Me, My Mad Mum and Others

INTRODUCTION

It always amazes me how timely life is, despite my particular talent at procrastinating. Although I had waited several months for a meeting with Marie Huxtable the morning we finally met was exactly the right moment to begin my journey of recording my account, an autobiography, a dissertation, a thesis? What it will turn out to be is not the important part, it is writing it down, capturing it as something other than the ideas I spout off to anyone that will listen.

Unusually I’m someone who likes myself. I find myself an exciting and interesting person to be around. I would like to tell the story of how I came to be the me that I am today, as I believe it is an interesting and inspiring story. It’s not just me who thinks this, I have been told so many times before by other people who have listened to parts of my story that I really should write a book about it. So whatever this becomes at least I am finally writing it all down.

I work with young carers, managing a service in Bath and North East Somerset. I hold a participatory value base and have been working for 4 years to enable the young carers I work with to design a service that they would like. I see my role as an enabler of their ideas. Although I have a lot of ideas myself I try to only use these to enhance what the young carers want. As a result I enable the young carers to choose the short breaks they want make funding bids themselves and spend their own budgets. I listen to their problems and then empower them to make their own solutions.

Currently we are launching school packs. I initiated this idea because I was hearing from so many young carers that they were having negative experiences in schools. As I had a social work student starting she created the extra capacity to run this project and we put together some consultation days and looked at what would be useful. An information pack was designed by the young carers and my student Corinne put together their drawings and the information they wanted into a format and a draft policy for schools to instigate. A number of young carers felt confident enough to launch these in their schools with a view to sharing this with their peers and training the staff. To me this is the full cycle of participation and is something that is not just embedded in my practice but defines it.

Perhaps you are thinking that this isn’t exciting and what does it have to do with me, my mad mum and others? Well it is my experiences in my life that have led me to work like this and hold these values. My social work students are taught to locate themselves before they start a piece of work. If I had to locate myself this is how I would do it in a paragraph. It will take me the rest of this book to untangle it.

I am a 29 year old female, 1/8 African, 1/8 Polish, 1/8 Scottish, 2/8 German, 3/8 English (but they never give space for that level of detail on those equal opportunities forms). I am both middle class (my foster parents own their own business and I have a BSC Upper Second class degree in Psychology and Social Policy) and underclass (my biological parents both had/have schizophrenia, have been/were unemployed for most of their lives and at various points have been/were drug addicts and alcoholics (my dad is dead)). I was fostered at 3 and half, in my foster family I am the youngest and have 3 older brothers, in my biological family I am the oldest with a brother with the same mum and dad and a sister with the same mum and a different dad. As a result I am also a middle child! I am heterosexual although in my early 20’s I did make some experiences with a female friend. I am an atheist although I was once a born again Christian and I do believe in my amazing brain which is capable of being what some people would call spiritual. I have no physical, mental or learning disabilities that have been diagnosed by white, western medicine, although I suspect other cultures may have something to say about my health! I vote Liberal Democrat although I have voted Green Party but believe politics in Britain needs to make a stand for justice. I believe in justice.

My life has located me in such a way I refuse to be put in any boxes and I work in the method I do because the label ‘young carer’ tries to box in the children and young people I work with. I work to enable them to not to be kept in that box but to design their own futures and solutions.

POWER

Although I have always struggled with the concept of power, as a professional adult I have become aware that it is impossible to ignore. As a child I always wanted to be an adult because I wanted to make my own decisions, I didn’t realise it then but this was because as a child I felt I had no power and as an adult I believed I would have power.

I was conceived in Dublin when my parents, Barbara and Bill, had joined the Children of God. My parents returned to Dorset but before I was even born I had been put on the child protection register and within months of my birth on the 31^st May 1979 in Christchurch, Dorset the County Council applied to have me taken into care. A Care Order was made on 8th August 1979 as my mum had suffered from post natal depression and had been admitted to St Anne’s hospital for four weeks and had had to receive electric shock treatment.

My parents married in December 1979 and I had gone to live back with my parents but had to be fostered again in 1981for 4 weeks because we were living in a cold damp caravan and my mum had another breakdown because she couldn’t cope. She went back into hospital whilst I was fostered. Although my parents got a council flat by October 1992 my mum went back to hospital and the local authorities decided that I should go to a long term foster placement. So many decisions and my parents and I had no power to change these and so this is the way the events flowed. My mum says my dad started drinking heavily at this point and both my parents being hippy kids were smoking a lot of cannabis and doing a lot of LSD. Whether this was an attempt to take some power back over their mental health, I don’t know but it back fired and I was taken into long term care.

I only have memories of this time from a photo album that I took with me to my foster parent’s house and a memory I clung to where I came running down a flight of stairs and sat down and spread jam on my bread with my knife. This was important to me because in my long term foster placement I had to use a tea spoon to take jam out and put it on my bread and I longed just to use my knife. How funny the things are that we cling to!

I remember a lot about the first day at the White’s my long term foster family. On the way in Mr Herringshaw’s car I was sick. I suffered from car sickness as a child but I suspect even at that age I had an awareness of the trauma that was coming that day. I remember clinging to my mum’s leg that whole day to the point that I wouldn’t leave her even when she went to the toilet and I remember my foster brother’ s, James, Steven and David, all looking down the stairs in height order looking big and scary. I wouldn’t talk at all that whole day whilst my parents were there and my foster dad, Stuart, always said to me ‘I thought you would never talk and then when me and your (foster) mum (Jo) put you to bed that night I tickled you and you laughed and told me to stop it’ He always said and then I never stopped talking from that point on!

I remember staring at the wire fence at Corfe Castle First School, where I attended from the age of 4-9, and imagining climbing it and running away so that I could choose how I would live my life. I wanted even more than that to be an adult because from my perspective it was adults who made all the decisions about my life and it never really mattered what I wanted it carried on the same. It was never that simple of course. I did have chances to say what I wanted but I quickly came to see my self as having 2 families different but equal. I didn’t want to lose either of them but I didn’t want others to choose either. I suppose it’s a bit like a conflict over land both parties can never be satisfied because they can’t both simultaneously be satisfied that the land is home.

It’s only now I realise this was a power issue. Now as a professional I am acutely aware of the power I possess over children’s lives, this has shaped my values in working in an empowering way so as to ensure I don’t repeat feelings I had as a child that all the decisions about my life were being made by adults.

My biological parents wanted to discharge the care order that has been made when I was about 5. They were prepared to live in Germany with my mum’s parents even though neither of them got on well with them and it would have been a big sacrifice for them, giving up much of their own freedom to enable me to live with them. At the age of 5 I didn’t understand much of what was happening but I remember having a day off of school to go to court. The court was in Bournemouth which was a half an hour drive. My foster parents drove me. As we walked into the court building it smelt like chlorine and it reminded me of swimming pools. I loved swimming so it made it feel like a bit of an exciting day out, rather than a potentially life changing day.

My social worker Mr. Herringshaw was an older man and I related to him like a grandfather. He asked me what I would say to the judge. I said to him that I would curtsey to the judge and say I didn’t mind what happened as long as my brothers, James, Steven and David didn’t mind. In the end it was decided that the case wouldn’t be heard that day as it was too unlikely that I would be returned to my biological family. I don’t remember having any strong feelings one way or another just that it had been exciting in the court house and I was a bit disappointed I wouldn’t see the court room and get to curtsey to the judge. My foster parents took me to a café in Wareham afterwards for cake and it seemed like it had been a fun day off of school.

In reflection the process had been very participative in principal; in so much as I was being given the opportunity to say what I wanted to happen. However, I don’t think I had really understood what it would mean if the case had been heard and I had moved to Germany. I would have grown up speaking a different language with a different family and different culture. It highlights to me that when I give small children options it is so important I really explain to them in a way they can relate to what the consequences will be of any decision they make.

As an older teenage I began to participate by becoming a co-opted member of the social services committee in Dorset. My role was to advise the members from my perspective as a young person who had experienced services from social services. I found this empowering as I could see that what I was doing could effect change for more than just myself. I suddenly realised that I did have power as a young person that I would actually lose as an adult and I tried to get involved with as may opportunities as possible.

