Proud of Me: Celebrating diverse families

June 22nd 2021

This School Diversity Week, author Sarah Hagger-Holt opens up about writing her book 'Proud of Me and how she was inspired by the experience of real LGBTQ+ families.

As an only child, I have always been fascinated by sibling relationships. I didn’t mind not having a sibling, but I always wondered what it would be like being so close to someone who wasn’t a parent or friend? To know and be known by them. To share so many of your memories with another person, someone who is both your team-mate and your closest competitor.

Only when I had my own children, could I observe the complexity – and straightforwardness – of sibling relationships up close. I saw how much my two girls loved and hated each other. How they were so alike and so different. How they could be sworn enemies one minute, and unite against their parents, the next. 

Writing ‘Proud of Me’, my second middle-grade novel, allowed me to imagine myself into the middle of a sibling relationship. The story centres around a brother, a sister, their changing relationship and a whole lot of secrets. Siblings Becky and Josh take it in turns to narrate a chapter at a time, passing the story between them like footballers working together to reach the goal, despite the challenges they face on the way. 

Like my own children, Becky and Josh have two mums and are not full biological siblings. Because their family is unusual, Becky and Josh find themselves having to explain and defend its validity to the outside world (“Which one’s your real mum?” is the question that annoys Josh the most and Becky worries that people don’t see Josh as her ‘real’ brother). Yet, as young teenagers, they desperately want to assert their own identities, separate from their parents and also, crucially, from each other. 

They are close when the story begins, but we see them moving apart. The cover of the book, beautifully illustrated by Helen Crawford-White, shows them sitting back-to-back on either side of a spreading tree, turned away from each other, but still close enough to touch – if they only reached out their hands. 

Of course, sibling relationships exist within a wider context – and that’s when things really start to get interesting. Five years ago, I interviewed more than 70 families for an LGBTQ+ parenting guide, to gather their lived experience and advice to help other families. The huge variety of ways in which people had started and structured their families blew my mind and warmed my heart. I heard stories which went beyond any that I could make up. 

Hearing these stories raised big questions for me. What is it that binds certain individuals together? Is it biological connection? Social convention? Love and commitment? Or different, and sometimes difficult, combinations of all of these? One thing was clear, there was such a diversity of ways to make, and to be, a family. I wished I could see more of those stories reflected in the books I read and in the ones on the shelves of my children’s school library. 

In ‘Proud of Me’, I wanted to explore these questions about what makes a family. This time, using fiction, albeit inspired by the experiences of some of the real families who I had interviewed. Josh sets out to meet his donor, trying out what it might be like to have a dad, but alienates the rest of his family by going behind their backs. Meanwhile, Becky falls for a girl in her class, but even her mums struggle at first to accept that her feelings, and her new found identity, are real. 

Through all the ups and downs, Josh and Becky let each other down and they come through for each other. They reinterpret and redraw their sibling relationship now they are teenagers, having to rely on more than their shared childhood. They learn that their unusual family is something to be treasured and also, perhaps, it is no more unusual than anyone else’s. 

My hope is that children who read ‘Proud of Me’ will recognise something of themselves and their siblings, if they have them, in Josh and Becky’s relationship. I hope too that they will recognise their own family in Josh and Becky’s family, and see that, however their family was formed or however unusual it may look from the outside, the same love and care runs within.

Proud of Me is out now.

Click here to download discussion questions.