From Lost To Loved: The Journey Back To Myself.

Reader discretion: This blog contains themes of parental violence and divorce, sexual abuse, financial difficulty, and addiction. Recommended 18+

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From abused, wounded and lost to loving myself for the first time in 41 years, here is my story. My story is by no means special or unique to trauma survivors but it is mine to be shared and I share it with you in hopes that you may be inspired to write your own story. There is nothing worse than reading articles written by people who haven’t been through traumas similar to your own and aren’t doing the work they promote. This blog is intended to give you a brief overview of my traumas so that you can see that I have lived through many experiences that eventually brought me to a place of healing.

My life has been fraught with struggle, I can’t look back on my life and see a time when things felt truly comfortable. I was born in July of 1983 to a beautiful, insecure mother and a strong, wounded father. My mother was an award-winning hairdresser who was denied her dream of becoming a wig maker by her parents. My father was an alcoholic, sergeant major in the Army whose own father taught him how to use his strength for the worst. Neither of them was emotionally or physically equipped to bring me into the world, but I had arrived.

For the first three years of my life, we lived in army barracks in Dortmund, Germany. My mother was isolated from everything she knew and this gave my father the perfect opportunity he needed to turn her from insecure to emotionally destroyed. You see, my father was strong but not in the way that you would want a father to be strong, he was a violent man who used his fists to secure his own dark feelings of safety. He didn’t just inflict his wounds on my mother but on me and anyone who just so happened to be there when he felt like it.

My Father Wound

My father was a charismatic and charming man but he had a lot of pain within him that spilled out into all areas of his life turning him towards violence, alcoholism and affairs. He taught me that love came with threat and abuse and his presence filled me with fear. He was emotionally, physically, intellectually and spiritually unavailable and the expression of his pain has caused the biggest wounds within me that I carry, leaving me with both mental and physical scars.

I was never safe with my father, even the way he played with me left me hurt. He simply didn’t know how to be gentle and lead from his heart. Every touch was rough and frightening. I don’t think he ever cuddled me or kissed me goodnight. He never read a story or sang to me. He never held my hand lovingly or told me everything would be ok.

The first memory I have of him comes in the form of my 2-year-old self being beaten for making a sound while crying, from that moment onwards I learned to cry in silence.

I was born with a skin condition that was resistant to treatment. My father did not like how it looked because it reflected his infidelity, he had passed it to me in the womb, and so he decided that a knife would be the best form of extraction leaving me covered in scars that serve as a constant reminder of his disgust for himself.

I was three and a half years old when my father decided he would walk me 10 miles into town and back without a buggy. On the way home I remember vividly crying in silence from pain in my knees and I asked him to carry me. He refused. The following morning, I woke up without the use of my legs. I was diagnosed with viral Arthritis caused by excessive walking, spending two weeks in hospital until I could walk again.  

In the same year, my father decided it was time to teach me to swim by throwing me into the deep end of a swimming pool with no lifeguards while holding my mother back from saving me, screaming to her “She’ll be ok” as I gasped for air and slowly sank to the bottom. Even as a small child you understand the fragility of your own life, the fullness you experience from lungs filled with water is unexplainable, the pressure is overwhelming and the fear dominates you so much that you have no choice but to swiftly accept that maybe this is the end. I remember seeing my tiny life flash before my eyes and everything went dark. The next thing I knew I was spewing reams of water directly in his face. Some would say that it was my revenge but it didn’t feel like revenge to me.

My father’s unkindness stretched into every area of my life. I was not taught how to use a knife and fork properly and because I couldn’t pick it up the way he wanted me to he took to stabbing me in the back of my hand with a fork as punishment during mealtimes. If I didn’t look him in the eye when he spoke to me, he would grab my face in rage and force me to, squeezing my jaw to the point of dislocation. He would often scream so loudly at me that I would wet myself in fear. Time and time again I felt the full force of the pain inside of him even if I’d done nothing wrong in my young mind’s perception. Alternatively, he would ignore me acting as if I simply didn’t exist. He was simply cruel in a way that no child should have to experience.

