Today I spoke to an adult survivor, in her 40′s and she said she was ready to get some help for the past which was weighing her down so badly… what a wonderful and brave decision she has made… how does society honour and support her decision to get help for something which was not within her control… where is the specalist help… I was one of the lucky ones, after a few not so great counsel…lors I had a fantastic person who helped me more than ever, sadly now it has become even more of a lottery, in terms of what help you get and for how long… this really needs looking at from a government level… people seem to often forget that these children grow up and have to live with this legacy… surely as a society we should be doing all we can to help them restore their lives… instead the perpetrators seem to get more help than the victims… it is so distorted!

To quote that famous line by John Donne (1572-1631) … ‘No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main’ Now I may be mis-representing what John Donne meant in this famous quote however my understanding of it is as follows… As survivors there is alot of talk of surviving, healing, thriving, moving on… but equally alot of talk of sinking, giving up, had enough, can’t do it… and I understand both sides of this fence because I have been on both sides myself. What I have come to learn in a pretty painful way is that we owe it not just to ourselves but to those around us who love and care about us to take care of ourselves. You may feel like you don’t have friends or family that care for you… but maybe just maybe… in the street where you live you mean something to someone without even knowing it… maybe a lonely person sees you going to the shop at a set time and it makes them feel comforted just to see you… maybe you said hello to a stranger at the bus stop and you were the only person who spoke to them all the day. If you are fortunate enough to have family, loved ones who care about you… you owe it to them to take care of yourself, to strive to heal… you owe it to yourself too of course but we can easily lose sight of that. Sometimes in our own pain we fail to see the cost of our suffering on those who love and care for us. It is hard to watch someone you care about slipping, it is hard to not take it personally when they tell you they don’t care if they make it or not… not to feel like they don’t matter to you as much as they thought they did because they feel like you would willingly leave them. I speak this all from experience, when I was recovering from a near fatal overdose. Friends would walk into the room and just burst into tears… and the pain of seeing them in pain, knowing I had caused that pain, I can tell you was excrutiating, nothing less than that. I was extremely ill at the time, and I needed help… nothing wrong with that. I just wanted to remind you all that YOU MATTER… if you don’t matter to yourself right now, you matter to others, even if you don’t even realise it. ‘No man is an island’ we all need one another… your family, your children, your friends, strangers even… they need you. You have a duty of care for others as well as for you… and sometimes that duty of care means looking after yourself, getting it together (with the right help and support) … so you can be the best you can be… for you and for them. I have thrown many a ‘pity party’ but their comes a time when you need to make a choice… to move on, move forwards… for the good of everyone.

I must begin by saying ‘Grandad’ is not my grandad, he is my oldest and dearest friends grandad. But he is also the only grandad figure I ever knew in my own life through my friend. Nan and grandad are salt of the earth kind of people as I described in my book. They live a quiet life and they love their family. Two things which I always loved about them when I was growing up, my life was neither quiet or at times very loving. They both refer to me as ‘Sophies little friend around the corner’ as when I was growing up, I did live just around the corner. But this continued after I was grown up and had moved… and I always liked the reference, it was familiar and it was said with love. I liked being a ‘somebody’ to nan and grandad, they always made me feel like a ‘somebody’. Its not even that I saw them regularly, not by any means. Its more like having a beautiful vase of flowers in the room and you catch their sweet scent every now and then. Through Sophie, nan and grandad have always felt like a constant beautiful vase of flowers in my life for the last 26 years. Each Christmas my card is signed ‘To Sophies nan and grandad… love from Sophies little friend around the corner’. On Saturday grandad moved on to a better place I hope, with no more pain or suffering. I just wanted to pay tribute to him here… to a gentle man and to the only grandad figure I ever knew. My thanks to Sophie for letting me share in a part of that, I am forever priviledged and enriched by the experience. Grandad can fly so high now, freed from the pain he never deserved, soaring so high because he is loved down here very much.

Even I find my title a little shocking! …however let me explain it… many of us are ‘people pleasers’… many of us care -so- much, almost in some cases too much… many of us will go all out to help someone else, sometimes at the expense of our own well being. We have a need to please, a need for approval, a need to simply feel needed. I am certainly one of those people, or I would like to say that I -used- to be one of those people. Absolutely nothing wrong with any of the above if the balance is right and we know our own worth.

