J’AIME JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2023

to ensure that the story was written for children. So
her 6-year-old daughter Mila had her creative input -
which was exactly what Jaime needed.
“Because it’s a story about grief I didn’t want it to be
too sad and I had to be careful around the wording
that I used because of the age range and I rewrote
it quite a few times,” says Jaime. “I’ve got three
children and two businesses, so we did a lot of this in
the evenings - and my husband has heard this story a
million times!
“My daughter had a big input with the characters,
and she’s got such a good imagination. I think we
write something that we think that a child is going
to perceive as brilliant, but actually a child’s input
is exactly what you need when you’re writing a
children’s book because my daughter would think
about things like the fact that the character Amelia
has a pet hedgehog and that’s something that I
perhaps wouldn’t have thought of. My daughter was
very involved, and she loved it.”
After getting the story just right, it was time to bring
the vision to life, Jaime wanted to include a little
piece of her own life experience which had a deeper
connection to her as the author of the book - and
representation was at the heart of it.
“The character Amelia has got a hearing aid and I
wanted to include this because I used to be a sign
language interpreter and deaf communities do not
get represented very often, so I wanted to make sure
that if I was going to do something, they would be
represented in my book,” Jaime says.
Jaime had initially planned to give
the published book as a present to her
young family member who was the root
of inspiration to write the story. But she
soon found out that it wasn’t only her
shelf the book was about to be sitting
on.
“My young family members’ birthday
was very close to the publication date,
she knew that the story was based on
her and she gave me the inspiration and
I wanted to make sure that she had that
book for her birthday,” says Jaime. “I
wrote a message in the book that when
it’s World Book Day, you’ll be able to go
as yourself because the book is based
on her. So, my goal was that she would
realise how fantastically amazing she is
and hopefully it would help her through
anything she went through and that she
could go as herself on World Book Day
because that’s all she needs to be.”
Since the release of My Magnificent Memories, it
has reached number seven in the Amazon best sellers
list within its genre and Jaime has received a lot of
support around it.
“I didn’t really think that I would get the support that
I have,” she admits. “It started out as a book that
would be on my family members’ and daughter’s
shelf, I didn’t really think about it, and it was literally
one of those bucket list things to write a children’s
book. I hadn’t planned for it to be like this at all, but
it’s been great.”
Moving forward, Jaime said that she would like to
write another book purely out of passion, but for
now, if there is something that people can take away
from My Magnificent Memories, then this is it:
“I feel responsible, as a child that went through grief
- that grief is normalised for our children. When
I went through the tsunami, at that time, mental
health was not talked about, and I was ‘the tsunami
girl’ which made me feel different to everybody else
and I hated it. What happened to me was not my
fault, and how my brain reacted to that was not my
fault - and this happens to children everywhere and
there is not enough in our day-to-day life to support
children with those absolutely ginormous feelings.
There isn’t enough, so this is my contribution, and
I would hope that any child that reads the book
would realise that grief, guilt and loss are a part
of everybody’s life and there are days past the
darkness.”
THE CHARACTER OF AMELIA
WEARS A HEARING AID AND
HAS A PET HEDGEHOG
8
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