The Ripple Effect
On Friday night, I popped into the pub for a friend's birthday.
Chris Hibbert · Writer
The past
explains us.It doesn't
get to
decide us.
Chris Hibbert writes candid, darkly funny narrative nonfiction about the things that make us who we are — and what we choose to do about them.
01 —The first book
Breadcrumbs
“What happened to the happy little boy?”
When Chris Hibbert was a child, he started hiding his packed lunches in the back of his wardrobe.
Eating hurt.
He couldn't explain why. Nobody knew what was happening.
Decades later, looking back at the things he'd hidden, forgotten and survived, Chris realised something.
He'd been leaving breadcrumbs all along.
Discover BreadcrumbsMemoir · Approx. 85,000 words
02 —The writer
I'm Chris.
I'm a dad, amateur football coach, enthusiastic cook and men's mental health charity volunteer.
I'm also someone who spent a considerable portion of his life believing that being able to cope was roughly the same thing as actually being OK.
It isn't.
I write about the things that happen to us, the stories we tell ourselves about them, and what happens when those stories stop being particularly useful.
There's some fairly heavy stuff in there.
Fortunately, there's also food.
03 —Latest writing
Latest writing
Borrow Somebody Else's Belief
Today is World Suicide Prevention Day.
Cross-Examination
The difference between accountability and self-condemnation.
Understanding why you are the way you are is useful.
Deciding that means you can never change is something else entirely.
Breadcrumbs
A memoir by Chris Hibbert
A childhood that looked happy from the outside. Experiences nobody saw. And the consequences that followed one man through relationships, fatherhood, alcohol, grief and the exhausting business of pretending he could handle everything himself.
Breadcrumbs isn't a story about fixing a broken man.
It's about understanding how he got here — and discovering that understanding your past doesn't mean handing it control of your future.
- Childhood
- Masculinity
- Alcohol
- Fatherhood
- Trauma
- Relationships
- Responsibility
04 —What's next
More stories to tell.
Breadcrumbs
The principal book
A childhood that looked happy from the outside. Experiences nobody saw. And the consequences that followed one man through relationships, fatherhood, alcohol, grief and the exhausting business of pretending he could handle everything himself.
The Useful Man
In development · Narrative nonfiction
A personal exploration of usefulness, masculinity and what happens when being needed becomes inseparable from being loved.
Things Men Don't Say
Early development · Narrative nonfiction
Friendship, fathers, sons and all the conversations men somehow manage to have without discussing the thing they're actually talking about.
05 —Notes
Shorter thoughts.
Not everything needs a thousand words.
I was once accused of having “delusions of grandeur”, which seems like a pretty impertinent thing to say to The King Of The Universe.
On SubstackWhenever someone says, "Do bears shit in the woods?", I point out that polar bears don't and then congratulate myself on being really quite brilliant.
On SubstackI never know whether to be furious or impressed when I can't get the lid off a tube of superglue.
On SubstackWhat's your earliest food memory? Mine is mixing spices for my dad's curry while he chopped onions beside me. My daughter's is sitting on the kitchen worktop every Sunday picking rosemary for the roast potatoes. Funny how the things we remember are rarely the food itself. I'd genuinely love to hear yours.
On Substack
Let's talk.
Every message goes to the same place for now.
hello@chrishibbert.com
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