An hour after we left court, Grandma’s nursing home called to say she was really poorly, so Elroy and I went straight over there. For the next thirty-six hours I didn’t leave her bedside but, sadly, she left us at 3am on the Wednesday morning. I was devastated, heartbroken at the loss of her but I also knew she was so tired of life and wanted to be with my grandpa, who had passed twenty-six years earlier. I felt that God works in mysterious ways – I was blessed that I got to spend her last hours with her, which I wouldn’t have if Norman was around. I arranged her funeral and made all the plans for her. Norman had all of her documents in prison so I didn’t know what would happen regarding them once he was informed of her death. Neither he nor Kev came to her funeral, but it was a lovely day for her, with songs I chose that I knew she would have loved. I was glad I was able to do this for her but I missed her so much already.
It was a strange time, but also one that brought some normality into my life. Everyone goes through this, losing elderly relatives – it’s just natural, just normal, and it was something I could deal with. Even missing Grandma is part of life’s cycle, and I hold on to my lovely memories of her. She was a wonderful woman who did not deserve to have anything nasty brought into her life. I’m glad she never knew about Norman’s conviction and I genuinely felt he was the way he was because of his choices, not because of anything that he experienced at the hands of my grandparents. People have to take responsibility for who they are – and I never saw anything that suggested Grandma and Grandpa were anything other than loving people. They were horrified by the lazy, indolent life Mum and Norman lived, and he certainly hadn’t been brought up that way, but even if he had, I don’t think that’s an excuse. I think it’s a horrible slur to suggest that those who have been abused in any way can’t prevent themselves from becoming abusers. There is nothing in this world that would make me hurt a child, and I hate the fact that some people believe you can never break the cycle of abuse. Grandma was a good woman, and I can only hope it’s her blood that runs through my veins rather than his.
I was so relieved that Norman got such a long sentence, because it did matter, it really did. Knowing that all of those people – strangers who had no reason to do anything other than listen to the facts and make a decision based on those facts – believed me meant the world. However, I think the fact that we are so unused to substantial sentences being handed out to paedophiles, particularly with regards to historical cases of child abuse, is a sad indictment of our society.
Yes, Norman got sixteen years, but I got a life sentence.
When someone reveals that they are a survivor of child sexual abuse, the focus is on that specific crime and on the fact that they did survive it – but so much is hidden.
I’ve fought a battle with bulimia for sixteen years now. I am never free from guilt or shame.
I only had one child because I could barely cope with the anxiety and fear of raising a child in the world that had allowed my father to abuse me. I felt incredible anxiety and terror every time Karl was around other people and, for years, I thought I couldn’t risk having another baby if that was to be how I felt. I wanted a little girl so badly, but I worried about how I would be, whether I could ever allow her to be around men. When I finally did feel strong enough, I found that I had been so physically damaged by the abuse that I would never have another, that Karl was actually a miracle child in so many ways.
I suffer from depression and have done for years; I have suicidal thoughts and I really can’t say with any certainty that I won’t act on them one day. I get flashbacks and have nightmares, which haunt me during my waking hours too.
I don’t really trust many people and I have ongoing issues with intimacy: seeing Norman’s face when I’m with someone, knowing there are so many triggers that can ruin any moment no matter how much I’m loved by the other person.
I’m unable to be alone with older men and I think of every one of them as a potential paedophile. I look to see if they’re hanging around children in a suspicious way; I check everywhere all the time just to see if I can ‘spot’ one, even though I know the danger is much more likely to lie closer to home, just as it did with me.
I always seek approval from other people, even when I know they aren’t worth it. I feel worthless, and let others use me, expecting their hurt and just waiting for the moment it will come.
I’ve tried so hard to be honest in this book and cover everything, but I’ve really only scratched the surface – how do you put a life, all of those lives, into a couple of hundred pages?
To this day, my mother’s voice is there in my mind far too often, shouting me down, telling me I’m stupid. I feel that there is a darkness on me that other people can see, that I have been marked for ever by the past, what was done to me. But I must find the strength to move on.
Many – if not most – abuse survivors are told that historical convictions are virtually impossible to achieve. That isn’t surprising really: it’s hard enough for contemporary cases to secure a ‘guilty’ verdict and, even when they do, custodial sentences are not guaranteed. With historical allegations, there is likely to be even less evidence, witnesses may be impossible to trace or have died and corroboration is difficult to prove. I knew all of this – I was told many times – but still I fought. And I won.
