My daughter’s illness led to a love of writing. Now she’s working on her first TV show

But in her 20s, Ruby’s periods became so painful and drawn-out that it was hard for her to hold down a job. She felt horribly guilty about letting down people at work, as well as her friends, whom she often didn’t have the energy to see. Along with this came anxiety and depression that would spiral into other health problems, including chronic fatigue that didn’t respond to treatment.

I was a wreck, suffering from my own anxiety about her, trying to help any way I could. We visited doctors – lots of them. I bought her what we called a therapy dog, but she was often too tired to walk her, so I pitched in. During these long periods of being unwell, Ruby would escape into many of the books I passed on to her, often murder mysteries and detective fiction.

The heady cocktail of her illness, her isolation, and all those books helped to shape a sensitive young woman.

Ruby was living near me when her health deteriorated further. Because she couldn’t work consistently, her father and I helped financially. But we were helpless to cure her ailments.

No one seemed to know what was making her so sick. We went to every kind of doctor and therapist imaginable; they all had different theories but none had answers. Mostly they would circle back to the idea that her anxiety was inducing her physical symptoms. We saw GPs, gynaecologists, allergy specialists, osteopaths, psychiatrists, psychologists, mystical healers and a woman who specialised in a breathing technique she was convinced would cure Ruby of all her ills.

Every time we saw someone new, we clung to the hope that this might be the missing piece of the puzzle. But nothing helped. She was always nauseous and had lost a dangerous amount of weight. I was unable to eat or sleep and eventually experienced every mother’s worst fear: that her child would not survive.

There was only one thing that seemed to help: being in nature. Having run out of options, we left Sydney and moved to a little town on the NSW south coast where I rented a big house with a back garden for Ruby, me, her dog and our three cats.

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Just being near the sea, surrounded by bushland and birdsong, seemed to make her feel better. At the same time, we saw a new psychologist who believed that Ruby’s anxiety had some, as yet, undetected physiological cause. Finally, we found a specialist who suspected endometriosis and within weeks, she had surgery which confirmed the diagnosis and helped change her life.

Ruby developed an understanding of the mind-body-spirit connection and its relationship to the natural world. Whenever her symptoms returned, it was when she was staying in a city, so she and her new boyfriend would escape to the country whenever they could.

It was on one of these trips that she started writing a novel about a girl with a chronic illness whose life was turned upside down after finding a dead body. And then Ruby fell pregnant. She and her now-husband and baby came to live with me on the coast.

Her novel was put on hold, but when the pandemic hit early in 2020, and we moved to the NSW Southern Highlands, I re-read what she had written and was convinced it would make a great TV show. At the same time, I started my own novel, a murder mystery inspired by the misty forests and quaint towns of the Highlands. And together, Ruby and I adapted her novel idea for television.

Now, a few years later, our show has a producer and has been funded. Ruby has had another beautiful baby and, perhaps unsurprisingly, has become a “natural” screenwriter. And she’s just started writing a new novel.

My first, Echo Lake, was published in time for Mother’s Day this year, which seems fitting. We’ve come a long way. In our darkest hours, I could never have imagined this was possible. But ironically, if it hadn’t been for the dark times – the disease, the introspection, the move to the country and, of course, all those books – we wouldn’t be where we are now. And we always celebrate our birthdays together.

Echo Lake (Allen & Unwin) by Joan Sauers is out now.

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