Is This OK?: One Woman's Search For Connection Online

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I am touched by her speedy, warm and honest response but a bit perturbed as to why I sent the message in the first place. Days before, I’d listened to an episode of her podcast in which she reassured listeners that it’s fine to feed your body whatever it asks for in the first trimester, and that she just ate potatoes. So why did I send it? I then vow to keep her at arm’s length, painfully aware that I’m never more than one G&T-in-a-can away from becoming the type of person who writes “Well done hun, you’re stronger than you’ll ever know” underneath a post from a former Towie cast member whose miniature schnauzer has just been diagnosed with diabetes.

It’s not her fault that this is her life. She is just trying to promote positive birth stories so others aren’t afraid. But maybe they should be frightened? Women and babies still die in birth, and it’s not because they’ve not meditated hard enough; it’s because it’s seismic and unpredictable. And once the pain and blood of birth have finished, you are filled with psychological savagery on the other side. The first few days of motherhood are brutal. The level of high-functioning performance required is unparalleled. It’s like stumbling on stage at the start of the Oscars, your body bloodied and broken from a plane crash, and you’re handed a mic and told you’re hosting the whole gig, but if the jokes aren’t good enough, the audience dies. The next morning I get another mysterious call. It’s a nurse and she’s in a good mood. As a precaution they kept our eggs in the lab overnight, and one has fertilised – it’s a miracle! How about an anonymous donor?” the doctor says. “It’s not a big deal. The baby’s still yours.” Mark agrees. I nod, but it does feel like a big deal. My body has been a scientific experiment for over a year now, and I need some space. I am horrified by the thought of putting someone else’s body into my body. Ella speaks a lot on social media and on her podcasts about the benefits of hypnobirthing: a method of pain management that involves mindful breathing and visualisations, and a woman I work with claims her baby slipped out like a bar of soap thanks to breathwork alone. I Google local classes and sign up for the nearest session. At 7am the next day I get a call from an unknown number. A nurse from the hospital. She has bad news. None of the eggs has fertilised.

The word “threat” is well chosen. Gibsone’s early romantic and sexual relationships are troubled. Some verge on abusive, and she turns the pain they inflict inwards. She torments herself with hunger, alcohol, and generally abnegates herself to meet others’ needs. Though drawn to music and art, she is not yet able to claim the power to create for herself. It’s comforting to know that this book is proof of her ultimate success in that respect. But it comes slowly. At first, instead of nurturing her own creativity, she makes a career out of tending to that flame in others. She becomes a music and culture editor at the Guardian, where she remains a contributor. In this book, Czerski looks at both the physical properties of the ocean and the way they have influenced animal and human life. In lucid chapters she discusses such phenomena as the water walls and strata that sit deep beneath the surface, how different regions of ocean breathe carbon dioxide in and out; a marine ecosystem that is based on organisms so small 61 per cent are invisible to the human eye; and the societies – from Iceland to Polynesia – that have found different ways to live with and from the seas. This engine, she shows, is extraordinarily complex and we don’t understand exactly how it works. Suddenly staring down years of IVF, HRT and other invasive medical treatments, her relationship with the internet takes a darker turn, as her online addictions are thrown into sharp relief by the corporeal realities of illness and motherhood.

the first: her early twenties, as she juggles her young career as a music journalist with incessantly stalking pretty much everyone who enters her orbit online. Something has awakened in me, the emergence of a surlier version of myself, someone more weary in the face of such temptations. This is the voice of my longsuffering, baseline soul, and it is assuring me of some facts. She was in her early 30s when she experienced a host of alarming and mysterious symptoms: sweating, bloating, emotional instability and brain fog, leading to a diagnosis of premature ovarian insufficiency, one cause of early menopause. She struggles hard to get pregnant via a donor, and to give birth, and her account of both is quite stunning. The misogynistic resistance to women writing frankly about birth and motherhood means that such work is still too rare. The power and horror of bearing children have been covered with skill and clarity by writers such as Rachel Cusk in A Life’s Work and Anne Enright in Making Babies. Gibsone owns her place among them with a bloodied confidence after the fight it took to get there.Eventually my preoccupations with other people’s lives would expand to include those with a public profile, too – people on TV, in films, musicians and, in later years, influencers. I’d come to discover this has a name: parasocial relationships, the dynamic where a “normal” person feels strongly towards a famous person. The term originated in 1956 to refer to the relationship between viewers and television personalities, and has become more widespread over the past decade due to fanatical “Stan” culture and the superficial notion that we have 24-hour access to the lives of public figures via social media and reality shows. Cheeks pink with a post-orgasmic flush, her hair damp and tangled, the woman in the small square photograph is surrendering to an expression of total euphoria. In her arms is a tiny creature, so new and unformed it is still practically an internal organ turned external. It’s a special baby. A healthy, happy baby. It’s Deliciously Ella’s baby. All her relationships, both online and IRL, are subjected to exhaustive analysis, comparison and self-conscious adjustments in her search for some imagined perfect state of being, in herself and in relation to others.

Is This OK? swings between silliness and profundity; Gibsone is a writer taking herself seriously but having fun while doing it. This is a book to hold on to and one to share, a warning and a map created by a watchful girl, telling others what may lie ahead.

Summary

Music journalist, self-professed creep and former winner of the coveted ‘Fittest Girl in Year 11’ award, Harriet Gibsone lives in fear of her internet searches being leaked.

You can have my eggs,” she responds, as if at a breakfast buffet. And so begins a dual journey: my quest to get pregnant, and my battle against the demon hormones. Terribly,” I reply. I refuse the drugs, leave the appointment promising to meditate and exercise, and decide to take matters into my own hands.

Advance Praise

She says that it is all right to sometimes feast on the contemporary wonders of global connectedness, as long as it is in small doses, and if I’ve slept for eight hours and have been outside for a walk. obsessed with this book!! it perfectly encapsulates what it's like to grow up online and be caught in the lifelong search for connection while capturing the changing culture and social media of the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. Harriet Gibsone manages to write about all the embarrassing and cringeworthy stuff we do and think and the reasons behind them—the things we seldom admit to anyone else, the things that no teen coming-of-age comedy has ever explored with half as much cringe, humour, and honesty as Gibsone. there's something so special and specific about her writing, the way she blends humour and relatability, while displaying a generous amount of vulnerable, is a skill so impressive that it floored me. I loved this book because it is SO relatable. Harriet is only a few years older than me, so I felt like I had a very similar experience of the world and pop culture growing up – the nostalgia really hit me reading this! But what really captivated me was Harriet’s unfiltered honesty and authenticity, as she fearlessly shared the highs and lows that many women can relate to.