In the middle of all of this, Vicky has been amazing. She tells me she will offer support for as long as I need it. She says some cases stay with her always, and that mine is one of them. It’s been in the local papers, so everyone knows now, but I’m handling that. I’m still waiting for my ‘elation’ to start, to start wanting to celebrate, but I kind of doubt that it will ever happen. I hope my life is better now though. I was believed; it was his fault, not mine. It’s my turn to have a life now. For the first time he knows how it feels to be afraid and out of control of his own life. I awoke one night recently thinking, I’m free and safe, no one is going to hurt me. The tables had completely turned. In fact, after the trial, early one morning when I was driving to Birmingham for work, I had an amazing feeling of being free. I know I’ve always been free but, that day, I felt totally aware of it. I can stop for coffee, have a break, get some fresh air – basically, do whatever I like.
I started to get those flashes of freedom, perhaps even of happiness, more and more often. Then, on New Year’s Eve 2011, a complete miracle came into my life when I found out that I was pregnant. After being told it would never happen, and desperately trying to pull the money together for IVF, this was the most wonderful thing that could happen to us. I felt complete, and pure happiness washed over me as I looked at the positive pregnancy test. An early scan ruled out any threat of it being ectopic, and I started to feel that maybe, just maybe, everything was fine.
‘Perhaps I can actually do this!’ I said to Elroy, delirious with the possibility of being a mum again.
‘Of course you can, you can do anything,’ he told me, grinning with delight.
‘Maybe this was life’s plan for me all along,’ I replied. ‘I just needed to wait until I was ready to raise a child free from the terror of perpetrators – just maybe. I couldn’t face it before, but maybe now after court and everything, I’m healed enough. Do you think that’s what it is?’
He smiled, happy enough to indulge me in whatever reason I came up with, happy to see the pure joy shining from me. I started to look forward, to think I had a fresh start; but sadly, at the three-month scan we discovered that our baby had died. We were devastated. How could life be so cruel? This was my one-in-a-million chance to prove that I could be a healthy, free parent; it felt like life gave me a miracle but then cruelly snatched it away again. I spent two days at home waiting to go into hospital. I still felt pregnant and I was told my body was holding on to the pregnancy. I was finally admitted to Liverpool Women’s Hospital, for a six-hour procedure; I ended up being in there for five days as, after five attempts with medication failed, I had to go to theatre.
The next few months were difficult and I felt as though it was me, it was something I’d brought on myself. I wondered if I deserved to be happy. I’d figured that taking Norman to court would be like a magic switch, that I would feel normal for the first time and that it would all be behind me. That the moment of sheer freedom I’d had in the car would be how my life would feel now. I was wrong. Although I was definitely clearer on some things and had closure with Norman, my turmoil continued. It wasn’t a magic bullet. I still felt black and foggy and incomplete and unlovable; recovery was a long road.
As time went on, I realised I was struggling to feel emotionally healthy and that there was no magic switch. I still saw Norman everywhere and I still had awful nightmares. In a recurring one I go ‘home’ to my house, but instead of finding Elroy there, my mother and Norman are waiting. She is always angry and he sits on the sofa, having got out of prison. He’s waiting for me and he grins, then follows me to my room and takes his ‘revenge’ on me for sending him to prison.
I’m working out that a lot of things done to me as a child were designed to humiliate me, keep me isolated from people who may have been a support to me, and to destroy my self-esteem. Telling me that my grandparents hated me, that other family members had no time for us and considered me the instigator of our family problems, destroyed any self-confidence in me and made me sure I was a bad person. Mum telling me that Grandma was an abuser and that Grandpa tried to rape her were also surefire ways to make it impossible for me to ever trust them completely. Norman would say, ‘If you tell your mum, she’ll die. She’s too ill for this.’
Even though I’ve come a long way, I still feel largely unlovable and I wrestle with my rational side and my irrational side. The struggle is still there. If someone seems to like me, I usually feel I have deceived them in some way and that they just can’t see the ‘real darkness’ me just yet. I feel often people ‘must’ criticise things that I do. I feel that I still grieve for a lost innocence and childhood freedom that is every child’s right.
Having said and felt all of this, I know I am recognising wrong thoughts and feelings of ‘truth’ and starting to challenge them. My determination to feel normal and for closure will overcome all this eventually. I am looking at some things differently now and I recognise the damage done to me by my parents; and it’s going to disappear as my truth and become a lie told by bad people. I’ve been emotionally damaged by people all my life and for it still to be happening – enough is enough. My fight starts here.
