She Seems Fine to Me

AS HEARD ON GIOVANNA FLETCHER'S HAPPY MUM PODCAST ''She Seems Fine to Me reads like Nixon speaks – sparky, crackling with rage, but also, somehow, laugh-out-loud funny' The Guardian Actress, check. Wife, check. Mother, check. In control of her own mind? Well... After a lifetime of getting everything 'right' – marrying her childhood sweetheart, starring in hits from Fresh Meat and Cranford to Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging, having a much-longed-for baby – Kimberley Nixon's brain broke. Or, more specifically, OCD won. ''From the outside, I was coping. Inside, my brain was on fire.' She Seems Fine to Me is not a tidy recovery story. In this jaw-droppingly honest and darkly funny memoir, Kimberley shares what it's like to become a mother while losing your sense of self, loving your child ferociously while being terrified of your own mind and the brutal gap between the rose-tinted version of motherhood we are sold and the more complicated reality. At once devastating and tender, Kim's story will resonate with anyone who has ever felt overwhelmed by motherhood, failed by the system or frightened by thoughts they were too ashamed to say out loud. It's for anyone who has ever been told they looked fine when they were anything but.

Kimberley Nixon is a BAFTA-award-winning actress best known for her role as Josie in Channel 4's Fresh Meat and for starring in much-loved teen cult hits Wild Child and Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging. Other television appearances include Under Salt Marsh, Mudtown and Shardlake. Kimberley started a blog and podcast forum, Kimfluencing My Brain, on Substack to chronicle her experiences of postnatal mental illness and diagnoses of OCD, ADHD and autism. She is a proud ambassador for The National Autistic Society and Perinatal Mental Health Partnership and honoured to be patron of Mothers Matter Cymru in her native Wales. Kimberley lives in Pontypridd, South Wales with her husband, son and lunatic dog.