Anon 005

Her father's sexual abuse taught her fear where she should have known safety. Engaged at seventeen, she hoped a relationship would offer a way out. Instead, she experienced further abusive relationships. Drugs and alcohol became ways of coping, and strangers raped her when she was too intoxicated to consent. For a long time, she blamed herself.

She also experienced mental illness, hospitalisation and periods when reality became difficult to hold onto. People saw her anger without understanding the hurt beneath it. She wishes they had asked, “What happened to you?” rather than “What's wrong with you?”

She does not present herself as someone who has never made mistakes or hurt others. She wants room for both responsibility and understanding: “Trauma can explain you without excusing you.”

She is also a mother who loves her children fiercely, an artist and musician, and someone who has studied, taught and built a career. Healing has not made her perfect or erased what happened. She still creates, laughs, parents and keeps going. She wants to be seen as a whole person, with pain, mistakes, love and a life that continues.