Mind Over Matter

August 10, 2020.Reading time 14 minutes.

I sit on my bed. The house is quiet. Peaceful almost tranquil. To anyone else looking in it most definitely would be tranquil. But the storm raging on inside of me flooded the last rays of serenity many moments ago. My hand strokes lightly across the cover. I’ve counted them. Each one of them. Their powder leaving small traces of evidence behind. As I continue to write in my journal, my eyes fill heavy and my pain lashes out uncontrollably. This is the end. It’s better this way. Easier. No more pain. No more hurting others. I don’t know where I’ll go, but I’ve come to peace with that. Have I come to peace with it? It terrifies me. Yet I see no other option. Life is too much. Too hard. I have no purpose. I stroke my hand across the covers again. Faint residue disperses ever so lightly. I close my journal. Put down my pen. As my tears dry up, a hardness engulfs. Stop being so weak. All I’ve ever been is weak. I grab a handful of sedatives and swallow hard. A small bottle of vodka helps ease the nerves. Another handful and another. I gag. NO. Do not be weak. I swallow again. More vodka. I know my mind is going. Reality shakes as I start to lose control. Grounding techniques, I need to use grounding techniques. I can’t remember them. I have to finish this. My hand becomes distant, the pills become faint. NO. Don’t stop. I bang my head. I sniff my perfume. I start talking loud. STAY HERE. I’ve almost finished them. For a fleeting moment I’m proud of myself but as I finish the last mouthful of dissolving powder the mist returns and the distance comes raging closer. I lose control. I’m falling backwards. The darkness sucking so hard I lose grip and tumble down. Far down. The pit larger and deeper than I ever remembered it. Impenetrable yet with ease I pass through. There’s no more time for regrets. Too late to take it back. Consumed with nothing, I’m full. It’s done. So done.

How do you come back from something like that? How do you start again? Move forwards? I was supposed to be dead. My heart stopped multiple times en-route to the hospital. My body had leaked every bodily fluid possible. I was unconscious for more than 3 days and when I eventually woke up in the ICU the doctors and nurses couldn’t believe I had survived. Not only was I alive, there was minimal damage left from what could have been a fatal catastrophe. My body was ok. My mind was not. I woke up so broken, so alone, shattered into a thousand tiny pieces with no clue in the world on how to start again.

Five and a half years ago I sat in a little room on my own. It had been just hours since finally being discharged from the hospital after taking an overdose which miraculously, and it truly was a miracle, did not kill me. Even after surviving something I never should have survived I still contemplated trying it again. I had categorically entered into the lowest of lows and in these darkest moments would come a choice I would live by for the rest of my life. I had made multiple attempts on my life, dissociated hundreds of times, many of which had been incredibly dangerous, survived years of abuse and walked out of sex trafficking. That night in that little room something happened that I will never fully be able to explain. But I saw the choice crystal clear in front of me. In that moment I knew without a shadow of a doubt that if I attempted suicide again, I would be successful and I would not survive. I resisted, I screamed, I cried and I fought back. An unseen battle raging so strong. Mind against matter. I hated life, I wanted nothing to do with it. I did not want to keep going. Yet in the middle of the struggle, amidst the onslaught of emotions, I chose. I chose LIFE. I said Yes. Whatever that would look like. I knew it would come in all shapes and sizes. I knew it wouldn’t be easy. Not for a moment. But for the first time I understood there might be a reason why I was still alive, and despite feeling purposeless, who was I to decide that nothing could ever change. That one choice, became a minute-by-minute choice. Over time it turned into an hourly choice, a daily choice and eventually it formed into a habit that I no longer have to think about.

