Storytelling & Life Writing

Whether I'm writing about travelling solo and bouncing back after divorce or being child-free by choice, I want to bring hushed topics out of the shadows. I've been touted as unabashedly honest, with my writing known to make people cry or cringe at the words I've splashed on the page.

In addition to writing for The Independent, Metro, and Grazia, and Stylist I've contributed to BBC, Cosmopolitan, The Times, and The New York Post, among others.

I've also been a featured speaker on BBC Radio, The Moth and podcasts on both sides of the Atlantic.

GRAZIA

Learn From My Mistakes: I Spent More Than £10,000 on a Matchmaking Service

Featured Articles

THE REAL WORD BY TRAFALGAR

How I Built Lifelong Friendships With My Broken French

THE INDEPENDENT

Why I’m Finding It Impossible To Get Over My Pandemic Heartbreak

BBC The Invisible Price of Travelling Safely as a Woman

Solo female traveller Jen Kaarlo has travelled to 53 countries, most of them alone, and says solo travel for many women often comes with constant calculations around safety. For Kaarlo, choices such as arriving in daylight, pre-booking transport and avoiding situations where she feels overly vulnerable have become almost automatic.

While travelling through Panama, she booked a semi-private boat trip through the San Blas Islands but paid extra to guarantee she would not have to share a sleeping space with a stranger.

"In order to rent the cabin, I had to pay one fee," she says. "Then I had to pay between $100 and $200 (£80-£160) more to ensure that I had a private boat bed."

More routinely, she says she budgets extra for transport, particularly when arriving somewhere unfamiliar. At Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, she encountered a man who repeatedly approached travellers with an elaborate scam, an experience that reinforced her preference for pre-booking a car or taking a taxi rather than public transport. "Probably the biggest cost generally is the extra ground transportation… I avoid mass transit anytime getting into a new city unless I know that city really well."

In a similar way, Kaarlo says that after having her drink spiked in "an incredibly scary situation" in Paris, she changed how she approached solo travel.

And for Kaarlo, the cost is not just financial. "The cognitive overload, I think, is the biggest weight," she says.

Grazia

“Your social media feed may be awash with engagement and anniversary photos, but data would suggest many Britons aren’t experiencing happily ever after.

Not only are divorce applications at the highest level in 10 years — helped, in part, by the no-fault legislation passed in April of last year — but there is evidence from the last economic downturn that recessions and higher divorce rates are toxic bedfellows…”

Featured in Metro

I threw a divorce party with bubbly, my closest friends, and dancing

Meet the ‘rainbow families’ celebrating their new normal

Where I Work: the writer working from home with a cavapoo

Sorbet

A quick online scroll ascertains seduction doesn’t exactly have the finest of reputations.

When keeping close company with the likes of world-famous flirts and lotharios, not to mention deceptively charming spies dramatically swaying the tides of war, perhaps the term requires a much-needed PR makeover.

After all, the word ‘seduction’ stems from the Latin “to lead aside.”