The role as a co-opted member involved attending quarterly meetings at the council chamber in Dorset. David Joanniddes came to visit me at my foster parents’ house to explain the position. He was a tall white man with tight curly hair greying but had obviously been a gingery brown. He had a beard and perhaps because my foster dad had a beard it made me feel he was friendly. He was the director of social services but came to speak to me with no hint of the power he held except that he was in a suit.

By this time I had become very analytical and I on meeting David he had a warm greeting and treated me as an equal. He explained the position without patronising me and explained usually young people hold the position for 4 years. He explained I would get travelling expenses and that their would be a lot of paperwork and that if I wanted to speak at a meeting I would get a 5 minute maximum time allowance for each item. He explained that this was the same for every member of the committee and that it was to ensure the meetings productive and got through all the material they needed to. He also explained that because I was a co-opted member and not an elected councillor I could only advise and not vote on the final decision. I understood this and it did not make me feel less important.

The first time I came to a meeting I felt a bit daunted but I had spent hours going through the hundreds of pages of papers that had been sent to me before the meeting, highlighting bits I felt were important and commenting on parts that I felt I could comment on. I arrived early and asked at the reception to go to the members lounge as I was here for the Social Services Committee meeting. They explained that their was a code for the door and where it was. I remember entering the members lounge for the first time it was a long room with French windows along one side and comfy chairs around the room. Free tea and coffee were available and biscuits. Perhaps this is why I always think food and drinks are always important to be provided when running participation events, or just because I always think food and drink are important, my world revolves around food!

I helped myself to a drink and a biscuit and settled down in one of the comfy chairs to read through my papers again. The room was impressive but not so grand that you felt intimidated, it felt comfortable. David Johannides met me and explained that the room had been more grand in the past but now it was prudent not to spend so much public money on the members lounge, but that had made it more comfortable. We went through to the committee room this was another impressive room, darker as it had no window, the tables had been organised in a square shape. David explained this was new, that previously they had been more hierarchical in lines, but this way everyone felt more equal. Around the edge were more seats and David explained they were for visitors, that sometimes press attended but that they had to leave when private papers were discussed and we were to be careful not to leave private papers lying around. He also explained that anyone could come and hear what decisions were made at these meetings.

As more people arrived I was introduced to the other co-opted members a disabled man who came into the room along the disabled route which was a labyrinth of turns to get to this level. He was fairly large balding who although in a wheel chair was extremely animated making lots of hand gestures and moving around in his chair

He was highly motivated and advised me that it was important to say what you felt and not be intimidated. He was involved in a number of pressure groups to improve services for disabled people in Dorset. He explained that many buildings that said they had disabled access were like this making you feel different and less than everyone else. I said that I had prepared notes and had some things to say in this meeting from a young person’s perspective.

There was also a thin lady with frizzy grey/brown long hair who had bi polar disorder who represented people with mental health. I immediately took to her whether this was because I had explored mental health issues so much because of my own mum and dad’s suffering with schizophrenia and the effects it had had on me I’m not sure. She explained she was also very active in speaking out on issues affecting people with mental health issues although she explained sometimes her own mental health issues prevented her from doing so.

There was also a lady representing older people and I can’t remember the other but I remember there were 5 of us. That meeting I did speak I explained that all children in care had to ask for police checks of their friends families if they wanted to stay the night, I explained not only how embarrassing that was but how you end up missing out on important events in a child’s life such as birthday sleep overs where there is not time to organise a police check.

After the meeting many of the councillors came and said how helpful it had been to hear what I had said, how they had not realised this was something that had to happen and now understood the repercussions for all foster children. I felt like I had done something to change things by informing those who had the power to do so. This Opportunity to speak had been an empowering experience and the opportunities this position opened up would continue to empower me.

When I help this position I was able to attend many conferences and meetings as a young person’s representative. On one occasion on the phone I asked them to use me now as much as possible as it wouldn’t be long I would no longer be part of the system and my ability to comment as a young person would be gone forever. At this moment I was summing up the power I had been given as a young person but that it was limited to a time in my life that was rapidly coming to an end. The power children and young people have can be more powerful than a professional if they are given the right platform to speak from and I certainly experienced that in my speeches to various bodies it was my voice that moved them far above those of the professionals there.

When I finished university after a slight diversion to Cyprus which I’m sure I will come to later, I began working in Wiltshire as an Intensive Connexions Personal Advisor (PA) with 16-19 year old not in education employment or training (NEET). It was here I began to find out that not all professionals shared the same values and passion for working with disadvantaged young people as me. I remember one of my first cases allocated to me was a young girl aged 16; I’ll call her Sarah, who had been through the care system and had had some really bad experiences of living in childrens’ homes. Her father was abusive and a serious alcoholic and her mum didn’t want her. Along with her brother she was a really serious offender. Her record was full of violent crimes and she had been a long term offender. The first time I went to meet her was at court and I remember asking one of the professionals there I think they were a social worker or from the Youth Offending Team. When they asked why and I explained I would be working with her, they said words to the effect of your wasting your time, she’s a lost cause.

This was a shocking response from another professional and one I was to come across time and again with this girl. When I met her she was a girl with mousy blond hair wearing a track suit on and white Nike trainers. She had a face with a smile that lit up her face, she was quite small neither skinny nor fat but almost looked like she had puppy fat which gave her face a round feel. She was friendly meeting me and was relieved that she’d not been prosecuted that day. She did not seem to warrant the introduction the other professional had given me.

I worked with this girl for a year and a half and we had a great relationship. I became very fond of her and was proud when she made small achievements such as not getting arrested for a whole week and starting a training programme. She had a great character, larger than life and always treated me with respect. Unfortunately she had loyalties that ran to tightly to her family and friends and however, much work I would do with her one drinking session with her dad and she would end up back in court and often to Youth Offending Institutions. I certainly covered more miles visiting her than any of my other case load.

On one occasion I remember talking to Pat Williams who was a Supported Lodgings provider I had organised for her to stay with. Pat was an amazing women, she was an older lady probably in her 60’s with a slight frame but what she didn’t have in stature she had in character. She would take all the most challenging young people from the after care team. Kids with violent records, drug problems and mental health issues. When they came to her she’s tell them how it was in her house and that if they kept the rules then they’d get on great, if not they’d be out. She smoked like a chimney and all the kids that lived with her thought she was great. They thrived from having clear boundaries and although they test them at first they’d soon find out she was serious and she’s take no shit.

I was so upset when I spoke to Pat because I couldn’t understand why Sarah’s youth offending worker was even working with kids. She seemed to have an antipathy to kids and particularly to Sarah. I asked her why on earth would you want to work with kids if you don’t even like them? Her answer shocked me and has stuck with me ever since. ‘Power’ she said to me. ‘Working with vulnerable kids gives you enormous power because they don’t have any’. I said at the time I didn’t understand power and why you would want to have power over someone so helpless. But she said I would come across this again and again and she was right. So often people get themselves into positions of power to use to their advantage. Not just with service users but I have also experienced it with bad managers.

My first manager was amazing a really empowering lady called Jacky Chipping. She helped me would my values in practice and to show me practical measures I could take when things were going wrong. She also always made sure there was tea and biscuits for supervision which always helped me focus! Although she was white with frizzy mousy hair she spoke patios much to the surprise of some of our service users who were shocked when she could reply to their comments about her! Jacky helped me understand that a good manager is always there to support you, give you advice and cover your back when other professionals are complaining about the service users your working with. Jacky worked in an empowering way even though as a service manager she had a lot of power which she could have used for her own ends not to support me.

I later found out that not all managers are the same and a bad manager will use their power to belittle you, block you from resources even when it is for the benefit of service users and undermine your confidence. I remember one manager saying before she left the I had felt frustrated because she had deliberately blocked what I was trying to do. She attributed this to a ‘power struggle’ that we were in. I was amazed at this as I had not been trying to gain power for myself but to benefit the service users I was working with. Her need for power seemed to blind her from the idea that wanting more resources could be to benefit vulnerable kids not to make me feel more powerful.