I have come a million miles in the last 5 and a half years. I don’t recognize my life. The first couple of years were ridiculously tough. Tackling therapy on a new level, it hurt. Memories are painful, regrets agonizing and starving out the old highly uncomfortable. But as the bad is cut away, room is made for the new. And with it comes fresh oxygen and ripe fruit. I have learned it’s not mind against matter, it’s mind over matter. Most matters in my life I cannot control. But my mind I can. Life throws us curveballs at every point of the way. Some we can dodge, some we can even catch, but many will hit us and attempt to make us fall back or fall over. It’s those big ones, the ones which make us wobble, where we choose mind over matter. We decide how it lets us affect us, we determine how we respond. I have come to understand my triggers and know when a ‘matter’ attempts to take charge over my mind. Panic, chaos, exhaustion, desperation and hopelessness are just a few of the alarm bells going off when the wrong leader takes the lead. I have to shift gear, take a minute and reestablish correct order. No ‘matter’ should ever take charge over our mind. We have been given phenomenal minds, incredible brains and an unbelievable ability to overcome almost anything. Do we choose to let matters take charge? Or we do we decide that our mind is more powerful.

I wasn’t just ‘fixed’. I went through more than 7 years of therapy to get to where I am today and years of ‘choosing’ how I was going to respond to situations and even more challenging than that, feelings. Every day is still filled with choices. Feelings come in and try to take over. But I have been given a mind which is able to listen to my feelings, but take control and often decide a different course instead. Mind over matter. For years I heard the phrase, never really contemplating what it actually meant.

This week I went for a run with my little sister. I say ‘little’, at almost 6ft tall she’s a whole lot bigger than me! The run was supposed to be 3 miles (5k) and we were gonna be picked up at the other end by our mom! We set off with 3 dogs and 25 minutes later we finished the run. What we didn’t realize is that the pick-up point was another 20 minute walk away! By the time we arrived (fast jog/sprint) we were so late my mom had turned around and left as she had another appointment. We were stuck! Seriously thirsty, ridiculously dusty and very tired! It was an hour wait (at least!) to get picked up, at least an hour to walk back or we could do the same run again and be back in 25 minutes! We chose option 3! I know we’re crazy… but this blog was birthed out of this experience. I absolutely did not think I could run all the way back. I was DEAD, exhausted, my legs hurt and having not done many runs over the past month, slightly out of peak condition. But with a much younger sister who’s only completed 2 runs all year, I wasn’t ready to cave and say I couldn’t do it! So we set off. 27 minutes later we were home. Not at any point was it easy or enjoyable. I could hardly walk by the time we got back. BUT I was reminded of the power of my mind. Despite not ‘feeling’ like I could do it, my mind took charge and decided we were doing it.

Time and time again during the past many years, I have had to choose mind over matter. Situations I didn’t think I could handle, emotions too great to understand. Hardships and losses, goodbyes and great challenges. Life will never be a breeze. It will never be just easy. I know for many this last season has been one of the toughest so far. Many feel out of control and lots of us unsure of what the future holds. Despite the unknowns, the matters which remain unpredictable, your mind is powerful and was created to be in control. Whatever you’re going through today, whatever your current situation looks like, take a moment to see who or what is in charge. Are feelings leading your every day? Situations dominating your life? Who’s at the head of your table?

I’m about to walk into one of the most challenging seasons of my life. These past few weeks I’ve had to make some of the toughest decisions I’ve ever had to make. My heart feels torn in so many directions. My feelings are screaming at me to take over. Emotions overwhelming to a point of bursting. Yet I know I have a choice and I’m choosing to stay calm in the midst of what feels like chaos and too many unknowns. My mind is in control and I’m going to make sure it stays that way. Mind over matter. The matter for me right now is big, scary and intimidating. But my mind I know well. It’s become safe and predictable. It knows how to respond. And that’s my prayer for you too today. No matter what you’re facing, how daunting or hopeless your situation might be. Know that you have been given a mind that is incredibly powerful and immensely strong. You can be in control even when everything around you feels out of control. And you can choose, even when it doesn’t seem like you have any choices left.

THE TIME IS NOW

June 24, 2020.Reading time 10 minutes.