When I decided to write this book, I did so for two reasons – I wanted Jenny to finally be acknowledged and I wanted someone else, anyone, to get from it the strength to take their abuser to court. I wanted them to see that it could be done, and that there was hope. After thirty years, without real evidence other than my own voice, my father went to prison for sixteen years.
However, the process has been harder than I could ever have imagined. When you read a book like this, you want it to be straightforward – this happened, then this, then this. And you want a happy ending. I haven’t been able to do that, not in any sort of traditional way, because life doesn’t work out as easily. I don’t have memories from the day I was born – who does? I don’t have Jenny to tell me her story. I have had to piece together so much, and my memories are slippery things that, finally, make up no more than a jagged patchwork of my life.
So, the memories all flood in sometimes, they refuse to come at other times, they repeat and they replay. The one about the Michael Jackson poster is there often, I think because it’s so bizarre, and I constantly think back to parts of it such as using my dressing gown and coats to cover every inch of the inside of my bedroom door so Norman couldn’t spy on me at night. I think about the time Mum put the lock on. I remember being forced into sleeping all night in their bed when she was in hospital, when I was twelve. I remember him taking every single opportunity to get to me, to corner me in the kitchen and put his hands inside my clothes, not stopping even if my brother walked in. The bathroom, any bedroom, the hallways – he followed my every move and I moved around only when I thought it would be ‘safe’. That was my life, every day.
I remember him coming into the bathroom, ordering me to lie on the floor. I refused, so he threatened to take all his clothes off so someone would see. I was so scared that I did what he said, confused, wondering whether I should risk the shame of someone seeing but also hopeful that might stop it. I remember him sometimes calling me Netty, my aunt’s name, when he was raping me. I remember always having to work out when I could do my many chores, as I couldn’t go upstairs to clean if no one else was up there. I had to plan it all out, and he was always getting angry with me for outsmarting him.
Every time I get upset about things – whether inconsequential or not – the other memories rush back; it’s as if my mind is looking for an excuse to upset me, never giving me peace. It’s as if they’re shouting at me, telling me not to forget, telling me that this all matters. I remember, I remember, I remember. I remember being made to polish in their bedroom. As soon as my mother went out, he came straight in, pushed me onto the bed and raised his fist to hit me when I protested. I think he would have battered me senseless if I hadn’t let him do what he wanted.
I remember that he held me against the wall on the landing by my throat when I tried to stop him. I remember being scared all the time, with my whole life revolving around avoiding him. I remember going to the toilet only when it was safe, or using a plastic Tupperware bowl in my room because I knew that he was quietly waiting for me to have to leave my room. I felt disgusting, ashamed, frightened. I remember living with a knot in my stomach, afraid to go home. I remember being completely alone.
And that, that is what you live with when you’re an abuse survivor. Your mind races with memories all the time, your dreams are filled with terrors. You never know when it will hit you, because it has filled your formative years.
As I finished writing the book, I knew there was one person I had to talk to about it all. I’ve always been close to my eldest brother, Ian, but I knew he had his own demons. Although I was trying to process mine, and he had said he would be there for me, I did wonder how all of this was affecting him. By telling my story, I was opening up everything about my family, and I knew from the start that there would be repercussions. I desperately hoped Ian and I would still be strong together, still love each other, when this part of that story was over.
We Skyped each other and he told me he would be by my side for as long as I needed him, that he would stand by everything we both knew was true, and that – for the first time ever – he would let me read his witness statement, which he sent through to me. Although Norman was not Ian’s biological father, he had been there for most of his childhood – and had left his mark. As I absorbed the words that he had said to the police I realised, yet again, just how much damage had been done to so many people by the toxic pair I called my parents.
The statement reads:
I am the above named person and I live at an address known to Merseyside Police. I make this statement in relation to an allegation of sexual abuse made by my sister Karen Walker against my stepfather Norman Yeo.
Unfortunately, I cannot access most of my childhood memories. I’ve always believed this was due to something that must have happened when I was a kid because, when I try to, I get very uncomfortable and it is almost like there is a pain in my head.
The following is an account of the few things I am able to access and an overall picture of my stepfather.
Fear. That is what I mostly remember about Norman. Me always being in fear of Norman coming home. I knew I would be getting a beating but didn’t know what he would use this time or how severe it would be. I do remember he always knocked my glasses off first and then he would use his hands, fists and other implements such as my cricket bat or the metal soup ladle. I’m told that he would usually pull out clumps of my hair.