I have found that when power is used in this way it has made me question my abilities and has had an adverse affect on service users from them not getting their leaving care grant to protect the budget to preventing funding being gained for activities young carers want to give them a break from their caring role. On a bigger level it has made me lack confidence and believe I’m not capable to achieve these things and stops me trying on the service users’ behalf.

Despite these negative experiences I am now a professional who works in a participative model and it has increase my recognition of the importance of giving the power back to the young people I work with. When they are given a voice it is that moment where it is not theory or budgets being discussed but lives; stories of vulnerable children and young people that are being presented. However many pressures there be on provision it is difficult to refuse to change things when faced with the reality of that lack of provision and the struggle and pain it creates.

In my position as a young carers manager I have become involved in many strategic level projects to change things at a structural level. One project was to create a hospital pack. This came about because I had been hearing from young carers I worked with how scary it is when their cared for person goes into hospital. I discussed this with Victoria Clare from Wiltshire Young Carers one day. Vick was like a mentor to me, she looked similar to me, long brown hair, brown eyes, pretty and around the same size 10-12. On occasions we could stand in for one another if necessary and described ourselves as I’m her in Bath or I’m her in Wiltshire. Vick was a few years older than me and had expanded Wiltshire Young Carers Service to work with around 600 young carers at this point and always growing. She had a talent at getting funding and a determination that ignored managers and authority figures. I didn’t have this, something fundamental in me was obedient and honest. However, despite these differences we loved working together and looking at Vicks successes ensured I never became

It was a gloriously sunny day in the back garden of my house in Bath. The back garden was a long strip that was on a steep slope. The top of the garden was tarmaced but the bottom of the garden was a grassy area and I had a picnic bench in this area round 2 sides was a thick privet hedge that totally hid us from the alleyway and people walking by. On the other side was a fence that enabled us to converse with our neighbours. I had worked hard to try to grow vegetables although my boyfriend Ben Mousley had had more success than me and his spinach had grown to Jurassic proportions and we never quite realised we could eat as much as we liked and it would continue to grow so most of the time it just grew unhindered. We had also made a hammock and stand out of a couple of huge fence posts and various pieces of rope to prevent it collapsing.

Vick and I, whilst usually trying to find pleasant venues and avoid offices for our meetings at this point, still managed to get a lot of work done when we met up. It had been one of those days and now we were sat drinking tea and eating some of my home made crumble that I had used the apples from my next door neighbours tree we were sat beside now. I began asking if she also found that the young carers she worked with were having negative experiences of going to hospital with the cared for person. One young girl had particularly touched me. She was 8 years old and her mum had had to go to hospital for several operations, during some one to one work she explained that no one told her what was happening so she believed it was because her mum was going to die and no one would bring themselves to tell her. Then when her mum was coming out she and her older sister didn’t know how to care for her properly because no one had told them and her mum would try to do more than she was capable of and end up back in hospital. The girl was getting more and more distressed but said the staff at the hospital just ignored her questions and so she just didn’t ask any more. The less she knew the more scared she got.

Vick agreed that she had similar experiences. Over that cup of tea we agreed to look at what we could do with these kids to make it better. We thought an information pack would be achievable, so we agreed to send all the young carers we worked with, about 700 at the time, a questionnaire to gather young carers who’d be interested in the project and to get more of their views.

Firstly we needed to find a way in to work with our local hospitals. This proved incredibly difficult. We spoke to the hospital social worker, and a variety of staff. All of them said the same thing the hospital is too big it’s not possible and that none of them had ever come across a young carer in the hospital so they can’t be there. Vick and I were beginning to despair when Vick met Maggie Cherrie. She was appalled by the stories and immediately asked Vick and I to come in and tell us what we would like to do.

Vick and I decided we needed to go into this meeting at full enthusiasm and ensure we got across the emotional stories and the child protection stories. The one that hit Maggie hardest was the story of a young girl walking back to Salisbury town centre after dark. She was also struck as I’d seen many times before that these young carers were as young as 5. Vick and I were energetic and enthusiastic, taking off from where the last one ended seamlessly bringing in what we had found from the young carers questionnaires to the stories we had heard, then how we could gather many young carers to design the packs and train staff on what they needed to ensure a change occurred. Although Salisbury wasn’t my patch the hospital in Bath was very luke warm and although they liked the idea they felt they couldn’t offer anything to setting up the project but if I went away and designed it they would try to disseminate it.

I decided not to battle somewhere that was unreceptive but to work in Salisbury making it clear that the work we did there needed to be freely allowed to go to Bath. Maggie agreed but said they would have to fund it and not our charity but the hospital. I had my doubts but agreed to ensure the project started. Maggie was so impressed with Vick and I she also got swept up with our enthusiasm. Maggie was incredible. She organised what felt like the whole hospital to work on this project. We had a consultation day at the hospital with 26 young carers attending designing the pack, having lunch on the director and visiting wards, not just creating work to use on the packs but breaking down fears that the young carers had around hospitals. Maggie came on a Sunday, we very rarely find professionals as mad as us giving up there weekends!

Maggie then found £3000 to pay for the packs from the hospital’s charitable trust. We had been looking without any success for the quantities of draw string bags, stress toys and stationary. Maggie managed to get the hospitals procurement department to source everything. Vick and I coming from 2 small charities where when we wanted something it meant we did it or occasionally we would be able to give it to a volunteer or student on placement were bowled away. SO it was with the whole project, IT departments, training departments, readership panels etc were called upon and were touched by the project and worked to get things done.

Maggie did work us hard too, at every opportunity she would find a way to raise the profile and say I’m putting you in for this award or put an application into this competition. We were all too pleased to do this extra work though as not only did it raise awareness of the project and gain extra funds but it gave the young carers we were working with a great sense of achievement and rewarded their hard work.

This project has finally made its way to Bath and I now have a strong advocate in Theresa Hegarty. Less energetic than Maggie but quietly persistent. She has strong participative values. She has managed to get £3000 to fund the packs despite my reservations and has already made it possible for young carers to directly impact strategic plans for patient and public involvement.

I find participation when it is done in a holistic way and allows service users to be involved in the whole cycle of a project the most effective way of empowering them. It literally gives the power back. Power to me is rather like money there is no point I accumulating it for yourself it only has meaning when it is used. If it is used for positive ventures and gets cascaded it is a good thing if it is used for destructive purposes it is a bad thing. As a professional I am seeking to cascade my power to the children and young people I work with so they can change their lives for the better and so that I do not have a chance to abuse the power I have been given by my position.

LOVE/PAIN

Love/pain poem

I began in my introduction by saying that I like myself. This has helped to define who I am both personally and professionally. It has given me confidence that negative relationships both privately and professionally have been unable to crush, although they have still managed to dent it at times. It has also enabled me to stand tall even through very difficult episodes in my life. However, as with most things it was a long process to get to this point.

When I was at first school I recall feeling that I was loved very much by both sets of parents and that although I lived with my foster parents it was because my parents loved me so much that they wanted me to live with a family who could look after me properly because they couldn’t. This got me through for a long time, rather than feeling let down I felt lucky to have two families that loved me so much and that I loved so much.

I went to Corfe Castle First School and had two best friends, although as all children do I fell in and out of friendships with them. I was also a tom boy too and loved playing football and was often found in the ‘boys’ playground kicking a ball around. I was always honest about my family background as I never felt there was any reason to hide it. It wasn’t until I was about 9 when one of my best friend’s, Alex Green, who was a complete tom boy like me, asked me about my real family adding that it must really hurt not living with them. As though someone had opened a flood gate, that I had never thought was there, I suddenly felt pain for the first time regarding being separated. I had felt disappointed before. Mum would visit every 6 weeks, along with my brother, all the way from Germany. Mum had moved back to Germany to live with her parents when she had my brother, it had been a choice my mum and dad could have taken to prevent me being taken into care, but they decided not to and I had gone into care. I suppose when mum found herself pregnant with my brother she couldn’t face him going into care and went to Germany to give birth to my brother.

I would look forward to each visit by my mum and brother with the keenness that most children save for Christmas. On the occasions when mum couldn’t visit it would be explained to me that mum was too ill to visit. The disappointment was the same as telling a child Christmas had been cancelled.