I have moved house about 25 times in my life. The majority of those moves happened after I turned 18 years old. Life can be pretty crazy right? Unsettled, restless, uncertain and unsure. I’ve learned over the years that I can’t place any value on a house or in a location. It can change. Quickly and often without much warning. And so a long time ago I stopped placing importance on ‘things’. I had to pack too often, downsize each time. And with each move I ended up having less and less belongings. I know the first few times I found it hard. But with each move it became just that little bit easier. A sense of freedom, nothing tying me down.

But what I have placed significance on is people. I’ve lived in so many places and although everything around me would change, the one constant has always been people. And I can honestly say I never realized how important human beings were until we moved to Germany last October!

We’re currently stationed in Northern Germany for two years. We moved in October and it’s been the toughest move yet. When we first found out we were moving here excitement overrode every other emotion! We were gonna be moving to Europe and I would be close to my family and friends again for a while. I was incredibly excited for the adventure and even more excited for my husband to see Europe and experience how the ‘Europeaners’ live! We found out 21 months before we actually moved that we were going to Germany!

Sounds great right? But what we didn’t realize is that when you know you’re leaving and something else is about to take place, it’s very hard not to ‘check-out’ of your current situation. And we quickly noticed that that’s exactly what we were doing. We had 12 months left in Virginia Beach before we would then move to Washington DC for 9 months to learn German, before eventually moving on to Germany. Looking back we lived those 21 months half-heartedly. We didn’t get involved with things we probably would have had we not been ‘leaving soon’ and our minds were already on the ‘next adventure’.

Fast forward to October of 2019 and the adventure was finally here. We moved to Germany and were hit hard in the face with the unrealistic expectations we had formed. We didn’t know anyone, we moved in winter time and it was only light about 5 hours a day! And when I say light, dim would be a better description! Constant rain pounded the gloomy streets around us and within days of moving into our new house without any furniture (that would come 2 months later) my husband went out to sea and I would hardly see him until Christmas time!

Let’s just say, a fair number of tears were shed. As I sat on a little mattress upstairs in one of the empty bedrooms with just a bag of clothes, a laptop and my two dogs surrounding me – it hit me hard for the first time just exactly what we had left behind.

During those first few months I experienced loneliness on a new level. Despite my past I have always still had a full life. I’ve always had family and I’ve always had friends. Even though for many years I ‘felt’ alone, I’d never actually been alone. And for the first time I felt alone on a level I’d never encountered before.

People.

My eyes were opened to the importance of human beings, connection, friendships, familiarity and contact. Despite having spent 9 months learning German and becoming pretty decent at speaking the language, I felt like an alien in a foreign world. The culture here so vastly different from anything I’d been used to before. The actual spoken street language, a completely different language to the one we had learned.

When life is stripped away to the bare minimum, and at the time that really is what happened! No furniture, no ‘stuff’, no people anywhere nearby, sitting on my own in a foreign country – what is of value becomes magnified. I missed being able to go for a coffee with my girlfriends or sit in the office having a laugh at work. Going to my awesome church or camping out with my mates. I craved familiarity and connection. I desired human contact.

People.

At the essence and core of all of us is the yearning to be loved. It’s intimacy. For people to know us. Love us. Understand who we are. Community. We are born with an innate need and desire to belong. You often hear people say “I’m an introvert or an extrovert.” But it doesn’t change needing people in your life. It doesn’t mean we don’t need friends and family in our corner. Because we’re made to be in community with one another.

I was incredibly fortunate to get to know a couple down the street who saved us time and time again with basic things you take for granted every single day! Car insurance, bank accounts, internet, food stores, building a fence for the dogs! Kjell and Christiana if you read this blog – I am eternally grateful for your time and your friendship. You have been incredible from the minute we got here. And you’ve been a friendly face in an ocean of unfamiliarity, often in times when I’ve most needed it. Thank you!

I have learned many lessons over the past 8 months. Germany and coronavirus have been a school of life education. Its classes have challenged me to my core. Don’t take anything for granted. We almost wished our time away in Virginia Beach because we were too impatient to get to the next chapter. And yet I have yearned to be back there so many times since. I have a newfound gratefulness for all the people in my life. My family and my friendships. Whether I get to see them in person or just via zoom – it doesn’t matter. They’re there and that’s what counts.

