I imagine this will be the first in a couple of blog posts on this subject, and actually, just this week I was invited to speak to a group of screenwriters about writing from life, and was struck by the visual power of their articulated ldeas. They were all writing fiction, but some were using their own life as a springboard. They each pitched their idea to me, and even those who openly admitted the autobiographical heartbeat in their work had found a way to transcend the everyday with metaphor. Of course, it’s film, and film is reliant on the image so much more than prose, but I reflected again – as I never tire to – that it is image that sticks in the mind. It’s the images we take away with us from whatever we read or watch. It’s the emotional revelations as well, and the story – but when I recall certain books or films I remember them by their big scenes, the external image that captures the emotional tone. Last night I watched The Hand of God, by Paolo Sorrentino (Netflix), and now I can see the greedy woman eating cream buns in her fur coat; the boy racing through Napoli’s streets on the back of a criminal’s motorbike. I recently read Zoe Gilbert’s new book, Mischief Acts (pub 17th March) and am haunted still by the trippy miniature men who live in the woods, and the caravan tipping on its side in the intense storm.

But for now I want to talk a little about how we capture emotion. I thought I would reach out to my Twitter friends to attempt to answer this, and did a call for short Twitter stories from people who have suffered the absence of a parent. I wanted to ask this, because my memoir (Sins of My Father, due to be published 17th March) is about me trying to get the attention of a man who was either absent physically or emotionally, and mostly both! My father lived most of my life away from me; he was distracted by a very young second wife (she was 18 when they married, he in his late 30s [I was 10]); a religious cult, which was damning of children; his work as a successful publisher, always chasing the next deal; and then eventually, prescription drug addiction and alcoholism. When he was still married to my mother and living at home with us, he was wrapped up in sexual affairs and flings. In the book I ask was I ever really seen by him? From the moment I was born he was distracted by the chaos of lying about his sexual conquests, his guilt. This was my origin myth: ‘subservience to a tantalising absence’ – I was destined to love more than I was loved, always in the passenger seat.

So below, I have included the best of the Tweets that came in response to my plea. I also asked two friends to write something, because the three of us share a common experience – that of having parents who were disciples to Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh when we were children, my father’s Indian guru, captivating with his mesmeric welling eyes, fluffy white beard and long drawn out vowels. I have grown very close to these two women in recent months, and even though we only met in the past year we have been a massive support to each other through what has evolved into quite a challenging time with various revelations happening from within the communal space for survivors from our parents’ cult. And we all experienced extremely absent parents. Sam, a psychotherapist, grew up with both her parents involved in the cult, detached from the stability of convention; she also spent significant periods in communes. I asked Sam to put into words how this had felt, and this is what she wrote: ”My parents were emotionally absent and self-absorbed – I didn’t feel held in mind. As a child I felt that their needs mattered more. Looking back, I see that they didn’t have a clue about raising children because they were still children themselves.” This resonates with me – as my father was the eternal child, and many cults infantilise those that believe, because it suits the narcissist versus subjugated dynamic, where the narcissist (guru) is able to stay in power. I was curious in writing Sins to also chart how my father mirrored this dynamic in his relationship with me – he always attempted to take the role of the guru and to keep me in that state of missing him, of want, of never fully having all of him. I was the person left, gazing out of the window, waiting for the postman to bring return mail from far off places, letters that often didn’t come.

Maroesja, who is a Dutch film maker, had a mother who joined the cult and a father who abandoned her when she was very young and, like mine, later died from the effects of addiction. She spent much of her childhood dragged along behind her mother from commune to commune, having to give up all her possessions for the common ideology of detachment from belongings. She writes of a memory: ‘It’s late. I am in the kitchen. I sing him songs about drinking fathers. I drink to feel the same as he did and pretend he can hear me in 1993, to save us both.’ Maroesja is quick to remind me that she is not an alcoholic! But I understand that echoing, between father and daughter, and the bond we feel we might still have if we continue to indulge in the toxic obliteration that took our parent’s life. The addiction is feared, but it is also binding.

Thank you dear friends for sharing your experience with me.

And here are the responses to the Twitter challenge:

J L Hall @jlhallwriter: Absent parents leave questions which you carry but can’t answer. The questions are, for too long, about yourself, your failing, you not being enough. But age brings understanding. The questions, the lack, was never yours. They were their own, too heavy to carry and unresolved.

Tamsin Cottis @tamsincottis: Every weekend Dad was with frizzy-haired Jan. I asked him, ‘Why do you spend more time with her kids than with us?’ ‘Because they don’t have a dad,’ he said. ‘You’ve got me.’ I couldn’t make sense of it.

John O’Donoghue @JOD45: From ‘Letters’: On the afternoon of my last exam I took the bus back on my own. Waiting for me a telegram: Mother dead. Funeral Sunday. Come home.

HANNAH STORM @HANNAHSTORM6: A child is not a present, to be bought or given, a promise broken, a heart patched anew. A present does not replace an absence, any more than a void is filled when two words collide: avoid, a parent so close, in name but far from apparent – the shame.

Selina Wallis @UnlockingBirth: Crying so hard in the conifers, my neighbours thought I was laughing. Hospital visits watching Top of the pops, smelling antiseptic. Wasted at a party when he went into a coma. Refusing to hold his hand when they turned the machines off. Three gymnopedies still gets me

Noah Burd @NoahBurd_: It was the day before. The creased photo I carry of him smiling on the beach was the day before. Did he know that when the Nokia clicked, it would be his last? I’m sure he did as it was the day before he drove and left us at the railway station. I recall that he wore his seatbelt

Ms S (she/her) @cattieface: I was standing over the grave (or lair, as it is called in Scotland), smiling baby in my arms. This is your grandchild, I said. Actually, your third grandchild, and you’ve never met any of them. Then, for the first time in 36 years, I started to howl, for the father I never knew.

Nasim Marie Jafry @velogubbed: My late Pakistani father absent for most of my childhood. Am in process of writing about him. I often feel ‘fake’ mixed race as I didn’t grow up between two cultures – he had long ago abandoned his – but with an alcoholic doctor father who took his own life. I wish I spoke Urdu.

Thank you everyone who took part. I am left with many feelings from these extracts, and glimpses of images – a smiling child in a graveyard. A man driving away from the railway station as an enduring memory, because it was the last time. A child who is NOT a present. But the image that has stuck in my mind over the past few days has been crying in the conifers, so hard that a neighbour thought she was laughing. I love this image and can see it so clearly, as if it were in a film. I can also feel the pain. A pain that comes back again with the memory that is triggered by listening to Erik Satie.

I have been lucky to have a spare proof copy, thanks to W&N and I will be sending that spare to Selina for her moving writing. I also want to mention here that it really helps us writers if you pre order our books. The more pre orders we get, the more alerts the booksellers get that our book will be popular and so they order more to sell in their shops! So, if you haven’t already I would LOVE it if you pre order my book! You can do so here.

If you too have suffered from loving an absent parent, I’d love to hear your experience in the comment box below.