When Alex asked me about the pain I felt, it was as if this was the first time I had felt a physical pain, like a blow to the solar plexus. I realised it was not as simple as feeling lucky to have two families, but that actually the love I thought I felt was marred by the pain of separation.

My confidence wasn’t dented because of this realisation. I still felt like I was loved by both sets of parents and this enabled me to love myself. It did however begin to make me question whether love could be without pain.

My foster parents belonged to a Baptist church and from the age of 3 ½ I went to church with them. I was a bright child so I began to learn the biblical stories and at Sunday School I could usually answer every question the Sunday School Teacher would ask. I felt a resonance as a child with the God I was taught about. I was taught that he loved the world so much he gave his son to die so that our sins could be forgiven. I suppose I felt like this was a bit like my parents having to give me up so I could be loved and looked after by another family, that they too had made the ultimate sacrifice. I also found it easy to relate to God as a father. I already had two and I felt quite amenable to having more.

My friends started to become more important as I moved from first school to Swanage Middle School from aged 9-13. I was the only one that moved from my first school and I was scared I wouldn’t know anyone, but there were a couple of girls I knew and I soon made some best friends as well as boyfriends. At this age they were simple relationships and involved a bit of kissing and cuddling, although now as an adult it seems horrible to think that I was only 11 when I first kissed a boy with tongues. But at age 11 I felt time was running out for me! It wasn’t until I neared my teenage years that I started to feel differently, perhaps because boys were starting to try and feel parts of me that weren’t there yet. I was a late developer and along with my Christian up bringing didn’t want to have sex yet. My friends started to become the most important thing to me and as I moved on to comprehensive school.

I started to feel like my family was actually a bit complicated I had three best friends I was able to talk these things through with. Susie Moss who was like bouncy ball and always full of energy, skinny with mousy hair and had been my best friend throughout Middle School as well. Helen Bray, who was always just slightly cleverer than me, had long straight blond hair and was an excellent dancer and later pursued it as a career. And Tamsin who was skinny with blond wild ringlets and piercing blue eyes that could look psychotic when staring at a camera.

These friends came from wildly differing backgrounds and had there own struggles to deal with whether it was their complicated families or to come to terms with abuses that they had experienced or just working out how to get through life as a teenager. We were able to talk through our feelings and although we didn’t always look after each other, we tried.

The other love that was a painful exploration for me was when my sister Champagne was born. I had grown up with 3 older brothers and my younger brother Sam was born when I was 4 as much as I loved them as a sister does I had always thought it would be nice to have a sister. When I was 13 my real mum had a baby girl. My mum had become ill every time she had a baby and with my sister it was no different. However, it was the first time I was old enough to realise the pattern. When I first met Champagne my mum’s boyfriend brought round this tiny baby all wrapped up in blankets and gave her to me to hold. Her face was bright red and she may as well have been an alien for all the connection I could make to that baby. Mum did recover and as my sister got older I tried to enjoy seeing my sister but a baby quickly forgets and it felt so painful that I was a stranger to my own sister.

I wrote this poem when I was 14.

My Sister

Champagne a wine of millionnairres

A drink of celebration

Sparkling, clear and full of life

A face bright and cheerful

I could sit and watch you

Love flows from me

I see your attainments being fulfilled

I notice your joy with each new acheivement

You are beautiful in every way

I cannot sit and watch you alone -

I must reach out and touch you

But you cry

Your tears make me sad and also want to cry

Like bitter lemon being poured into the glass

Chmapagne once so clear, not cloudy and bitter

For I am a stranger you do not know me

Each tear pierces me like a knife

A pain so agonising stabbing into my heart

My sister one day you will know me

Until then little baby I will love you

This stranger you see

This stranger is me

This stranger your ever loving sister.

As I grew older I started to bring in my view about love hurting and as a younger teenager my diaries are full of stories of unrequited love and the pain that I felt throughout each of these sagas I felt so strongly about at the time. That each time I would either fall in ‘love’ with someone too old, too unrealistic, too removed or that when it would look like something might happen my attentions would have moved else where. All these emotions are all very normal teenage emotions and although my diaries are full of the significances of them, they mostly fell by the wayside until I eventually fell in love at 17.

Tom Marsh was in the same year as me and had long brown hair, several of my friends had liked him throughout school but I had never really spent much time with him, throughout main school he had been in the other half of the year and in a comprehensive school of 1200 people it was easy not to get to know people if they weren’t in your classes. I did know he was one of the 4 boys in our year that were Grungers. Grungers wore a cross between hippy and punk clothing and listened to mainly Seattle guitar based bands the most famous of which was Nirvana. I was a grunger as well and along with the 4 boys and about 12 girls in our year, we were proud to be different. I liked not being the same as everyone else, I loved the music and I liked buying my clothes from charity and hippy shops. I felt like it was deep and helped me to explain the confused feelings I began to have about my two sets of families. I no longer felt lucky to have two families but felt like I didn’t belong to either family.

In sixth form the groups became much smaller and Tom became one of my closer friends. I felt like I could talk to him about all the confusing feelings I felt, along with a couple of other friends. Russell, who loved rugby and was a very small version of a front row player, although not slim he was never big enough to play a front row position as an adult and Tamsin who I mentioned earlier remained one of my best friends.

I held to the opinion that Tom was just a friend for a long time and although we would talk into the small hours and want to spend all our time together I believed it was because we has a special friendship. I felt I was too screwed up to have a relationship with anybody. At 17 I started to feel like no where was home. I felt like a stranger at my foster family, because they seemed so different to me. I wanted to travel and spent hours analysing how I felt about things and had friends around or spent time at friends houses all the time. We could talk for hours. My foster parents didn’t understand, they had lived for over 20 years in a small village and had only been away for a few years in their late teens and early 20’s as they had grown up there. It all felt so small and stifling and I didn’t know how to explain it to them. My real parents seemed to be more like me. They were both hippies in the 70’s and my mum used to take my brother Sam and my sister Champagne who was born when I was 13 to Spain walking across the mountains with prams. It seemed so romantic to me and I was excluded because I was in foster care. My home was not with them either. It all hurt so much the pain began to eclipse the love I knew they all felt for me.

Tom made it easy for me to talk all of these things through and to realise it wasn’t just being fostered that made you feel like your parents don’t understand you. He felt the same way with his parents and as I now realise that so many teenagers feel. He made me laugh as well. I was so serious about all these things as a teenager, everything was always so painful and confusing that being able to laugh and have fun was a great tonic.

It still wasn’t until Tom crashed his car that I realised I felt more for him than just friendship. I had driven over to see him and weirdly he wasn’t there. His dad had said he’s gone to visit his friend Charlie in the next village but had said he’d be back for when I arrived. It was in the days before mobile phones were owned by everybody so we tried the landlines. We eventually found out he’d crashed his Mazda 323. I was so worried I suddenly realised I was fooling myself to think it was just friendship. A few days later on the 21^st November I plucked up the courage to tell him, petrified I was going to ruin everything as we had already decided to just be friends when he had decided he felt more than friendship for me. I’d been so adamant that there was nothing more and I knew it was going to cause problems with friendships and other guys that I knew liked me as well.

When I was 16 my body changed suddenly from being a girls body into a woman's body. It felt like one day the tops and clothese I wore were ok and the next day people were saying I was a bit of a slut and just wanted the boys to stare at my new boobs. Tom was always honest about it. Yeah you look great and of course boys like it but it's not all they like about you, in one diary entry I wrote when I was 17 I describe Tom saying 'how I need to more appreciation of myself and stop blaming myself all the time'. At 17 I felt everything was my fault that I screwed up everthing my friends and myself. I explain it in my diary 'I can't accept compliments they upset me horrendous amounts just making me cry heartily, I'm not sure why probably because I'm so independant to do everything for and within myself. I also blame myself for everything giving me a complete self hate. I can see logically I do some good but I see far more the amount I screw up. I hate that more than anything as I know I'm no longer hurting myself but someone else, so I hurt myself more to compensate'. It took me a long time to accept Tom's view of me and the views of my friends and family. I felt I had so many issues and that they kept hurting the people I loved most. However, with constant support Tom taught me to find myself beautiful and ignore other people's comments and to realise that actually I worried about hurting other people because I am such a loving and caring person and that is something to be proud of. As I accepted Tom's love for me I learnt to love myself as well.