Life is short and a pandemic can happen at any given time! A sudden move to a foreign country hides behind the corner. Make sure you make every moment count. Message your loved ones, let go of regrets. Place great value on the people who have been gifted into your life. We can’t do this life alone. If I had I’d be dead today.

Germany is growing on us! The people become friendlier with better weather! Certain people have been awesome since day 1. It’s been a challenging time here but it’s also been a time of growth and strengthening of character. I’m ready to start living in the ‘now’ and not waste anymore time. I won’t wish anymore time away but make the most of what’s right in front of me. I’m gonna message those I love and FaceTime and visit whoever I can whenever I can.

Because people are significant. And we can’t do life without them.

I’m Back!

June 16, 2020.Reading time 5 minutes.

Hello my beautiful friends!

Wow it’s been a while! Almost 4 years actually. I almost have to remember how to do this!! So bare with me while the dust falls off and I re-find my mojo!

I just had to read my last few blogs to see where I left it, and boy has life changed just a bit! I’m gonna take this opportunity to tell you a little about me for those who are just joining my crazy adventure.

My name is Chi and I decided about 5 years ago to start using my life to help other people. My life has been complicated and my story complex. It’s definitely too long to fit into this intro! But I hope you’ll take some time and go through my website to find out more. For a long time I lived as a victim and I had no clue how to regain control over my life, my feelings and my mind. Fear crushed me, loss of control gripped me and anger defined me. I walked through each day unsure if I would see tomorrow and I lived each moment wishing I didn’t exist.

It wasn’t one defining moment which made my life turn around. It was a choice. And it became a daily choice. I’ve had a huge amount of help along the way and without certain people I wouldn’t be alive today. But even with all the help in the world, it came down to a moment where I had to choose life or death. I had to decide what my future would look like.

My journey has been tough. It’s been long and it’s been rocky. But I have learnt so very much! I’m most definitely not an expert in anything mental health or life related! But I do believe experience takes you a long way.

I started my blog almost 5 years ago because I realised I could either keep my life to myself, or I could decide to share it and in the process hope to help a few people like I was helped. Within a year of starting my blogging I met my husband, got married, moved from the UK to America, bought a few dogs, became a step-mom, bought a house, moved another 4 times, learnt a third language and ended up in Germany! Regrettably I stopped blogging! Now, 4 years on it’s time to come back to my passion and rekindle my love of writing, people and life!

I look at our world today and it’s pretty messy. And I’m not just talking pandemic messy! Did you know that every 40 seconds someone commits suicide? Or that there are currently over 4 million sex trafficking victims? More than 800 million people are suffering with a mental health disorder and more than 11 million people are incarcerated. Those numbers are pretty staggering and sobering. Our world is a mess. Too many people are struggling and your average Joe walking down the street is dealing with more than we could ever know.

I don’t have the answers on how to improve the statistics. But what I have experienced is a broken life made whole. I hope these blogs might help you or someone you know in some way. I hope we can journey together and figure this life thing out! I know change starts on the inside and filters out. It starts with each of us individually and as we become more whole we’re able to help those around us. There are so many people in very desperate situations needing help, support and a way out. My prayer is that we can start becoming those people. The ones who will step out and see the need. The ones who will look beyond their own lives and become someone else’s answer.

I’m excited to get back to blogging and am already so grateful for your support! Let’s go on this journey called life together and hopefully somewhere along the line we’ll start making an impact and a dent into the mess!

Open My Eyes

December 1, 2016.Reading time 11 minutes.

1st December 2016

My birthday, my engagement, two weeks off – life has been pretty good lately! And yet this has been the first week in a very long time where I’ve found life hard…

I guess when you come off the back of two incredible weeks and you’re on a total high after spending 12 days with a man who has slowly but surely become a very big part of your life, and for that matter – a very big part of me… It’s pretty hard to go back to routine and reality.