Some weeks back I had something of a personal revelation and it felt pretty darn good! I was walking down the road and I overtook this man who was slightly unsteadily walking in front of me… I thought absolutely nothing of it until the man called out my name… I turned back and looked, and then I looked again and slowly realised that the person I had walked past was my first love. I have seen him in passing before as we don’t live that far away from one another, but not regularly. I have to say that he looked in my opinion dreadful… he looked too thin, gaunt in the face, some ‘war’ wounds from falling over (my 1st love was a binge alcoholic) I didn’t know until I was head over heels! I was 18 years old, I was going through hell at home and here was someone who lavished me with attention and made me feel wanted… and I hadn’t felt wanted in quite some time. I thought he was all I needed to be okay… how crazy is that! …crazy but true! Looking back with the eyes of time and more maturity I realise that I actually made things okay for him, whereas in the main he made life pretty tough. So he called me… I turn and realise its him, I said hello and then I told him he was looking too thin, because he really was! I was pretty shocked and very saddened to see him looking worse than I think I have ever seen him before healthwise. He then proceeded to tell me that he -needed- me, that he was a mess and that he needed me because and I quote “you would look after me and I need to get off the drink” … here comes my personal revelation… !!!  My reply was “If you are aware that you are in a bad place and need help… then you can go to your DR, go see a professional and get the help you need. Now maybe to some reading this that will sound a bit harsh but for me it was quite something. Those heart strings were tugging, until I tugged them right back under control and I asked myself… when will he ever help me? …when I needed him where was he? …who is going to take care of me? …the answer is… ME – I AM … for someone who has been abused and spent a long time with her self esteem through the floor, for someone who was such a people pleaser… trust me that was a revelation! I granted myself the permission to be selfish. I protected my heart from further heartache, I protected my body from further potential domestic violence, I protected my mind from all the torment that goes with trying to help someone who will not help themselves. Yet even as I type this a little part of me would love to think I could be the rescuer for him… but I chose to rescue myself… permission to be selfish…granted! It does not mean I don’t care, it doesn’t mean I’m not sad for him and his situation, it means that I have enough sense of self to know that I am actually not what he needs to get well… he needs drive/determination/desire in the pit of his stomach to overcome his drinking demons… I cannot give him that, I could however make myself ill whilst trying to. I have done that in the past and this won’t be a case of history repeating. I care about him… but now I also care about me!

I have posted this on facebook several times in recent months, I don’t know who the quote is made by but its a brilliant quote to end on… If you’re not being treated with love and respect, check your price tag. Perhaps you’ve marked yourself down. It’s YOU who tell people what you’re worth by what you accept. Get off the clearance rack and get behind the glass where they keep the valuables! Bottom Line: Value yourself more! If you don’t then no one will. I’m priceless!! Are you?

Last week as I was signing out of facebook I made the following comment in our survivors support group which was… ‘Sometimes survivors are like pure oxygen to me’. I said it in a heartbeat and have spent time since thinking it over…and my conclusion is how true this is! I remember the first time I -knowingly- met with other survivors… hearing the other stories was difficult and yet just knowing they knew a lot of what was making my own self tick was a comfort. With fellow survivors you can say alot… without having to say alot. You are allowed to feel any which way and they are the one group of people in my life who have never said -just get over it-forget it now-stop talking about it- why is that? … because they know what it is to live with this kind of past. They understand how we don’t have the luxury of being oblivious or choosing to ignore things as those around us can and often do. It is so healing to hear another survivor say something which you have thought or felt for many years but never been able to express. To see another survivor doing really well can give the rest of us hope when we are in need of it. It gives us some energy to fight on because we can see that what they have is possible for us too. To see another survivor struggling makes us want to pick them up and set them on their feet again… because we have been down in the place to which they have fallen. When life is making you feel suffocated… other survivors really are like pure oxygen. I for one am so thankful for each and every one of them. I know my world would be a much more isolated place without them.

