A Girl Beyond Closed Doors

After 12 years of being trapped in the world of one room by the M.E. Monster, Jessica’s dreams start to come true. She’s pregnant! But Jessica has to adjust to being a disabled mum in an inaccessible world and face the critics who doubt her abilities. And when the pandemic hits just as they relocate to a new county, isolation takes on a new form, as they learn to adjust to being a family of three in one flat limited by government-enforced restrictions and fear of contracting Covid. Balancing parenthood and chronic illness, expectations versus reality, Jessica discovers alternative fairytale endings are possible... a life beyond closed doors.

Jessica Taylor-Bearman was born in March 1991, at Maidstone Hospital in England. She grew up in Rochester and Canterbury, Kent, where she attended Rochester Grammar School for Girls. At the age of 15, she became acutely unwell with an illness called M.E. She was continuously hospitalised from 2006 to 2010, suffering with the most severe form of the condition. This included her being bedridden, unable to move, speak, eat and more. She began to write in her mind, and when finally able to speak again, she began to write through her audio diary ’Bug’. In 2009,