Dropping my fiancé off at the airport was emotional and knowing he’s out to sea for the next month with little communication on top of the 4000 mile distance we already face, I felt slightly unsteady on my feet as the readjustment to routine seemed harder than ever before.

I never knew missing someone could make you feel sick in the stomach. I never knew loneliness could hurt quite so much. I never knew someone could become such a part of you that when he’s not there, an empty void really does take its place.

Driving back to Stoke – a town still very new and unfamiliar – I felt a heaviness weighing me down and despite my best efforts at trying to make myself happy and look for the positives, for once it didn’t soothe the ache.

10 calls to different friends, and multiple whatsapps, snapchats and txts later – the weight seemed content to remain where it was and a new emotional heartache seemed to snuggle round it like a blanket.

It was at this moment that I stopped and thought to myself – “why do I always have to keep up tradition of going to the answer as my final and last resort?” Asking two hundred questions to get there and yet knowing the right way all along.

And so I got in the car, as I regularly do, and just drove and prayed. Driving keeps me focussed. Praying gives me peace.

Don’t ask me how it works – I don’t know. But what I do know is that the answer is never wrapped around the gift I’ve put at the top of my list…

I’m driving as it starts to get dark and I turn on the news. And this is where I know it’s not coincidence – because I work in news and listen to, watch and read hundreds of articles a week. But within 30 seconds my perspective on life had changed, my mood was reset, my energy levels re-balanced and I got a firm grip on the heaviness that had been trying to take me down.

I’m reminded of the world I live in. I’m prompted about the life I lead. Awareness punches me in the face and I turn to embarrassment as suddenly and very quickly my issues and my sorrows seem to fade away in comparison to the suffering of the millions who live closer to me than my own fiancé does.

ISIS film a CHILD carrying out a beheading for the first time, as the terror group increasingly use boys to kill. Boys as young as 6 are being taught how to execute gruesome murders and carry out brutal beheadings with just a small knife. The boys face is uncovered – revealing a chilling dead-eyed stare that offers a glimpse of the evil he has witnessed carried out by ISIS’ killers.

Horrifying images show emaciated skeleton children caught up in the battles to defeat ISIS in Mosul. As the desperate battle to rid the world of ISIS continues, these are the innocent children caught in the middle.

A place which just a month ago was simply a desert, is now home to 50,000 displaced people forced out of their homes, living in tents, starved and close to death.

Woman continue to suffer brutal rape by armed groups and are then ostracised and rejected by their own families and communities because of it. Left alone with nowhere to go many do not survive or are picked up by other men and forced into the trafficking sex trade.

71 people are dead after a Columbian plane ran out of fuel. The plane plunged into a mountainside leaving only six of the 77 people aboard alive. An entire Brazilian football team, on their way to a cup final, were on the plane. Only two of them are alive but in critical condition. Friends and family are left in utter devastation, lives ripped apart, questions which may never be answered.

For a while I find it hard to move. I find it hard to breathe. We can almost become immune to stories in the news, the headlines, bulletins which flash up and within seconds are gone again. Pushed in between promotional adverts on the cheapest toys and sofa’s we can buy this Christmas. But these are real people. These are real lives. These are stories which are ongoing, happened this week and continue to happen today.

You see when I say my mood was reset and my energy levels re-balanced, I don’t mean I stepped out of that moment singing and dancing because actually my life is so good. It means I was pushed to a new level to get out of my small minded double framed square box and live on purpose in a way where I will make the biggest difference in this world I am capable of making. It means I chose in that moment to take the blurry focus of myself and instead sharpen it to the world around me. It means yes I can experience low moments, and loneliness, have harder days and not always feel on top of the world, BUT within reason. Keeping my filter open, having a 24/7 awareness that my life is a GIFT wrapped in silver wrapping compared to many of the lives right outside my door and right across from our country.

