of understanding, alone.

I had lived through my childhood knowing I didn’t have a mum, but with a simple fact that comforted me. She had died accidentally, caught in the underflow of a fast flowing river, and while it was sad, everything was ok. On that day, all of a sudden, everything was not ok. I was not enough. My own mum left me alone on this earth. I spiralled into a depression that lasted probably around nine years, which I escaped on my own by building myself up from nothing to the person I am now.

With my dad dying a few years ago, and with the comfort of being surrounded by a loving family all of my own, I ponder on the nature of stories and who we are. In the latter years of my dad, I asked him and other relatives about those sad times, and was amazed about the different stories, perspectives and claimed narratives that they all held, alongside my own memories.

The only truth is that no one knows what happened to my mum. Sure, the probability is that she took her life, but the circumstances and nuances before and after this point are lost and will be totally buried when we, who hold these stories in our heads, are gone too.

The reality is, it is our own choice as to what stories we hold and which we let go, and what we learn from them. Our stories don’t define us. We define our stories.

Back to Jac, aged 17, the same age my own world came crashing down. Yesterday I witnessed him dancing with abandon on the beach in Hornsea with his brother, Dylan aged 14, nicking each other’s hats and goofing around with an innocence I unfortunately lost or had stolen from me. I am so proud that Jac and Dylan know what love is, when they see how me and my wife Kate act childishly with each other, and fight and make up, and how Jac feels he can speak to me about anything and everything, and that he is safe to become his own brilliant self, undefined by his parents, but supported and challenged to be his best version, which is certainly already way better than me!

Jac has had his own challenges, discovering his neurodiversity and coming to terms with how he sees the world being different from others, along with its advantages and disadvantages. Inevitably, he will have more challenges, when the world lets him down in its own relentless and brutal way. And I won’t always be here for him, but he will have stories about his dad to keep him strong. About how his dad built a house and then a school for him. About how Jac’s self discovery also helped his dad understand himself better. And I look forward to the adventures we will share as he wanders into the world on his own, as I did many years ago.

And while people can argue that my experiences made me strong and defined who I am, I would argue that no matter what my childhood was like, right now, I am doing what I was put on this planet to do.

I would argue that like a collapsing wave of multiple realities, I am who I am now because I have defined who I am, and no one or nothing else.

Now, what’s for breakfast…? Jac!! Wake up and make your dad some eggs and toast!!!