'Moving to Wales helped me to process my mother's death'

Kiran Sidhu says there is continuity in the countryside which helped her to write about her mother

A writer who moved to mid Wales from London after the death of her mother says the continuity of the countryside helped her to process her grief.

Kiran Sidhu said her family "imploded" after her mother died of cancer and she lost her foundations.

She decided to leave the city and moved to Cellan, a small village in Ceredigion.

"The countryside teaches you that there is a time to live and a time to die, and it kind of simplifies life.

"This is my Odyssey really, removing myself from a place that no longer made sense," Ms Sidhu told BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour.

Some of her family relationships had become toxic, she said, and she decided to no longer put up with them.

"We put up with things when people are related to us. If it's a blood relationship you make excuses for that," she said.

The countryside felt like a "safe place to unfurl", Ms Sidhu said.

"I ran away, I literally ran to the hills."

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The move prompted her to write a memoir in which she shared her experiences of grief, home and community as well as lessons she had learned from the Welsh countryside.

'I can hear the cuckoo' was written in four months and the title was inspired by conversations with her 72-year old farmer friend Will, who taught her about cuckoos.

The migratory bird, which lays eggs in other birds' nests, is "almost displaced", she said.

"It's almost a bit like me. But it flourishes in a nest in which it doesn't really belong. It's a bit like me encroaching on the countryside."

Ms Sidhu said she could not have written about her mother's death in so much detail if she had not moved to the countryside.

Kiran Sidhu wrote the memoir in four months after moving to the Welsh countryside

"The countryside is very eternal when you compare it to the city, I live near an ocean, I live by mountains.

"I felt like my mother belonged in that mystery of life now. Everything else seemed so ephemeral," she said.

"There's continuity in the countryside which I felt quite safe in."

Leaving the "cacophony" of London behind and going on an adventure also helped her to face herself, she said, adding she did not know if Wales would remain home forever.

"I don't think home always exists in a postcode. Life changes, we change.

"It's home for now... It still fills me with wonder."