For years I lived as a victim. For years I could see nothing else but my pain. And I know how far I’ve come but this last week I had a moment where I could feel the self-pity creep back in again. And the second I stopped and focussed my attention to God and prayed for an answer, I didn’t get the answer I wanted or had asked for – but I got a glimpse of the world I live in and the lives around me. Their suffering and utter hopelessness and desperation. I instead had the slits in my eyes which had gradually started falling asleep again pulled apart and I knew in that moment that this was a loud and clear message to wake up from my slumber once again and live on purpose.

To all the beautiful people around me, my friends, my family and to the many I haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting. I know so many of you struggle. I know so many of you read my blogs because you’re desperately trying to find a way out of your pain. And I hear you and I feel you and I know where you’re at. But I encourage you in this moment to look around. To read and to watch and to listen to some of the stuff that is going on right now. We live in a desperate and at times a scarily evil world. But every day people are making life transforming changes for others. And if there is nothing you can do right now – then that’s ok – but just by taking our eyes off ourselves and looking outwards, it changes the way we feel inside. It makes our issues look smaller and less scary, it makes life more do-able and it might even stir up a passion inside of you, a fight, a decision, to step out of your pain and into someone else’s instead.

Rewritten

April 26, 2016.Reading time 9 minutes.

26th April 2016

As I look up, the state of the art sky-high buildings tower over me, filling me with a sense of overwhelming trepidation but equally an overpowering admiration. The photo’s on the walls exhibiting countless world-changing journalists and people of great affluence and brilliance stare back at me and for a moment I forget why I’m even here, taking in the spectacle and absorbing every detail unfolding before my eyes. Media City, the hollywood of the BBC and the media industry, a world so very far from anything I’ve ever experienced before.

But I’m really here! Four months ago I took a leap of faith and applied for a position I thought was so far beyond my reach and capabilities, just submitting the application seemed like I was grasping at a dream too high, too big, too prestigious for a small-town girl like me. I never in my wildest dreams thought I would ever get the chance to sit in the very buildings, walk alongside the very people, where multitudes of life-changing work originated and continuous to derive from.

As I walk up to the front desk the nerves seem to amplify beyond a point of what I thought my body was capable of producing. “Take a seat over there and someone will be with you shortly,” says the kind lady on reception. This is it. Thousands upon thousands of applicants; and I find myself alongside just 59 others here for an assessment day and interview, privileged and so grateful for the opportunity to showcase what I might one day be capable of and show them a bit of who I am.

I wait quietly, plumping myself down on a chair in the corner, and let myself just for a few minutes grasp the magnitude of this opportunity, envisioning the potential of how my life could change forever.

The minutes tick by slowly, the anticipation building every second, and as the feelings of doubt, insecurity and inadequacy attempt to lay their foundations at the centre of my mind, I remind myself of the video I made just a few months ago. ‘Impossible’. Refreshing my memory I extract the one quote from Michael Jordan that has stuck by me through so many times of hardship and trials.

“I have missed more than 9 thousand shots in my career. I have lost almost 3 hundred games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And THAT is why I succeed.”

It doesn’t matter that my journey has been so vastly different than most others I come across. It doesn’t matter that I screwed up time after time after time. It doesn’t matter that the deep dark depths of my past which try so fiercely to overshadow the success I know I have already achieved just by sitting in this very place. For the first time I realise for myself that it is exactly those failures, it is exactly those dark years that has brought me to this precise moment. It hasn’t just shaped who I am, it has given me the burning passion inside where I finally know who I really want to be and what I want to become.

Life isn’t about getting lucky. It isn’t about waiting for ‘your’ moment. It’s about choosing to be who you want to be. I spent so many years living in victim mode. So many years being hard done by the cards I got dealt. And then it hit me hard that it was up to me, and only me, to actually make something of the one life I had been given. It’s been a process and I so often still get it wrong. But going for the biggest interview of my life made me realise that anything really is possible. I never dreamed that I would one day sit in front of some of the top BBC journalists explaining my story and the passion that burns inside of me for people and to get my message out. I never dreamed that the biggest media platform in the world might give me the opportunity to help them reach an audience of millions. My assessment day was tough! And there is every possibility I might not get the job. But as much as getting it would be a dream come true, I know it doesn’t change anything if I don’t get it. It has opened my eyes to the possibilities. The possibilities of what happens when you choose life and choose to fight against the odds. What happens when you decide to turn your mess into a message and the tests you were forced to face into a testimony.