We were wildly happy and although he knew I had an extreme Christian view of no sex before marriage he preferred to view it as believing in sex after marriage and we became a couple. All the issues I worried about did become a problem and friends were hurt and other guys were upset, but we were happy and didn’t really know how to prevent that happening so we carried on. In the end it turned out to be something altogether different that made the love I felt for Tom painful.

Tom smoked a lot of cannabis and dabbled in other drugs. By this age I had decided that the enormous amount of drugs my parents had taken in the 70’s particularly cannabis and LSD had caused their mental health problems. I began to hate drugs and blame them for the issues in my family. However, I knew Tom took drugs, most of my friends did, but I hadn’t realised that I was about to fall in love with someone who was personifying the one thing I’d decided to lay all my hate and anger and sadness into. And so my first love became a long battle of trying to rectify how I felt about my real parents and losing my opportunity to be a family and the blame I placed on drugs that I saw doing it all over again to the boy I’d fallen in love with.

Our first Christmas this all came together, I had not seen my real dad for 7 years and felt I needed and wanted to. It was a painful area for me because I loved my dad but wanted to hold a romantic image of a creative hippy who wrote poetry and played guitar. I didn't want that image to be shattered by actually seeing my dad and the realities of him as an alcoholic and drug addict with schizophrenia. I liked to look at the pictures of him when I was a baby with a big black afro and 70's clothes with a big smile and when the LSD was still a good trip and having a baby made him smile. It had come to a point now where I needed to see him just to know him as a real person and to have him as part of my life. Tom came with me and visited him at my nan's house. He had a friend round and his lips were reddy blue from the red wine he was drinking. He was over excited to see me I could tell and I was nervous, I couldn't believe how old he looked, his black afro was now grey and his face much older and his teeth all black. He showed me his guitar and played me old 70's music like the Stones. He had a big spliff with Tom and it was like my two worlds collided. I didn't know how I felt at the time, in some ways it brought everything together. In my diary I wrote about the day. I said 'It was kind of good to see both together'. But it was only one step on the way to try to resolve how drugs had effected the poeple I had loved most in my life.

Put the picture of drugs in.

As I was trying to love Tom whilst hating the drugs he did, my Mum and boyfriend were slowly beginning to fall apart. Since my mum and brother had moved back to England when he was 5 mum had managed to maintain looking after my brother and later my sister. She had been in a relationship with my sisters dad for a number of years and that had provided a more stable environment for my Sam and Champagne. Howard was a thin man; I thought he looked a bit like a small bird, as he had a narrow nose. He didn’t work in any type of set job and mum and him lived on benefits, mum on incapacity benefits and him as her carer. During A-levels I explored schizophrenia and did a case study on my mum, I realised that there was a dark side to their relationship and that Howard had thought he could make mum better and yet she continued to get ill. Although mum knew she got ill, she had no power to stop herself and so the pattern continued. It wasn’t until my A-levels finished, however that I learnt that Howard had become so disillusioned that he had turned to heroin to numb the pain and mum had turned amphetamines.

I had been excited about Champagne turning 5 as I knew I would be 18 and have a car so I would be able to take her out. Unfortunately my year out that began with so much excitement turned into a difficult year. Mum had planned to move to Spain with the whole family. Mum and Howard believed that if they moved somewhere warm and beautiful it would bring an end to their problems. Mum had said I could move into her flat whilst they were in Spain and look after it. It meant free rent and freedom for me so I was happy to move in. The place needed a lot of work because mum had not kept it in a very clean state, but it seemed exciting to me and Tom and some friends were going to move in so it was worth all the work. Tom did move in and a couple of others, however, at the end of the summer mum, Howard, Sam and Champagne came back. Howard had gone cold turkey on the drive down to Spain and they had only made it as far as the South of France before they had to stop. Howard had been horrendously ill, whilst they were at a campsite. They had come back as soon as they were able to. Sam and Champagne and Mum had all come back to the flat where there was no longer room for them.

Drugs had again ruined my life even the magical adult hood that I thought would provide me with the ability to make my own decisions instead of other adults. It was beginning to dawn on me that life is always effected by the actions of others and I would never be able to shield myself from pain. Love would always be tinged with pain.

The story did not end there. Mum came back to the flat with Champagne when they got back and told me that she had rung social services and asked them to put Champagne into foster care because she didn’t think her or Howard were capable of looking after her and she needed a safe home. However, she had also phoned Howard to tell him what she had done.

I began to realise that my childhood view that mum had loved me so much she had put me into foster care was much more complex and painful. I was about to live out some of that pain.

Mum left the flat after that bomb shell and left me to look after Champagne and Sam? Not long after Howard came to the flat. It was one of those high rise council flats that has a buzzer at the bottom. To start with I said I wouldn’t let him in because he was obviously angry and it might be better for Champagne to stay with me until he calmed down. He only became more angry. As the other residents knew him so it wasn’t long before he was able to gain access to the building and was able to get to the front door. Luckily there was a bolt on the front door so although Howard started kicking the door in and shouting obsenities at me he wasn’t able to get in.

I remained calm and explained I had called the police so it would be better if he left now. The whole time I was aware Champagne was listening. I sat her down next to my huge teddy bear mum had sent to me years earlier called Cuddles and began talking to Champagne about what was happening through Cuddles. She was obviously frightened and confused. After all it was her dad at the door. It seemed to keep her calm until the police came and we had a cuddle with Cuddles.

Unfortunately, later mum came back and although I asked her not to she took Champagne with her and Howard promptly snatched her from mum on the street. My hopes of making up for the childhood I had missed with mum, Sam and Champagne as an adult, had immediately come crashing down around me in a stark reality check.

My brother was 14 and mum was determined even if the rest of the family couldn’t make it to Spain, he would. She took him to enrole in an international school in Benidorm, even though the drugs and the mess the family was in obviously showed it wasn’t going to happen. Sam later told me mum had visited him at Nadine’s the woman who looked after him in Spain and was shooting up speed. He stayed in Spain for nearly a year but the money dried up. The school and Nadine couldn’t keep him with no money, he went to a Children’s hme in Spain for a while until mum? Brought him back to England. Social Services didn’t take him into care he was 15 by this point and they thought they could procrastinate and avoid paying for him to go into care. Luckily a family he knew fought the case and they agreed to put him in care with them. By that point mum’s flat was pretty much a drug den.

Mean while Champagne stayed with Howard and even though I warned them he would run to Spain they left her there. A few months later and he absconded there and I was not sure if I would ever see her again. Amazingly after a year the Spanish Authorities recognised her. She was put into the same children’s home Sam had been in and put into foster care in Poole when a social worker was able to go and collect her

Those are the stories of my siblings. I had stayed in the flat in Poole until the autumn and moved back to my foster family. Tom had organised to go to Austrailia for 6 months and I had decided to travel on my own around Europe. We’d decided we would officially be single for these experiences, but we still loved each other and we were single only by distance and name. Our hearts hadn’t let go of each other. My family were breaking my heart, losing Tom was breaking my heart and I was falling out of love with God. All my big loves were breaking apart.

Throughout my teenage years my relationship had grown from a story that resonated with me to a belief in a God who was your friend, father, brother, lover. A God that I had a personal relationship with. I believed God spoke to me, loved me and that my life was to fulfil his will. Looking back this is a strange thing to teach a child that both parents have schizophrenia, but that is what I believed in. My relationship with God came before my relationship with Tom, before my family and before my friends. Everyone knew this and it had been the way it had been all through my teenage years. During my year out, I had tried to come closer still to God but my heart was ripping apart by the things that were happening to my family, Tom was leaving me and my friends didn’t seem to understand what was happening anymore. I suppose it wasn’t surprising because I no longer understood and they had decided that things had gone down hill because I had gone out with Tom and trying to explain that Tom had been the only one there for me when I had been trying to protect my brother and sister, when I had been trying to get to know a dad I hadn’t seen for 7 years and a mum that I was losing to drug addiction. My foster family were trying to support me and I was trying to tell them what was happening but these things were out of my depth and they had no idea what to say or do to support me.

