Carmel Harrington: 'I’m trying to switch off that negative script in my head'

Carmel Harrington: "When I finally got out of my own way and said ‘okay, I’m going to give this a go and it either works or it doesn’t but at least I’d tried,’ it was very freeing"

My Irish dad married a Londoner, and we lived in Harrow until I was almost 10. Then, we moved home to rural Wexford, where I still live now. I have two sisters and a brother; our grandmother also lived with us. There are only a few years between my siblings and me, so all my childhood memories include them. We are as great friends now as we were growing up.

Really, it’s more fragments of memories I remember. Holding my dad’s hand (he had big hands) and that feeling of safety; snuggling on my mum’s lap as she read bedtime stories, playing with my teddy bear (I still have him), and laughing with my siblings Fiona, Shelley and John.

In the main, I am living the life I’m meant to. Family is everything, and I am lucky to love and be loved. I could not imagine a life where I wasn’t a mother. It’s my greatest joy.

I’m a storyteller, always have been. But I have yet to achieve all I can, career-wise. There’s time. I’m in the Michelle Yeoh camp, still in my prime too. There’s a lot more that I want to do, career-wise.

In all honesty, the greatest challenge I’ve faced is getting that work/life balance right. I worry a lot. And I definitely have struggled with that ‘mother guilt’.

You know; you’re either doing too much for the kids and not enough work, or doing too much work and missing out on time with the kids. I’m trying to switch off that negative script in my head that tells me I’m getting it wrong. My kids will tell me when I get it right and I know that I have, in the main, always been there for them whenever they needed me.

Last year, I celebrated 10 years as a published author and I published my 10th novel. It felt like a significant milestone that I was still here still doing what I love 10 years after I set out to.

I’ve asked my husband and children what my best quality is. They tell me it’s my kindness and that’s pretty cool because it’s one of the things that I’m trying to teach them. I would actively try to have kindness at the heart of everything I do.

There are some people who are unkind [online] and you can’t quite work out why, maybe saying something about your appearance — the negative comments tend to be quite personal. I’ve been quite lucky when it comes to reviews.

Choosing [one person I turn to] is hard because I have so many confidantes within my immediate circle of family and friends. I trust them all. But you asked for one name, so that has to be my husband, Roger.

He’s a wise one. He’s very different to me. I am quite emotional and he is much more even-tempered. He’s seen it all, the good, the bad, and the ugly. We’re together 16 years now.

The life lesson I would like to pass on is to be kind to others, but remember to be kind to yourself too. That’s definitely my number one. The second one would be ‘when people show you who they are, believe them’. I definitely didn’t do that when I was younger.

‘Don’t meet trouble halfway’ is the greatest piece of advice I’ve ever been given. It’s such a great philosophy in life. It’s not always easy to remember that because sometimes I think we let our heads run away with us.

I would have liked to find the courage to share my writing sooner. It took me until I was almost 40 to look for an agent and publisher. I used to have all these excuses. I would say ‘I’d try to find an agent if I wasn’t so busy’.

When I finally got out of my own way and said ‘okay, I’m going to give this a go and it either works or it doesn’t but at least I’d tried,’ it was very freeing — it changed my life. I’m just sorry I didn’t have the nerve to do that earlier. I was a bit of a coward really. Nobody was stopping me but myself.

My husband works for the Department of the Environment so we talk about it [climate change] with the kids and how we can make small changes to help as a family.

We work hard to use less energy, cutting our carbon footprint and energy bills at home. We have solar panels; we turn lights off when we don’t need them and have replaced light bulbs with low-energy lights. We also minimise waste by repairing and reusing where we can.

We always donate to charity. When I was young, we used to do the ‘one big shop’ and there was so much waste. We have switched to shopping a couple of times a week instead.

I’m told I can spin a good tale. That’s my greatest skill.

Each year, as they grow older, my children’s personalities shift and change. And just when I think I have a handle on who they are, they do something to surprise me. Their minds are like sponges and they amaze me with their general knowledge every day, often reminding me of things I’ve long forgotten. Or they’ll say something in conversation, and stop me in my tracks, as I try to work out how they could possibly know that.

I’m not a scaredy cat; I don’t jump scare easily. But the slightest whiff of danger near my family and I’m quaking.

I’ve no regrets. Every step and misstep has led me to where I’m meant to be.

• The Girl from Donegal (HarperCollins) by Carmel Harrington is out now.