On one occasion, when I must have been about 15, he was hitting me and taunting me to hit him back, telling me to ‘be a man’. I was a 15 year old, about 5’ 4” of scrawniness and he was the fear-inspiring father figure of over 6 foot. That one time, though, I finally tried and was beaten so badly that it has become a blank after me hitting him back.
He never really needed a reason for his beatings and, after growing up, I assumed it was just a problem he had or he hated the fact that I wasn’t naturally his. This left me as a timid child who rarely played out unless forced to by my mum.
As a kid I ran away from home twice. Once when I was very young and once as a teen. On the first occasion, I took Jennifer with me and all I remember about it is that we left through the living room window and were in fear of something. The second occasion is a little clearer. Jennifer wasn’t living with us but I took Karen and, again, we were in fear of something (presumably Norman). We ended up at the back of an abandoned house and I’m told that I left a note saying we were going to kill ourselves. Apparently the Police were informed and broadcasts were made on the local radio.
I honestly do not know if I knew what was going on with Karen and Jennifer but it seems I was trying to protect them from something and I do recall that as we were getting older, I noticed Karen becoming more withdrawn and nervous, especially around Norman.
I’ve often tried to pierce through whatever the block is in my memory and I’ve wondered if it was sexual abuse for me as well. I’ve told myself that I don’t care if it was, that I care more about the fact that it happened to Karen and Jenny but would just like to know if that was the reason. The only clues I have to it being a possibility (apart from the block itself) are fuzzy memories. One is of being in the bathroom with Norman whilst he was naked in the shower and another where I was, for some reason, showing my naked backside in the living room and Norman and his friend were there. I also recall when, as a teen, I found Norman’s stash of pornography. Most of it was the usual girlie magazine stuff except for one magazine, which was all naked men. Needless to say, that stuck in my memory.
My childhood has left me as someone suffering from depression, someone who mostly stays in the house and no longer seeks out relationships, primarily because I always feel like a fraud, that I am play-acting being an adult when really, I’m still a frightened kid. I am able to fool people when I am out because I usually portray confidence and sociability but I can’t seem to make those feelings real nor parlay them into a proper relationship with a partner. I don’t feel sorry for myself or anything and I know I have to change but it is really difficult to find the motivation. Again, I care more about what happened to my sisters. I’ve lost Jenny and I think her self-destruction was definitely all about her childhood and what she endured at the hands of Norman. As for Karen, I am constantly amazed and awestruck at what a loving person she still is, despite what she went through. She has her problems too, of course, and they too are due to what she went through as a child and she is working on them. As for my brothers, they too have their demons to work out.
Overall, Norman was a destructive force in our lives. He was often away fishing as he rarely worked and those times were easier and lighter for us but always with the spectre of him returning as that would mean more violence and beatings, crying and punishments whether we had done anything ‘wrong’ or not.
***
Reading that statement hit me hard. So much of this I had never seen before, and it broke my heart to think Ian was pouring it all out now, still trying to help me, still being my big brother. I think mentioning the pornography in his court statement helped the jury believe me, as I’d said it was one of the early grooming tools that Norman had used against me. When he and Mum both denied having it in the house, the jury must have had to decide who to believe – our parents, or Ian and me. I also didn’t remember us writing a suicide note when we ran away. I do remember the actual running away with him though, and thinking we would live in a big old abandoned house that we found, but the suicide note was something that had been forgotten, for me, in the mists of time.
When Ian sent me that letter, I asked him if he thought he might regret it being included in the book.
‘No,’ he replied, without any pause whatsoever. ‘I don’t care what is used, because it’s the truth. If my memories help to give yours credibility, that’s only a good thing. As a child, I witnessed those two holding Jenny by each arm, at the top of the stairs, both pulling her in different directions because Lesley was trying to throw her down the stairs. I found the porn, and I was being beaten for it, but I also know Lesley had “books” that were hers, that were nothing to do with Norman. They were beyond vile, they were full of animal porn, people having sex with dogs and donkeys. How sick is that? It made me want to vomit. I think that defending Lesley came from fear – fear that came from knowing what she was really like.’
I get that. I think Ian’s protectiveness, which is sometimes very over-the-top, comes from being the oldest sibling and feeling like it was his ‘duty’. I’ve tried to tell him over and over that it wasn’t his responsibility, that he was just a little boy and that only two people were responsible, but those deep-rooted feelings won’t disappear just because his little sister tells him what she thinks is going on. Writing that testimony for me was such a brave thing to do, because by writing this book, I know I have put it all in the spotlight. Perhaps one day he will tell his story. I hope so.
