When love first tasted the lips of being human, it started to sing, Rumi
About me:
I am a 57-year-old mother of 2 sons and an overjoyed grandmother of 5. I work as a Counsellor in Private Practice. I have a huge belief in the transformative power of creativity and learning & growing through the sharing of experiences. I am a lover of life and am passionate about mental health & well-being and raising awareness around it and the negative impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences. I became a first-time published author 7th January 2021 of my autobiography, Back to love.
Back to Love shares and tells the story of my self-rediscovery and psychological, spiritual, social and racial healing Journey, undertaken after experiencing, what was then in 1987 called, a Nervous Breakdown. This Mental health crisis- which I go on to reframe as a Spiritual Breakthrough- was brought on by a range of traumas experienced in childhood and triggered at that time in 1987 by a toxic relationship with my child’s father and a troubled relationship with food, namely Bulimia. This book offers hope and the message that: however, one’s life starts out, however the world tries to bury one in “statistic, ” that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and there’s THAT SOMETHING inside sooo strong that can help us make it through, begin again, and go on to live a mostly joyous, purposeful, wholehearted and complete life, according to how we choose to experience it.
The book begins when I become a mother at 18 years old and in that instant promised myself that being a mother would be the new start I felt that my life needed at that time, having come out of a childhood which never truly got started. As a young mother I promised myself, and my new-born child, that this would be his-and mine’-very best of starts. That decision changed my life’s path and squarely placed me on the road of healing and self-rediscovery, an unfolding and maturation that continues in my life to date…
What follows is part of the introduction of my book Back to love:
“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. Frederick Douglass
This book, Back to Love, was born first out of a desire to share a journey, and second to tell a story. The story is one of an abused and abandoned child, and the things that can be one in the dark to such a child, casting a menacing shadow across the child’s life when grown; oftentimes for generations to come, if the healing remains undone.
In the telling of this story, my story, the unhealed baton finishes with me, which also makes Back to Love a book about the process of change and its particular twists and turns. It is a self-transformation life story about the not-altogether-straightforward cycle of change, and the coming into being of a more whole and integrated self.
This book was a very difficult book to write. The baring of one’s heart and soul, and tortures and loves, in such an open and now public way took me right out of myself, stretching me beyond all measure, on every level. I don’t know if I’d call the writing of this book a ‘therapeutic’ endeavour, but it was certainly an endeavour, to be a true, clear and no-nonsense voice for the most vulnerable in society, that I’d gladly do again and again, however much it hurts.
I don’t just speak for the needs of today’s children; I speak especially for all the wounded, denied and abandoned children that still exist within countless adults the world over. I write in service to them, as well as to the child within myself. It is my hope that in doing so, we as a society will come to listen more and better respond to children’s particular and unique needs and wants, lest those cries turns into screams of blue murder; the kind see and read about on the news and in the papers, daily.
It can also be said that when I speak of the ‘child within,’ as well as without, I am essentially speaking about the spirit of that first innocent essence; the loving protection, cultivation and bringing forth of which creates emotionally mature, wholesome human beings.
Contrary to popular belief, we are not so much in and of ourselves human beings, but rather it’s the case that with the right kind of love, encouragement, modelling and engagement, we grow into that particular skin. We need each other and are bound to each other for our very survival as a species, moving towards an evolution that is benevolent and has no end.
This book spans twenty-three years and tells of the initial and subtle stirrings of change, the definite decision to change, the process of change and what all of that came to entail for me. The reason it is called Back to Love is because it has been written for those who, like my past self, do not know due to early, out-of-shaping traumatic experiences that they themselves are the very love they seek. Back to Love also talks about the journey from outside-in to inside-out, and then back around the cycle again. This book has been written with heart, for the love of all: all who have Soul.
This book has also been written for the everyday, ordinary people – and for you: wherever my story finds you on this journey called life. It is my hope that through reading about my own process of change, and my return to my most true self, that you may realise your own true capacity, and in so doing bring to resolution all obstructions that lay within, in front of and behind of you. As you embark upon this journey, may we, as Henri David Thoreau urged, Move more confidently in the direction of your dreams, and dare to live the life Imagined.
Amongst other things, I am a British-born black woman of African-Caribbean descent, who refused to be a ‘statistic’ and dared to live the life I imagined growing up, knowing in my heart that life was out there for the taking. May our missing voice in the historical, academic and research records be heard clearly and undeniably here within these pages. May we continue to rise up out of the personal and collective wreckage of traumatised presenting past lives, and like the phoenix continue homeward bound to the places, spaces and lives to which we most belong.
I write in service to you all and hope that in the sharing of this harrowing, and absolutely worthwhile Heroine’s Journey, your heart and soul receives the nourishment and encouragement that it needs to embark upon a similar corner-turning journey, if that is your wish; or if your journey has already begun, to continue on with more self-confidence and embodied empowerment.
As the above quote says,
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
Yes, it is easier, but it is not impossible to turn our lives around and drive it in a direction more of your choosing, as my story bares testimony to. I am here, and my Life Purpose is to share the Good News that, with self/love, all things are indeed possible!”
What follows now, is an excerpt from the Epilogue of Back to love:
EPILOGUE
“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” George Eliot
Today I am nothing like I was. I was a very quiet child growing up, for all the reasons shared
in this story; I was quiet and shy with an ever ready plastered on smile that hid how I truly
felt inside. I became so very quiet I almost successfully made myself invisible. I got so good
at being quiet that even when I needed to tell, I couldn’t find the words: they too like me were
no-where to be found. I suffered in silence-a godsend to (my) abusers.
But the buck stopped with me-and not accidentally, but by choice. By a choice I made when I
became a mother, therefore automatically a teacher. Back then I promised myself to make a
difference. A promise that continues to date, in whatever ripe for right-doing situation I may
find myself.
It has been words that have saved me; searching for them and sharing them in therapy,
through journaling, poems, and writing my life story, hoping one day it will be published. I
love words, they help me to have a say-to have MY say. They help me to not be quiet about
the things, that left unspoken, like cancer, left untreated, kills. So The Word here is:
There Is Freedom, Healing and Power In The Tongue…”
And Back to Love ends with this important P.S…
“P.S. And she Lived, self-knowingly & self-lovingly ever after.”
You go from room to room searching for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck. Rumi.
I hope you have enjoyed reading this article featuring my Healing Journey book, Back to love, a dream – much like me, now healed- that had to come!
I wish you More Peace, More Joy & More Personal Power in your lives & Journeys too. And please remember that there most definitely is Good & True Life after trauma!!
I also keep the following blog, sharing Insperiences and thoughts on topics very close to my heart: Counselling, Spiritual Life Coach – InnerSide-Out – London, England
