How the lost children of Craig-y-nos were found

This morning I received royalties for a book written some 26 years ago and it still comes as a surprise after all this time.
The book “Children of Craig-y-nos” started life as a  blog  I began hoping to reconnect with children who might have been in the same sanatorium as myself as a child.

I called it “The Lost Children of Craig-y-nos” but as the blog developed and the stories poured in it became clear that not only were those children still alive but anxious for their stories to be told, to be given a voice.
 
It rapidly snowballed into a major project.  What to do? I had accumulated nearly 200 stories and more than a 1,000 photos.  In desperation I wrote to the Wellcome Trust seeking help. The email landed on Dr Carole Reeves desk and together we turned the blog into a book along with an oral history recording too.

Soon we realised we had something special on our hands. For this is the only account in the world of life inside a TB children’s sanatorium told through the stories of the children who lived there.
I did not know when I started the project that I was unwittingly touching on 40 years of lost Welsh history and suppressed trauma as the stories poured out.

Talking about it for the first time proved to be a cathartic experience for us all. Not even M whom I had already been married to for thirty years had any inkling of this dark secret in my past.