When my auntie got Nanny’s diaries after her death, there was lots in there about Mum – she said she was ‘the eternal victim’ and she wondered where they had gone wrong to make her turn out the way she did. It was clear that they never knew what to do with her, that they had been at their wits’ end about her behaviour ever since she was a little girl. I know Mum kept me away from anyone who could tell me the truth, and that, when Granddad died when I was nine, things got even worse. The food he brought, the money he gave her – that all stopped, and she resented it. She would tell him that the kids were starving and he would always help out when he could; even though she fed herself first and spent the money on her own clothes and make-up, he was there, and sometimes she was calmed down a bit by the fact that she had got something. When he died, that was lost. I don’t remember her ever grieving for him, just being angry that one of her easy options had gone.
People call it ‘historical’ abuse, but there is nothing historical about what I’m living. Every day, there is something to remind me of what was done to me, what he did to me. I know I was lucky to get a conviction, but how sick is that? How appalling is it that we use the word ‘lucky’ when an abuser gets a tiny portion of what they deserve? He got convicted, but I got a life sentence – and, Jenny, you didn’t even get the chance to live your life at all.
I know we need shorthand phrases to try to help people have some understanding, any understanding, of these horrific crimes, but I often feel as if there’s more time and effort spent on getting the words right than there is on protecting children or supporting survivors. And there’s another one right there – ‘survivors’. So many groups and individuals have fought to move away from calling us ‘victims’ – we are strong, we have got through this, we have survived; but the truth is, sometimes I don’t feel like a survivor. I feel guilty even writing that but I do, at times, wonder if there would be more sympathy or understanding if we used the word ‘victim’. You don’t survive a burglary, you don’t survive a mugging; you’re seen as a victim, so why, when the most personal thing of all has been attacked and stolen and taken, is there such pressure to label yourself as a survivor? I know the arguments behind it, I know it’s meant to be empowering, but there are so many times when I want to scream, This still affects me, this still hurts, I am still in such a lot of pain and I fear it will never end.
Whereas other people have warm childhood memories about things like friends and Christmas and birthdays, I don’t. Everything is coloured by the people I called my parents. My childhood has so little to make me smile; it doesn’t even have much in the way of difference from day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year. I wonder if, without those files, I would even have any structure to my memories. I get small flashes, but very little that brings back a full story. So I recall the pretend house from when I started school that I mentioned at the start of the book. But then the sadness comes in as I remember I was overjoyed just to be playing, at everyone smiling around me, and how unusual that was. I remember Ian and I used to walk to and from school alone between the ages of five and eight, but all I can wonder is, did no one walk with him before? Was he all alone?
When I was seven and moved to another primary school, on my very first day I went to the wrong toilets, a big brick outhouse at the end of the schoolyard. The teacher seemed cross with me, as though I had done it on purpose. I know that back then I already felt ‘not good enough’. I was just not as good as the other children. I was ‘dilatory’. The only time I was happy then was when I found a blue Snoopy watch at school – his arms were the watch hands! – and I was allowed to keep it as no one said it was theirs. I loved it and treasured it for years.
At middle school, I did like music, but my time was made terrible through being bullied by the ‘popular’ kids, who called me scruffy. I felt like an outsider and that I was a bad person inside. The abuse was daily by that time, but I never said anything to anyone. I thought everyone did it, I really did.
There are a few good memories about high school, and I did make some friends there – I even liked the ‘nit nurse’! Jenny and I would walk to this school together when she was staying at home; we would steal bread from our kitchen to eat on the way as Jenny was usually hungry from having no tea.
I did OK, I suppose, given what I was enduring at home. I enjoyed English, Biology and Home Economics, but P.E. was quite difficult for me as I was so body conscious and often didn’t have nice underwear or the correct clothes to wear. I was embarrassed, so I would make up excuses to get out of PE, and could never go swimming as I didn’t have a costume. I couldn’t say that, so I made up a problem each time and got into trouble a lot. I could never go on school outings or trips as my parents wouldn’t pay the small surcharge that parents on low incomes had to pay; another reason for me to get into trouble, as I lied a few times and said I’d lost the money.
I was known at school as ‘quiet little Karen’ and left with eight CSE passes, but what really sticks with me as I reflect on all those years was that there were no knights in shining armour: no teachers to rescue me, nobody to notice the quiet little girl with the sad eyes. Nobody noticed anything, with me or with Jenny. They were all oblivious. Even when I became a mother, no one picked up on anything.