I had always believed God would look after me, but the worse things got the less I could find God. I read Job which is a book in the old testament where God tests him until he has nothing left. I read this and along with nearly crashing my car and finding myself wishing I had decided I wasn’t made of strong enough stuff to remain a Christian. I needed to find some happiness in all this heart break and so I went to Europe losing my love and faith in God and growing my love and faith in myself.

I only travelled to Amsterdam, Brussels and then spent the next few months with my relatives in Germany. I finally found that feeling of home that had been missing for such a long time and a love that didn’t hurt. My mum couldn’t love her family in Germany without all the pain of her childhood and her experiences of her mum and dad’s over protective natures, but for me it was freedom. My Aunt Sabina had died her bright red to celebrate her divorce, my cousin Annette was a true hippy, not drugs all ethics and simple love of nature and of yourself and here I felt I had come home. I spent a wonderful few months walking and talking, visiting places in Germany allowing some wounds to heal, rectifying losing my love for the Christian God I had followed with all my heart for so long and finding that if he still existed and loved me as the bible said he did, perhaps he would be happy to see me finding that I loved myself and could grow to be an amazing person none the less.

I was still unhappy at times but I was able to miss Tom but be happy he was enjoying himself, I still struggled to know what to do about my family but was able to share it with Sabina and Annetta. It was a timely break and a time I needed to know that all love did not have to be painful.

When I got back I spent a summer in Dorset, enjoying being with Tom and preparing for university. We worked in the Lulworth Beach Café and I spent most nights sleeping at friends houses or in my little brown Nova. It was fun but all too short and soon I was facing separation from Tom again and was off to London.

London held excitement too but really university to me was another ticket I needed to get my freedom. Freedom to work for a job I enjoyed. I wasn’t organised for university, when I went up for Fresher’s Week I didn’t have anywhere to live and only knew I didn’t want to live in Halls. A friend of mine Steph Withey who had been my brother James’s first love and although it had ended badly had remained friends with the family let me stay on her futon while I looked for somewhere to live. She worked in a pub in Islington called the Tram Shed and thought the manager Andy might let me live in and work part time. I sat at the bar for an evening until Andy had time to meet me who said I could live in and work for my rent and that the living quarters were still being built but if I didn’t mind builders being around I could move in straight away. By this point I was a curvascious 19 year old and this probably helped Andy make his decision but I didn’t care I had a job and somewhere to live I was going to be ok.

My first night at the Tram shed my friend Matt Moore who had fallen in love and had his heart broken by my friend Helen Bray helped drove me up with a car full of stuff. Matt had cut off his long blond hair that he had when we first met him and dressed like Jarvis Cocker. I had become firm friends with him even though it had been my friend that had hurt him. Throughout the process I had been there for everyone and had managed to keep everyone’s friendship. When Matt dropped me off I piled it into the middle of a freshly painted room with just a bed and felt happy to be there even if there was nothing there!

Matt had been there for me when Tom had left for Austrailia just as I had been there for him when Helen had broken up with him. The pain of Tom leaving was terrible I was sure he would find someone else in Australia and sleep with them. Tom and I were our first loves and I had not really had sex with him, however close we had come. I couldn’t bear him losing his virginity with someone else. Matt had looked after me that first night, understanding the pain of separation. Again that pattern of being left even though I was still loved was there and just reinforced the feeling that love was always tainted with pain.

By the time I was in London Tom had come back and we had given each other our virginity. For several months Tom lived in Bournemouth and I lived in London and we travelled back and forth. Eventually Tom took the chef’s job at Chumley’s in Wimbledon where I had followed my manager Andy’s move.

I took another year out between university. I found it hard to study, it felt too removed from real life. I was getting more distant from mum as she turned more to drugs. Sam had gone into foster care and Howard had run away with Champagne, she was angry and instead of trying to be close to me she was angry with me for having another family that I loved. I came back and visited my foster family, after a blip when I was 17 and I had struggled to communicate all my complicated feelings they were again my family and I loved them. They supported me by listening and just being a stable loving place to be. They didn’t understand and they couldn’t tell me what to do but they did what they could.

During my year out Champagne was brought back to England to move to a foster home in Poole. Christine I’anson had fostered approximately 70 kids over the years and was highly experienced at having children from difficult situations. I was over joyed to see Champagne again. I had thought I would never see her again. She had pretty short blonde hair that made her look like a pixie and a tanned face. She remembered me and seemed neither happy nor sad to be back in England. It was a great relief to me and I remembered life happening to me when I was her age and not really being able to afford to feel happy or sad but just having to let the adults make the decisions they were making and get on with it as best as I could.

I wanted to wrap her up and not let her be taken away again but I knew the plan was to slowly move her back to mum and Howard. I felt it was madness after Howard had run off with her before, but knew that was the way things would go and enjoyed the moment whilst it lasted, feeling sure it would get worse again before it got better. I loved my sister and had often contemplated as to whether I should forget university and look after Champagne myself. I was 13 years older and an adult, I could provide a stable and loving home if she could not get that with mum and Howard. I suppose I always decided against it because I felt she needed me as a sister not as a serogate mother. I also felt that my love for my mum would be difficult to manage and would make it difficult to make the right choices for Champagne. I never did offer to look after Champagne but it was always a conflict between protecting her and trying to have a relationship with my mum. After Howard had tried to kick the door down in the Poole flat and ran away with Champagne I never liked him and didn’t want anything to do with him. I had enough complicated relationships with people I loved without having to have any sort of relationship with him.

I did return to university and in my second year my relationship with Tom came to an end. Tom had moved up to London with me and had found a job working in post production for TV. It was always an area he had wanted to work in and it was a foot in the door. I was so proud of him. I loved him so much and just felt we would stay together. Now I no longer believed in sex after marriage I had no reason to want to marry, but I would have done if he’d asked me. I didn’t really want children but we always said he’d be the house husband and I’d work. I felt things drifting in the autumn and when I returned to university for my exams in the January I thought I knew it was coming but knew I’d fail my exams if he broke up with me. I remember saying ‘Don’t say anything but if you’re going to break up with me please wait 2 weeks until my exams are over’.

He’d been talking about a girl called Sophie at work and I knew he’s been getting frustrated that he’d only ever had one relationship. He wanted to be young and play the field, he wasn’t ready to stay with me for the rest of his life. As soon as my exams were over he said he wasn’t in love with me anymore. It broke my heart, he said he cared about me but it wasn’t love. I thought I’d scream and fight but I said I’d leave and stay at my friend Vandra’s flat. She was beautiful vivascious blonde, far more than I could ever keep up with. We’d had a few experiences that Tom knew about but had accepted. I realised that wasn’t fair as I wouldn’t have accepted it of him but I’d still done it.

I left and said we’d meet up in a week to talk. I thought he’d miss me and want me back. I’d never drunk much even as a student but that week I drunk more red wine than I had my whole life. I couldn’t stay at university for my lectures and would g back to the flat crying and with 2 bottles of wine in my hand. Vandra would force me to eat before she would let me drink. I had never refused food. I’m a complete food fanatic and alcohol has never bothered me.

The next week Tom didn’t want to get back together. We talked for ages he was fair and kind and acknowledged how special the whole relationship was but was firm that it was over. I still couldn’t quite believe it which is why I suppose I was so calm. He said it wasn’t for anyone else.

I don’t know how I managed looking back but we went to the spa afterwards with our friends Charlie and Pie and I managed to talk reasonably to Pie about why it was over and went home. The next month was full of more alcohol and looking for affection from someone. I sought solace with friends but wanted to forget and find someone to make me forget how much it hurt. I didn’t want to ruin any friendships but didn’t want to have meaningless sex with strangers. I may have stopped following Christianity but my values wouldn’t let me sleep around. I ended up taking someone home that I worked with from the science museum. I thought he was cute and I knew he was leaving to work abroad in a month I thought it would be a perfect fling to help me get over Tom.

I wasn’t very good at flings and it turned into a 3 year long distance relationship. Champagne was upset that she wouldn’t see Tom again, mum was less sympathetic. My foster family were sad for me but I shielded them from most of it. Although for the first time ever I came home and went home drunk with Vandra. I expect mum knew how badly I was coping but she didn’t make things worse for me.