There were times when I was safe from him. He would leave on army exercise for weeks on end leaving me in the arms of my loving but very emotionally wounded and lonely mother but when he would return, he would bring only violence with him. I do not ever remember seeing a smile on my father’s face that came from a place of happiness, only revenge. I do not have one happy memory of him.

My father left at some point in my fourth year of life but the abuse I faced from him did not end there, it simply switched homes where he allowed his second wife and her children to also abuse me. I was often isolated away from everyone when I would spend the weekend with him and his new family, shut in another room or told to sit somewhere else. I was treated as an unacceptable tag-along.

His new wife and her children always came first. He would take us out as a family for the weekend and I had to walk behind everyone, he would buy them new clothes and shoes and I would get ignored. They would get ice creams and Cola and I’d get water. They would get cuddles and kisses and I’d get scratched and beaten. I couldn’t understand why, the only conclusion I came to was that it must be me, I must be the problem. A feeling that has plagued me my entire life.

My Mother Wound

What I learned from my mother was that to have peace you must be compliant. You must tolerate extreme abuse to be seen. You may ask where she was during all that I faced above, she was being abused.

As a tiny child, my mother was loving, caring and available regardless of her suffering. She spent most of her time desperately trying to keep me safe and alive. She tried to get us away from my father several times but there was nowhere to turn and she felt powerless by his threats and capability. Her life was threatened many times right up until my parent’s divorce was finalised when I was eight. Watching the abuse my father inflicted on her will always be one of the worst horrors I’ve witnessed.

It wasn’t until my father left that my mother started to struggle with giving me the care I needed. Perhaps her body felt the space to breathe and finally feel her feelings but the nights of me eating at the dining table on my own at 5 years old while my mother was in another room eating nothing but crackers and drinking wine seemed unending. She slowly disconnected from me as life in the state my father left us in became too much to handle. We had little money and very little support. She put Cardboard in the bottom of her shoes as the soles wore in, continuously sewed up the same pair of leggings time and time again and fixed her broken bra wires with plasters. My mother often went without food so that I could eat, I remember being served the same meal over and over again – Mince, onions and boiled potatoes and everything else was Tesco Blue Stripe food. She did what she could with what she had but she was losing herself and I was slowly feeling more and more abandoned and alone.

The man my mother partnered with after my father left moved into our home when I was six years old. He was a loving man with 3 of his own children but I always felt that I didn’t fit in with them. He would end up leaving my mother almost 2 years later through an affair after my mother had no other choice but to abort a child she desperately wanted but could not birth. Shortly after this a no-contact order was issued to my father when I made the decision in court to not see him anymore, I was eight. The combination of these traumatic events and the death of her grandmother led to my mother's first Mental Breakdown. She never fully recovered.

Over time her love went from tender and gentle to overbearing and forceful. Her health declined rapidly and I became a parentified child. Between the ages of eight and twelve, I was walking miles into town to pay bills and buy groceries, carrying bags so heavy that my fingers would bruise and bleed. I would come home from school every night to a cold, lonely home and cook a meal for two which has left me with a deep aversion for cooking. After our meal, I would wash up the dishes and spend the evening playing on my own. I don’t remember ever not feeling lonely and isolated as a child.  

My Teen Years

When my mother recovered enough to get on her feet, she met another man and moved him into our family home in my early teens. Little did I know he would become a monster to me. He was a habitual liar who could not be trusted. A deeply wounded man who had experienced sexual abuse that he turned outwards onto young girls, including myself.

My school life was filled with both physical and mental bullying from both boys and girls. I wasn’t safe at home and I wasn’t safe at school. I didn’t feel safe anywhere. I was over-sexualised as a teen as I looked older than my age and often older men would gravitate towards me giving me unwanted attention, leaving me with a dislike for older men.