There is no doubt that I had issues with my parenting – I hated to leave Karl with anyone because I just couldn’t believe he would be safe. I didn’t want anyone to bathe him or change his nappy and I knew, while he was still quite young, that I would only ever be able to have one child because I worried so much about having any more, especially little girls. I was scared about what my own reaction would be if they were ever around men. Would I panic? Would I see things that weren’t there? Would I see things if they were there? Knowing that, even now, I have suspicious thoughts when I see men with children and something seems ‘off’, I don’t think I could ever have coped with more than one child; I would have been too scared that I was taking my eye off the ball with one while I paid attention to the other.
I can’t help these things. They haunt me, and that’s why I often think of myself as a victim, not a survivor. And then there’s you, Jenny: you have to be a victim because you were never given the chance to survive, were you?
I try to live by the motto, ‘Always have a backup plan’ because I believe that is the key to a successful life that flows through the ups and downs. You never know what is round the corner – in fact, not knowing what’s next is the only thing you can rely on! Everyone in my life knows me for saying, ‘Keep smiling’, because I really do feel that you have to – you have to keep pushing through. I’ve been given so many gifts with this phrase on over the years – cups, wall plaques and such – and I will try to stick to the feeling that a smile makes everything better until my last breath.
Is my heart broken? Yes, yes it is, but I like to think of a broken heart very much as a cut or piece of broken skin … at first it bleeds so much and hurts with such intensity that you can’t bear it. You cover it with plasters to try to stop the bleeding and pain, much like the bargaining, denial and anger we feel after losing a loved one. Eventually, the cut knits together and the pain eases, but it’s still there, every day. Some day, some time afterwards, you might realise it doesn’t hurt at all; but if you press your finger on the scar (or go to your memories) it hurts again. The scar (the loss) never really goes away as we have a permanent reminder – on our skin or in our heart – but we learn to live with it.
I try to tell the younger people in my life to go out there, take chances, fail, pick themselves up again, go and look at the world, move around, see everything; nothing is set in stone and there is always another way (the ‘backup plan’). The saddest thing in life, in my opinion, is to stay in one place. The time may never seem just right, but you have to go for it – sometimes you have to take a leap from that mountain and trust in your own wings.
I’ve undertaken CBT training and life coach qualifications, which means I’ve picked up a lot of wisdom and had a lot of light-bulb moments, and a few of these are worth passing on, I hope. Sometimes, when talking to people who are very down on themselves due to getting older, I remind them that they’re never going to be this young again, and this always makes people smile. When I have been with a person who feels their life is done (at fifty or sixty years old!), I sometimes feel I have my work cut out, but it can still be done.
I have had family members and friends complain that they’re ‘past it’, or their joints hurt, or that they have done their bit, they’re too old, they’ve had their life. I always say to them, ‘Put yourself twenty years from now and look back at the person you are today – what are you saying to today’s you? Are you saying “Wow, I was just a lad or lass then, and I still had the world at my feet? I still had my health. I wish I had done those things I wanted to do.”?’ This is very powerful and people tend to realise the truth of that maybe for the first time.
I like to tell people – in life, if you get a NO, see it as an acronym for Next One! I ask people if they have a goal in life, and they tend to list them. I then ask them which ones they are actively taking steps towards achieving. They usually answer ‘None’, to which I reply ‘So you have dreams, nice ideas for your life, not goals; goals are something you are actively moving towards.’
Another thing I like to tell people is that there are no failures in their life, only lessons, only steps. I use the light-bulb example – Thomas Edison was asked how it felt to have failed 1,000 times while inventing the light bulb. He said, ‘I didn’t fail a thousand times, the light bulb took a thousand attempts to perfect.’ It’s true! We can only progress through making mistakes and learning from them. I always like to remember the saying, ‘Whether you believe you can or you believe you can’t, you are probably right.’ And I’ve believed I can do this for a while now – I really have.
Writing all of this down, writing it all to you, has brought it into such clear relief – I thought I had learned to live with it and handle it, but I know that I struggle at times. The feelings of worthlessness, low self-esteem and self-hatred last a lifetime, but do you know what, Jenny? I think I’m finally there, I think I’m finally ready to step out into the light and say, I made it. You didn’t break me. I’m still here, I’m still standing and I am shouting loud enough for both of us. Sisters, for ever, despite what they tried to do.