I spent over 5 years in therapy of one kind or another…during that time I battled to find peace with my thoughts, to reconcile with my inner child and to find a true purpose for daily life. It was a long, long road but it was worth it. Am I ‘fixed’ or ‘perfect’ now? No…but I have a life which I never thought would be possible. In my 20’s I decided that my life was finished, that there was nothing I wanted enough to make me stay! In my early 30’s I have so much that I want to do, often the day doesn’t hold enough hours in it! Now I have embarked on another journey which in many ways feels equally as long. I have decided to try to find the other part of me…and strangely so I am even finding it uncomfortable to type what that is! I have spent a long time feeling like I want to be a butterfly but I am only a cocoon…and cocoons whilst they sure serve a purpose, they are not terribly appealing! I am trying to make peace with my body…trying to lose weight and see if there really is a butterfly in there somewhere. When you spend years having your body used like a rag doll and thrown down again, it’s really hard to value it. How do you value something which others have treated as disposable? How do you love a body which you know has had your abusers hands all over it? Well that is the challenge…and I am on that road. I am currently losing weight & am actually rather enjoying looking at accessories, shoes & all things girly! Up until recent times if someone said ‘oh be careful not to bang your head’ or such like…I would instantly respond “It’s okay it doesn’t matter” until one day I said that out loud as usual and then inside myself a voice said ‘hey it does matter if you get hurt’ and I quite liked it! Suddenly I was beginning to see that my well being mattered as much as the next persons. It may sound like a small thing but to me it was pretty major! So here’s to my quest to break open that cocoon… pass me another lettuce leaf!

***TRIGGER WARNING***
WOW my ex just rang… and I mean my ex from a long long time back… more than 10 years… and my friend is right…she said I should just put the phone down as soon as I hear his voice…and I should…but I don’t!!! Something about that first love even though it was -bad- ! But today he is really really drunk and it just brought a whole heap of memories flooding in, WOW… hard to believe I was even ever in that relationship now… and he was being so ‘nice’ on the phone and keeping himself in check…and yet when he is that drunk he can turn on a sixpence to coin an old saying. To think after he treated me so badly…and he would feel guilty the next day and start packing a bag to leave…and I would cry and beg him to stay!!! Because I felt -I- needed him, that he -loved- me and without him I didn’t really have anything at all…now more than 10 years on I know that actually everything I need is within myself…I don’t need anyone else to make me feel validated and I know that love will NEVER intentionally cause a bruise. Love is not throwing a hardback book at my spine in a drunken rage…or trapping me in a room and telling me he is going to kill me…Love is loving myself to walk away and to stay away. Everything that scared me so much in my father…all his drunken rages when I was a small child…and then I did repeat that cycle. He was the first person outside of family to make me feel I was loveable… the price tag was an expensive one… being loved by him meant having to go fetch him from the pub before he got into a fight…having to clean up sick in the mornings…having to sit and wonder/worry what state he was going to come home in…being slapped, kicked, spat at etc. Nobody should ever pay that price…that is not love…that is abuse…thank God I came to my senses and left. This rag doll may not feel like or look like a princess…but she knows she wants to be treated like one…not even like a princess actually…just a valued person…isn’t that what each one of us should want at the very least…’Nobody’s Ragdoll’ as my next book is titled IS my statement of intent more than anything else to never again be someone’s ragdoll.

***TRIGGER WARNING***
Recently I came home from a talk at the local college and it went well…but I was thinking…all the talking I did, the questions people asked, the things I shared…does anyone ever know the full extent of what it was like, can they ever know…can they know how it was to lay in bed night after night listening out for the creaky floorboard on the landing…the one just before the bedroom door…the one which told me he was about to open the door. Can they know how it was afterwards…I mean after he has walked away and you are left half clothed and physically in pain…and your thoughts are scattered all over the place and you wonder how your going to re-gather yourself…but somehow I always did. For all the words I put on a page, all that I share about how it was for me…can people truly know the cost of this epidemic that is child sexual abuse? I feel like no matter how many ways I say it and how many times I share it, I can never convey the full horror of living it…do I even want to? I think that I do want to…I need people to know…know what it does to a young life…what it takes away…what it smashes to bits…what it leaves behind for you to wrestle with for years on end. Recently my mother was reading an article in the local paper about a football coach who had been caught after abusing kids for over 30 years…and she said to me…all those lives he has ruined. Nothing about me…about my life that her son almost ruined…how is that? I have never admitted this before but just every now and then, and really quite fleetingly I think to myself only if I die will they know how much this has cost me…maybe if I died they would have to see what the sexual abuse did to me. See the legacy of living with it for half of your childhood and then living after it for the rest of your life. But of course I know that dying is in no way shape or form the answer to this. I will keep on talking…keep on writing and sharing…trying to convey the true cost of this epidemic…in the hopes that some will be spared from this legacy.