At the age of 15, I was attacked by a girl just a little younger than me who left me with 3 facial fractures, a broken nose, a fractured skull and more than 75 bruises on my body. I was lucky to escape with my life as she kicked me in the base of my skull. This build-up of traumatic events led to my first mental breakdown and what would become the beginning of my first addiction, anti-depressant addiction.

Shortly after the attack, I met my first love. He was in essence a loving, kind boy who filled my life with adventure but I was deeply unhappy with our dynamic and our wounds would impact our relationship leading to its eventual collapse four years later. I think this is the first time I remember feeling the full force of my abandonment wounds.

My 20s

After the breakdown of my first relationship, I would rebound from man to man seeking love and validation, I could not be alone or with myself. I self-sabotaged through relationships and grew an unhealthy outlook on love feeling that the best I would be able to do was settle for less so that I wouldn’t end up alone. This led me to eventually meet my second long-term boyfriend. He was funny and lively but I was not attracted to him and even though I spent two years with him I would never fall in love with him. He was abusive, dishonest and struggled with alcohol. He would eventually leave having cheated on me; I felt deeply betrayed but I was glad it was over. I didn’t fully grieve the relationship until recently. At the time I felt a lot of relief as his presence in my life was filled with stress, pain and fear and I often felt the desire to end the relationship. It turns out that the trust wounds I was left with from that relationship would resurface in my 30s.

In the 2.5 years following the end of that relationship, I spent a lot of time single. I took to rediscovering my worth but I failed to do the internal work that I really needed to do. I tried to meet potential suitors but I couldn’t truly connect to anyone until I was 27 and I met the man I would spend the next 13 years of my life with. Shortly after we met, I had a work accident that left me bed-bound. I broke my back and ruptured 3 discs, leaving me in severe pain with limited mobility, I was told I would never walk again. My partner was almost 9 years younger than me and the severity of the situation prompted me to offer him a route out of our relationship. He insisted that he wanted to stay and our relationship went from strength to strength but the following years would be marked by a continuation of health difficulties for me and chronic pain became a constant companion, playing a significant disabling role in my life to this day.

My 30s

My 30s would be the beginning of my journey with healing. My mother, stepfather (A wonderful man that my mother met when I was 18) and partner helped me kick my addiction to anti-depressants which I had struggled with since my teen years and their combined effort gave me the strength to get back on my feet and walk again. While this time was marked by a turning point on my road to healing it was also filled with deep grief. During this time, we were surrounded by death, losing many of our significant loved ones over a short span of two years.

Despite this, my partner asked for my hand in marriage. I was ecstatic and felt I had found my home. He filled my life with happiness regardless of all the sadness that followed us and together we formed a bond that seemed irreplaceable. His presence in my life provided me with the only time I had ever truly felt loved. We made the date for 2017.

In 2016 the death of my mother would bring tremendous sadness to our lives. Her loss shook me to my core and in some way, I was unable to return to myself from the moment she left the world. She died of sudden death; the cause was unknown. Her death filled me with a fear that I have never experienced and I truly think I will never experience again. My place in the world suddenly felt challenged as I realised there was no one left for me to belong to. I had nothing to do with my father or my father’s family, my grandparents on my mother’s side had passed, and now my mother was gone. The safety I had was now in my Stepfather and my then fiancé.

Following my mother’s death, I started to struggle with dissociation, I couldn’t comprehend what had happened to my mother and doctors planted a fear of death within me by telling me that whatever unknown cause took her, would likely take me too. Family members and close friends instilled the message that it was now up to me to be in charge of the family and take over from my mother’s matriarchal spot. This message, coupled with my fear of death and previous parentification caused me to start trying to gain control over areas of my life that I never wanted or needed to control. My inner world was in chaos, I had lost so much through my life that I couldn’t face losing anymore. The world felt scary and unmanageable and so in a desperate attempt to feel safe I micro-managed my way through the following 7 years. Little did I know that in order to feel the safety I was longing for it was inside that I needed to control, not outside.

