Having always gravitated towards one another in times of need and as an absent 21-year-old, it had never occurred to me that this would be a role I would need to fill.

The mere thought of it thrilled and terrified me.

My sister became pregnant at 16, when I was in my second year of a performing arts degree in Salford and at the time she was living with our dad. It was 2006 and my life was operating on a cycle of nights out, hangovers and quick noodles, interrupted occasionally by a sparse timetable and bar work to keep my overdraft under control.

Our parents’ divorce a few years earlier meant there was no longer such a thing as a family home and that took its toll on me more than i expected. Life became wild and untethered and partying had become my personality. But through everything, my sister and I remained close: a blend of hedonistic, cracked and damaged by the breakdown of our family. And a baby wasn’t something I had dreamed for either of us.

I took some time off so I could be with her for the birth, but the date we had circled on the calendar came and passed by with no sign of labour. An entire week passed before my sister, calmly told me that her contractions had begun. I panicked.

The giddy anticipation, the nerves but my sister refused all drugs, easing her contractions with nothing more than gas and air. Her belief in herself was unmatched; her strength was something close to supernatural.

Finally, at 10.18pm that night, I watched in awe, shock and utter incomprehension as my baby sister brought my indescribably perfect baby nephew into the world, all by herself. She had taught me so much about resilience, self-reliance and strength. But witnessing the raw and bloody miracle of a new life changed my perspective in a way I couldn’t have imagined. The wonder of our existence, how utterly bonkers it is that any of us are even here, hit me like a thunderclap. 

When I returned to university a week or so later, something in me had shifted and brought me back into sharp focus. Suddenly, every day felt valuable, the opinions of others less so. Instead of wasting away at parties, I craved fulfilment in my interactions. I started to focus on my degree and took up a placement teaching creative arts in a female prison.

Holding my nephew in my arms that day, I felt an immediate rush of love and everything changed. How strange it was to look into his tiny face and see my sister, my mum, my dad, my siblings. Myself. His arrival pieced us back together, albeit in a different form.