I didnt start putting coals on to my almost burnout out life in order to be something, or have a story, or be inspiring. 

When I cried my desperate heart out in Mamma Mia 2 in July 2019, feeling so broken, desperate, lost, alone and afraid… I didnt know id end up here, now 7 years later able to talk about it. 

I thought that was it. Game Over. 

Marriage virtually over. 

Parents the source of masked pain – terrorisers. 

No where to run. 

No one to even talk to. 

That was it. 

The End. 

Yes I had just started reading a book on the stages of life (Falling Upward, Richard Rohr) 

But I still had to make it happen. 

I still had to ‘do it’ 

I still had to , for the first time ever, talk about what had really been happening behind the sacred walls of a marriage. 

I still had to make a phone call to try and get some short term accommodation from a friend who id barely seen for 18 years. 

I still had to make it happen, it didnt even feel like bravery. 

But it was. 

From a place of being utterly broken and utterly scared and utterly lost. 

It was. 

But it was also what I had to do. 

Because the alternative was the actual end. 

I dug in. 

Just. 

I was brave for the first time. 

Actually. 

No. 

It repeated what I had had to do in my childhood. 

Brave was not jumping through the window, when escape was a safe option. 

Brave was going back to the house every day. 

Brave was realising if I didnt close up to mum, she would drain me of everything. 

Brave was emotionally divorcing her/them, and realising to succeed I had to go it alone. No asking for emotional support, no asking for finances, no asking, at all. 

Brave was having to face the consequences of excluding them, better than including them. 

Yet there were definitely other moments where I wasnt brave enough. Fear and punishment and vitriol was never far around the corner. 

It was brave in a self defence kind of way. Repeated again 20 years later as I hit 40 1/2. 

People with medical conditions are write inspiring stories. People who climb back from addiction to a semblance of life are the heroes, as are military or the risky challenger type folks. 

I wasnt brave. But if you met my mother, you’d realise how brave I was. 

(Especially when making complaints about her historic conduct to her workplace under safeguarding) 

I just did what I had to do. 

I often didnt realise the magnitude of it until afterwards. 

But that didnt matter. 

And thats why, after writing out my story for you over the last few months I am reflecting on the what next. I was asked what kept me going in the midst of the moments when the darkness would have been easy to give in to. Truth was, I didnt know light, I didnt know what an alternative was. It was my existence. Survival was an identity. 

Maybe I am inspiring, just because I can sit here in peace and calm and write this. 

Maybe as I write this, you know I am looking at you, holding you, and loving you as you read, as you hear my voice in my words, offer calm, assurance, love and soul. 

Because you know me, readers, and you know that ive been in hell and escaped, then took myself there to make the demons unemployed. Because you feel it in these very words. You are known. 

Yet. I know also. 

I wouldn’t want to read what im writing now, to my 38 year old self. 

I wouldn’t have wanted to hear great inner platitudes of hope, or light or love – when I was 38 years into the midst of a miserable sad lonely life that I couldnt admit to. 

I wouldn’t have read these words. Or felt them. 

Yet. It’s to that person I want to write to. 

That person who is given these words from their sister or spouse

That person who is lost, confused or broken, and doesnt want to admit it, face it or reveal the truth of it. That person who feels hopeless. Pretending to be hopeful whilst dying inside. 

Hope. 

Is that what kept me going through all the bravery? Is that what kept me going all along? Hope? Hope for what? 

I wonder… maybe theres something in that…..maybe today, maybe theres something in Hope thats deep and real and true. It wasnt the intention, truly. It was just to get through. Take one more beating in the silence. Take one more screaming session in drunkenness. I didnt live a story to be hopeful to others. It was just to get through. 

I didnt have an end-game – it was just to get rid of the pain (once I felt it). 

Theres something about Hope, that feels like it’s building, expect some pieces on this in the next few weeks. Oh and a ‘little’ adventure coming soon too. 

Thank you for reading. Thank you for being here, fellow light sharers. Fellow Hope. 

Saw this. liked it. But of course. The difficult road I was once on was my normal.