Writing
Writing has always been there. In notebooks with double lines and on countless slips of paper filled with “golden thoughts” traded in school corridors. In endless stories told while walking with my mum. On the black-and-white pages of the school newspaper and in the local press. On the never-ending pages of essays about the writing of others. In the hardest moments, blurred by tears. And in the moments of gathering myself from scattered pieces. It is here now too - and finally it has its true voice.
My story
I was born on 2 August 1985 in Wałbrzych - a city nestled among green hills, with unemployment soaring at the time, a place that would spend years trying to rise from its knees after the mines were closed.
After finishing high school, with a dream of becoming a journalist, I began my studies at the University of Wrocław and an internship at the editorial office of the now-defunct Nowe Wiadomości Wałbrzyskie. That’s where I met Michał Wyszowski - a journalist (later also at Radio Wrocław) and my future husband. It was also there that I discovered journalism wasn’t really my thing. A year later, I started English Philology at the State Higher Vocational School in Wałbrzych (now the Angelus Silesius University of Applied Sciences). In the building on Zamkowa Street, I not only found friendships that would last for years and the unforgettable taste of garlic-sauce potato slices, but also discovered a love for English literature. That love led me to the University of Nottingham, where I earned my master’s degree in English literature.
After returning to Poland and an unsuccessful attempt to begin a PhD, I shared the fate of thousands of philology graduates and started teaching English. That fate - unwanted at first - became part of me for nine years, a part I still sometimes miss. After several years of searching for a full-time position, I settled into my beloved CLEVER Primary School, which consistently tries to change something in the rigid education system.
And I would probably still be trying to explain the mysteries of the Past Perfect to yet another generation of Wałbrzych students if not for 26 September 2016, when everything I had was taken from me in a matter of seconds. On the first anniversary of our wedding, on a sunny autumn afternoon, my husband suffered a stroke. After eight months in a coma and fighting for his life - a fight, I now know, lost from the very start - he passed away on 26 May 2017.
At the time, I thought it was the end of everything. That my story had already been written. Today I know it was the beginning of another chapter.
After a year of trying to continue life in Poland, I decided to move to Nottingham. And, unintentionally, I rebuilt myself, and I grew a life I had never expected to find on my existential bingo card. It was here that I found a new professional path - as a change manager, helping teams navigate transitions. As it turns out - changing an IT system is, at its core, surprisingly similar to moving to another country.
In Nottingham, I also found the companion for the rest of my life - a needle of love in a haystack, who pulled me out of the muddy pool of online dating in the rhythm of Drum & Bass. We live in Nottingham, juggling work, weekly attempts to tame a seven-year-old hurricane of blond curls, and an undying love for Married at First Sight.
And I write. Continuously.