In 2017 I married my husband in Florida. It was a beautiful, intimate and emotional ceremony with just 7 friends and family members present. I was the happiest woman alive, regardless of all the loss we experienced I felt more loved than I had ever felt. We were deeply bonded; he was my best friend and soulmate.

Though we would laugh daily the following years were financially incredibly difficult and caused a tremendous strain on me. I was the breadwinner of the family and The Covid 19 pandemic took a lot of work from me, just as it did many. The virus's impact strengthened my fear of death as being immunocompromised I was put into the COVID-19 vulnerable category. The political state of the world took its toll on my mental health and financially my country was in turmoil leaving my family struggling to make ends meet. I started to hate the world and everything in it felt like it was out to get me, I felt attacked at every turn and like I just couldn’t get a break from what felt like an unending struggle. Would life ever be kind to me?!

To cope I turned to workaholism, self-sabotage and numbing behaviors, all I wanted was some form of escapism to block out the internal pain of feeling unsafe. Binge-watching TV and doom scrolling on my phone for hours each night became the norm with my husband using his own coping mechanisms to get through each day. Both of us were constantly running away from the pain of years of unhealed childhood wounds triggered by recent events. These behaviours slowly eroded the connection between my husband and I and eventually our wounds led to the downfall of our relationship.

Healing

The time that I have spent alone since then has prompted me to take a journey of introspection and deep self-healing. Years of trauma had finally caught up with me and I knew that I had become someone I never wanted to be. I was not my best self and I made a vow to myself that somehow, I would find the me that I was always destined to be but never achieved.

This year I have had the chance to grieve an entire lifetime of trauma and start the journey back to my true self. The road to healing has taken me down a path that has torn me wide open in a way I had no idea was even possible. It has been dark and frightening but deeply cleansing and cathartic. For the first time in my adult life, I can see through the fog and at times I can find a peace inside me that I have never previously experienced.

Through shadow and inner child work I have discovered a new me that I have never experienced and the world has not seen. Learning to understand my behaviours and patterns has given rise to a refreshed and renewed outlook on life and my connection to others. I have finally learned to feel and identify my feelings fully and I can now sit with pain in a way I was never able to, I no longer run away from what I feel. 

Somatic work has given me the ability to identify trapped pain and trauma within my body, helping me to understand years of chronic pain and health difficulties and why no matter how many tears I cry, the sadness didn’t leave me.

Understanding anxious attachment has helped me understand myself and how I connect to my world. Attachment healing has shown me why I have struggled with codependency and self-sabotaged my way out of connections. Self-love, self-care and self-validation practices are helping me to feel a sense of being whole and complete on my own by learning to meet my own needs, rather than rely on the ever-changing abilities of those I love. This knowledge is now shaping healthier, stronger and more secure, loving and trusting bonds with my family and friends.

Differentiation and individuation have helped me discover the person I am truly meant to be. It is helping to return me to the things my young, beautiful and innocent self desired more than anything that my older self abandoned in favour of love and validation from others, my love for dance and music and my heart-centered nature.

So, why a blog?

Along my journey, I have made a lot of new beautiful connections who have become interested in my life and my healing, with several friends asking me to write a book. I felt that a blog would be a better option as I feel a desire to connect with a community of like-minded individuals with the view of helping each other. My blog will include topics of self-healing with the ultimate goal of returning to self through heart-centered practices, practices that I am following myself.

I have come to understand that returning to or finding your true being is the most important thing you can do for yourself; you owe it to your soul to become the best version of yourself but you don’t have to do it alone. There is a whole hidden community of wounded, ever-loving beings desperately trying to find their way in the dark. I hope that my blog provides a little corner of light for you to feel warmth in and that you will join me in making that light shine brighter.