The pain of losing Tom seemed to peak all the pain I had felt with love. The song ‘The first cut is the deepest’ by Cat Stevens always resonated during this time. Tom had many faults and he had always challenged me with his drug use that I hated and angered me. But he had always loved me and had supported me through all the mess of my family. He had made me love myself for who I was, he’d made me see myself as beautiful when my womanly body had seemed like a curse. He had made into a confident and happy young woman who believed nothing was out of her reach. It was hard to believe that the only thing I wanted now was him and he was the one telling me it wasn’t possible.

My 3 year fling was with Jules. He had none of the confidence that Tom had and was surprised by my confidence. I felt I needed to grow up and that I should just make do and get married and have children and stop living in a day dream that life was more than finding someone who loved you and settling down. I was fond of Jules and he fed me, it seemed like it should be enough. It was easy to ignore that I might need more that that when we had a long distance relationship. I felt like I missed him because he wasn’t there. I think I probably still missed Tom but didn’t want to think about that because it was impossible. This way the person I missed loved me so it was ok.

Although Jules was a lovely guy, his lack of confidence rubbed off on me. I thought I naïve and would get cross with me for travelling across London in the evenings on my own. He’d say I wasn’t just going to find a job I liked that life didn’t work like that. He thought I was strange that I had just assumed he would get together with him and that I should have been more unsure of myself. He felt I was scruffy and was always trying to buy me more respectable clothes to smarten me up. He was always worried I was losing my shape and thought I should work out more. I began to take on some his ideas and lost myself a bit. I spent time in Gibralter, Germany and Cyprus following him and although this was fun I lost what I wanted for myself. I spent 6 months in Cyprus after my degree not working a proper job, trying to make it work. I realised this was not what I wanted and that I needed to get a job where I would be making a difference to people’s lives. Although he said I’d never get a job straight away, I got offered both the jobs I went to interview for after returning to the UK and ended up moving to Wiltshire.

I broke up with Jules but I was lonely again and thought perhaps I’d been mistaken. His letters were lovely and I thought perhaps it would work. It never did and I know I ended up breaking his heart. I had promised myself I wouldn’t ever do what Tom had done to me, but I began to learn why Tom had broken up with someone he was no longer in love with, however much he cared for me.

During this time, Champagne had moved back with mum and Howard. I was concerned for her, she seemed to be withdrawing into a fantasy world more and more. Everytime I saw her she would be reading, she seemed hardly able to have a conversation. She seemed to be becoming aggressive and angry when she did spend time in the real world. Mum’s flat couldn’t be accessed anymore. It was so full of junk. Mum and Howard were continuing to do drugs. The social workers were aware of this but said it wasn’t grounds to remove a child their needed to be evidence of abuse. Champagne had begun missing a lot of school and when I asked a social worker how much they said it was more than a third.

I felt Champagne was at risk and when asked if I would document these concerns in a court report I said it would although I knew it meant standing against mum and Howard. At this point my relationship all but fell apart with mum. We remained civil, but mum was angry and Champagne was taken into care.

Sam’s foster placement had fallen apart years before and he was an adult now with his own flat. I saw him as often as possible but it never felt enough. He’d grown up so fast and at 17 had his own flat fell in love and had his heart broken which would prevent him from falling in love again.

Jules never understood my real family and although fond of Champagne and Champagne was fond of him, it seemed too hard to explain all the complexities to someone new who didn’t instinctively understand.

I suppose at this time I felt like I had withdrawn from loving people too much. The pain was too much and I tried to keep a rational view of love. I was trying to be grown up and sensible.

It wasn’t until I met Ben that I let myself fall deeply in love again. He was my housemate Kate’s brother and had been in Austrailia since I had lived with her. When he came back it is the closest thing I have ever experienced to love at first sight. Ben came home with short blond hair and a tan. He’s a slight man and had a look of a teenager about him. He had 80’s style wearing an open shirt, silver surfers chain, fingerless black gloves and surfer style trousers. He had a smile that just captured me. He arrived back from Austrailia to see his family and about to celebrate his 27^th birthday with his friends. I was going to London for the week but suddenly wanted to be spending it with him. When I got back from London I said he had to come out for a birthday drink with me and his sister and we just talked all evening and into the night. Kate eventually went to bed and I didn’t want the night to end. I invited him to sleep in my bed, no funny business just a cuddle. And so the next week went. Nothing but cuddles and smiles. His family thought he was going to be a problem and were keen to find a solution so he went to live with his dad. We became a couple and eventually moved in together with my brother Sam.

We were both scared of each other. We had both been in love before and been hurt before. My confidence was dented from being with Jules, I no longer felt safe in a relationship and neither did he. We talked freely and easily about all our best and worst experiences, for the first time since Tom I felt someone knew me and loved me for it. I began to feel it was ok to be myself and to love myself again. He understood my family again.

For my 25^th birthday my mum wrote to me saying maybe we should call it a day. I knew it had been strained but despite everything I loved my mum and the last thing I wanted was to lose all contact with my mum. I eventually pulled myself together enough to dial Ben’s number as he was still at his dad’s at this point. In floods of tears I choked out the words explaining what my mum had said.

Mum had no phone and the only way I could think to find her was to go to Poole and look for her. She might be at her flat or feeding the birds in town. Ben hadn’t met my mum but he said he’d come and support me. We found her and I took her for coffee, I tried to explain that I loved her and didn’t want to lose contact. I don’t know if she had meant it or if she had been hoping I would find her and say that’s not what I wanted. Perhaps it haunted mum to have contact with me because she blamed me for Champagne going into care.

I worked with young people who had awful families. I was always amazed at their loyalty despite the pain their families caused them and the damage they did to them. I always wanted to shake them and say ‘forget your family they’re not doing you any good’. I recognised that this is what I would probably be thinking if I was on the outside. People had said to me you don’t have to love your mum. I knew I didn’t like her sometimes, but I could never stop myself loving her. I think she felt the same way back. It gave me an insight into why the service users I worked with continued to seek their families approval and affection. I’ve never liked the saying ‘blood is thicker than water’ because I love my foster family and they have loved me. Blood has never been an issue, but I don’t think either of us have ever tested that relationship to it’s limits. Blood has sometimes been the thing that has kept my love for my mum when there has been nothing else.

Mum and I did stay in touch even though many of the times it was awful, mum became more vocal at her anger against me, but I felt I could take it. Ben was always there to support me telling me the things she said were not true. Ben never judged me for wanting to stay in contact with my mum, never suggesting I should forget her, although it would undoubtedly have been more pleasant for him and never making me feel like I should. He always treated my mum with respect whilst asking her not to be nasty to me if he was there when she was being.

Ben came to Dorset for our first Christmas together we had a whirl wind tour of all my friends and family. By the time it came to seeing my dad’s relative’s I didn’t feel like there was time or the emotional energy to see my dad, so we just met them and went home.

Soon after I was at work late waiting for a volunteer to turn up to interview with my boss Griff at the Youth Offending Team. Griff was great completely bald, worked by his values and not the rules he was in a band when he wasn’t working, lots of fun but getting the best results for young people was his main priority. I was at my desk and answered the phone. It was my uncle Roger, my dad’s sister’s husband. I briefly wondered how he had got this number as we usually only saw each other once a year and he wouldn’t have my number.

He then went on to tell me something terrible had happened, when Nanny had come back from London she had found my dad dead on the floor of his bedroom at her house. They were not sure what he had died of but were sure it must have been quick as he was lying on the floor near his bed. I burst into tears. Roger seemed surprised and a bit flustered so he passed me to nanny. Nanny had cared for dad ever since he developed schizophrenia in his late teens. I was still crying but asked Nanny if she was ok. She was calm and said she was. I suppose she had known for a while and must have been more upset when she found him. She was concerned, I suppose I hadn’t seen him much no one could have known how much I loved my dad and that the reason I hadn’t been closer was because I found it so hard. I explained I wasn’t on my own my boss was at the office and I’d be ok. She said she would let me know about the funeral arrangements when they knew what would be happening but there would be a delay because the coroner wanted to check there was no suspicious circumstances as he was young to die so suddenly.

