ARCHIVE NOTE
Long before I understood memory,
other people were already writing my story.
This photograph reminds me
that every file begins with a child
who has not yet had the chance
to tell their own.
EXHIBIT A - The Girl Who Walked Out of the File
I didn't choose fragments.
Fragments chose me.
For years I thought I had forgotten my childhood. Then memories began arriving the way birds return after winter —
one at a time, never when I expected them.
A bath.
Two coins.
Lavender.
A sentence somebody said.
The colour of a wall.
None of them made sense alone.
Together they became a life.
FIELD NOTE 006
Question:
Are all families like mine?
Answer:
No.
The difficult part was believing it.
EXHIBIT B - The Girl Who Walked Out of the File
My memoir, explores care, identity, belonging and the stories we inherit before we are old enough to tell our own. Blending archival records, poetry and creative nonfiction, it asks what happens when institutional records become the dominant version of a life. The memoir is being supported for publication by the Arkbound Foundation and is due to be published in 2026.
DREAM TRANSCRIPTION — POETIC MEMORY
I dreamed a road
wrapped in lavender
and lit by women
who looked like Granny —
soft hands, strong backs,
backs that knew burdens
but didn’t break.
They stood in silence,
not because they had nothing to say,
but because their eyes
had already said it.
“Go,” one of them whispered.
“Go on, baby. Run quiet if you must,
but don’t stop moving.”
I saw a girl.
She looked like me,
but taller.
Braver.
Her mouth was full of her name,
and it wasn’t broken when she said it.
“That’s you,” Granny’s voice said behind me.
“When you get there.
When you remember.”
And I wanted to run into her skin
like it was my Sunday dress.
I wanted to wear that girl
like a future
I already loved.
I asked the road,
“Will it hurt before I get here?”
And the road answered,
“More than it should.”
But the lavender still bloomed.
✦✦✦
Who chooses who writes about you?
Show me the rules that say:
You can't write your own file.
Their file recorded facts.
This archive records the silence
The shame
The suffering
The journey not in their files
Read them, if you wish.
I'll keeo writing mine.
My Living Archive
No archive is complete.
The official record captures dates, decisions and events.
This archive gathers the things that rarely survive:
poems,
fragments,
voice notes,
field notes,
questions,
performances,
research,
and the stories still becoming themselves.
Nothing here is fixed.
Like memory, this archive continues to grow.
FINAL FIELD NOTE
Two years ago, I picked up a pen.
Not because I wanted to become a writer,
but because I could no longer carry the stories
without somewhere for them to live.
At the same time, I was teaching,
raising two remarkable boys,
studying for an MA in Creative Writing and Contemporary Literature,
and slowly discovering that none of these things were separate.
The memoir became The Girl Who Walked Out of the File.
The Aftercare Project grew from the belief that every care-experienced person deserves the chance to author their own story.
In 2026, I begin a practice-led PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester, exploring memoir, creativity and the living archive.
Looking back, it no longer feels like several different projects.
It feels like one question,
asked in different ways.
How do we write ourselves
beyond the stories that were written for us?
The archive remains open.
The Living Archive
by Jade G. Thomas
Designed by Jade G.Thomas
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