About Sharon

I grew up in a council house at the bottom of a cul-de-sac in Cumbria, in the north of England. The assumption, when I was sixteen, was simple: the chocolate factory, like everyone else. That was the ceiling, cemented tight.

I didn't stay in Cumbria. But it took a village to get me out – a whole street of women who held doors open without a word, who put the kettle on, who wrote letters, who did what they could. This is where I write about those women, about where I came from, what it smelled like, what it felt like to leave and so much more. This is also where I explore what it means, decades later, to look back and start to make sense of it all.

In My Own Skin is a memoir in pieces, written from rambling voice notes and shaped into essays. One story at a time.

If you subscribe, new essays will arrive in your inbox. The archive is here whenever you want it and, if anything you read stays with you, I'd genuinely love to know.

~ Sharon McGlinchey