I put down the phone and Griff was obviously concerned. I explained that my dad was dead but that it wasn’t that simple I had such a limited relationship with my dad that I didn’t know how I felt. Griff made me a drink and sat me down. I said I could stay and do the interview, I suppose I was in shock, and in times of shock I often try to carry on as if nothings happened. He said that wouldn’t be necessary. I remember he told me about when his dad died and that eventually I phoned Ben and told him what had happened and not to tell Sam until I got back and that I would tell him.

When I got back I told Sam and he shrugged and said ‘Oh well he’s never been a dad to me any way’. I was shocked but didn’t really blame him. I just felt alone. I phoned my foster parents I suppose I wanted my dad even though I’d just lost the one I’d never really known. They were great as ever but again there was nothing they could do.

The next 2 weeks waiting for the post mortem were the weirdest weeks. I went to work as normal, I just couldn’t face being at home and trying to work out my emotions. Sam and I didn’t talk about it at all. Sam had moved in with me in September and we’d found a place in Bath with Ben. I’d been really excited Sam and I had never lived together, I thought we were going to finally be brother and sister properly. But as I had discovered so many times these natural relationships don’t come naturally when they’ve never had time to develop over time. We had always loved each other and we spent a lot of time filling in the gaps from our past for each other telling the other halves of our stories. Remembering how excited we had been when we would visit each other, neither of us would sleep properly for the excitement.

I had always thought Sam had had the rough deal living with mum and Howard, getting stranded in Spain, his foster placement breaking down and having to find a place at 17. He had seen all these as adventures and although some of the experiences when he returned from Spain and mum had been shooting up had been horrible. On the whole he felt sorry for me not being able to live with my real family and being in foster care.

Despite all these stories we were able to share I felt we were playing at being brother and sister. We didn’t really know each other that well and we didn’t have those learnt behaviours from childhoods growing up together to fall back to. We were never sure whether to hug each other or play fight. Ben was great he got on well with Sam and helped to normalise things when I wasn’t quite sure how things should be.

It wasn’t until dad’s funeral that things really changed. After 2 weeks of not really talking about it, we all got dressed up in black and I drove us to Boscombe to Nanny’s house. I felt like I couldn’t cope with Sam’s lack of concern but knew Ben would be there for me. It was surreal at Nanny’s. There the rest of the family had planned a funeral. There were sandwiches and people had remembered tissues and people had bought flowers. A hearse had been ordered with a big black car to follow with the family, I wanted to sit with Ben but I could see it was dawning on Sam to so I sat with Sam on my other side.

I hadn’t even accepted dad had died, I couldn’t believe all these arrangements had been made. The only thing I had tried to do was to tell mum and I’d failed to do that. I had had to leave messages with her workers but she wasn’t seeing them. I thought he had loved her and would want her to know. The only time since I was 3 that I had seen them together was when I had turned up to mum’s flat a couple of year’s before. He had been wearing a suit, he never dressed smartly, part of the side effects of the schizophrenia is that dad didn’t keep himself well, so I knew he had made an effort. I felt like he loved mum even then, even there in that flat. Although mum wasn’t interested anymore I felt like there was something there for mum too, but she had been too hurt and it was too long ago for her, but she didn’t have friends only Howard so I suppose she needed him as much as he needed her.

Sat in the car I just cried silently, tears rolling down my face. We were following the hearse and I was trying to get my head around the fact my dead dad was in the coffin. As we pulled up to the crematorium there were so many people. Nanny had only booked the smallest chapel and there were too many people to have fitted in. My parents were there which was weird to give your dad a hug at your dads funeral.

Then the funeral director asked for the closest relatives to follow the coffin. Sam and I looked around and then everyone said we were the children so we should follow. Both Sam & I said no Nanny should follow or someone else. Anyone else but us dad’s stranger children. It all got too much for Sam and he walked off. I turned to Ben and said ‘ Ben can you go after him’. As gently as he could he said to me ‘No Sonia you need to go after him, he’s your brother’.

At that point I think everything changed and from that moment on Sam and I learnt to be brother and sister. I followed him and we talked I said it was crazy it was all bull shit anyway it didn’t mean anything we shouldn’t go in we’d stay out here together. Sam cried and said no Sonia we need to go and follow the coffin and do it together. We did.

I sat next to Sam and cried and cried and he held me. They played 70’s music and Sarah read my poem from my dad and I wanted to get up and jump on the coffin when they went to take it into the chamber but Sam held me and I cried more. It was over and the chapel had been full to bursting with relatives, friends and workers.

Dad had been 6 foot 7 inches and although he’d been a drug addict, alcoholic and had schizophrenia he’d been a gentle giant. A lover not a fighter. He had been artistic and a poet. He played guitar badly but avidly and with love. He and given me his badly beaten guitar and loved me in his way. He sent me poetry and communicated all the things he couldn’t say in person.

Here is a poem my dad had written for me:

To Sonia my daughter,

I hope lovers take you down highways of diamonds by ways of flowers

That is if lifes mystery can realease you from lampposts and city streets

And when you come to God, I hope you do it in humble acceptance of the mystery

Life is an oyster, life is a pearl life is a sail that you unfurl.

He sent it to me when I was 14, when I fisrt read it it moved me to tears and it still brings a lump to my throat. In my diary I wrote 'it's so strange it's as if he knows me'. I have always felt as if my dad would one day be able to explain everything to me and we would talk about how we felt about each other. I held a fairy tale notion that one day it would all be ok, even though I had always known this wouldn't really be the case, his dying had meant it was no longer even a possibility.

After the funeral we met many of dad's friends who were so positive about him, it was so nice to finally feel like the daughter of my dad. My whole life it had felt I had never had that opportunity, it was just so painful that I was only able to have that after dad's death.

Sam and I went for a long walk on Bournemouth beach after the wake and talked and talked about all our memories. Both of us remembered how excited we would get before seeing each other and how disappointing it would be if the visit would be cancelled. He talked about seeing dad when mum and him lived in Swindon. He never felt close to him, dad had been an alcoholic and he remembered him pissing in the sink, he had thought that was digusting. Then he hadn't seen dad or any of the family for years. It was only when I was old enough to drive that I took him to visit all of dad's relatives and dad. They had been cross mum and dad had gone on to have a son when I was still in foster care and had decided to have nothing to do with him. When I brought him to see them all they had realised they had misdirected their anger and had missed out on knowing my brother all those years. Sam had become close with Nanny especially over the years, closer than me in many ways because they had an adult relationship, whereas I still felt like a child with Nanny and guilty that she had looked after dad all those years and I found it difficult even to visit him.

The more we talked it over the more we ironed out those things about each other we'd felt we didn't know, the more we grew those links of being brother and sister and what that meant to us. From the death of my dad I gained a real relationship with my brother.

Love and pain continue to be an issue for me but less so these days. I had some counselling after dad's death just to help me deal with all the emotions around losing not just the man who was my dad but my chance to ever have a real relationship with him. The counselling ended up giving me tools to deal with other relationships especially my mum. I learnt to not try to be the parent even though mum can act like the child at times and even though her behviour can be like a willful teenager. I've found it has helped that if I don't take mum's victim behaviour, even if it ends the converstaion then and there it's better in the long run. We have more respect. She still says horrendous things to me when she's on a come down or she's ill, but I am better at letting them go over my head and she's better at apologising about them.

I'm having counselling again because I still have troubles allowing myself to love when things are painful and I want to have a healthy relationship with my boyfriend. It again is helping me to find methods to communicate the things I find painful and to deal with them.

I think many people find love painful at times and although my experiences may be an extreme version, it is just my story. People who have far simpler stories or far more complax stories have this same struggle with love and pain. As a professional I am able to use my experiences of love and pain to empathise with the service users I have worked with over the years. It enables me to approach them with an authenticity, not because my experiences have been so extreme but because I have an awareness of how they have effected me. I can then recognise how their experiences are effecting them and help them to come to terms with their experiences as I have and am coming to terms with mine. It is a process but one that I feel priveleged to be able to share my own process and to support people with their processes.

Put later - When I finished my A-levels I went straight t Germany. I had met my relatives 3 years before with my foster parents and the year before with mum and Sam