This blog isn’t about pretending that life is now perfect for me and it has all finally fallen into place. Far from it! It’s about the realisation that I look around and see so many people still struggling. So many people living as victims. So many people desperate, hopeless, still in dire situations or unable to see past the problems they are currently facing. Yes life for me is a heck of a lot easier than it was even two years ago. But there came a point where I had to choose. I had to choose to fight. I had to decide to make something of the crap that I had to go through. I had to accept and embrace everything that was ever thrown at me and turn it into something positive and powerful.

It’s about the lady in the wheelchair who decides every night to still take her dogs out, no matter how hard it might be or how exhausting it is to move around. It’s about the young man who lost his sight but it doesn’t stop him from teaching kids in his local community how to play the piano. It’s about the mother who lost her son to cancer but now helps other grieving families who are going through the same thing. It’s about you and me who have a past, who might still be going through heartache, pain and sorrow but finding that thing that makes you special, helps you relate and gifts you in a way where no one else could ever make that difference.

That’s what I learnt from being chosen over thousands and thousands of other applicants to have my chance at giving what I love doing a shot and potentially one day be able to do it full time and for a living. Life a choice. Do we choose to accept it as it is? Or do we choose to make something of what could be.

Operation Bullfinch

March 29, 2016.Reading time 11 minutes.

29th March 2016

The screams are loud and piercing penetrating my entire mind as I attempt to grasp onto the last bit of reality with all my strength. The darkness thick and vicious, it permeates my entire being, crippling, restraining me deeper into my bed. The pain pulsating through my body, the trembling rapidly turning into waves of convulsions that become uncontrollably exhausting.

The girls are lined up, stripped bare, showing nothing more than potential money making objects in the hungry eyes of their predators. Humility and privacy, the rights that once belonged to them, are now just a distant memory of a life that once existed. I strain to distinguish between each girl, their unique characteristics, but suddenly find myself looking into a mirror image of my face, duplicated over and over again as hundreds of ‘me’ turn the short line into a boundless procession. I turn away disturbed and confused. Refocused I throw one more glance back scrutinising the girls, their eyes pleading and showing their desperate hopelessness without a word being spoken. The seemingly endless marathon of torment continues on and on until the night finally dissipates and the first rays of dawn engulf whatever darkness was left behind.

I wake sitting upright with a bolt. It’s morning and light is shining intensely into my room giving it a whole new aura compared to a few hours ago. Just another night I remind myself as I work hard to bring the present back into focus. Just another nightmare I repeat again in my head. I smile as I remember being told once that sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together. Right now that statement holds a hollow and vacant place is my heart.

It’s Thursday morning. Less than 12 hours ago I sat opposite one of my social workers and police officers being asked to decide whether or not I would go through years of interviews, statements, court appearances, cross examinations, interrogations and questions to help bring down potentially many of the men and woman who shaped and created such a tremendous part of my past.

It’s been almost fifteen years since it all began. Looking back now it seems more than a whole lifetime ago. Today doesn’t even come close to resembling any part of ‘back then’, but I’m reminded again how incredibly long the journey has been and how tough it was to get to this place I find myself in now. They had stolen years of my childhood and many more as I endeavoured to come to terms and start fixing the damage they had left behind.

A mixture of anger, confusion, hopelessness and desperation starts wrangling its way up my chest and into my mind, seeking to regain its control of my thoughts once more. It seems never-ending as the ripple effect continuous to spread further and further out into the vast ocean of consequences from so very long ago.

I will never forget the day the police came knocking on my door two and half years ago informing me that my involvement had become apparent in their major child sex abuse investigation. ‘Operation Bullfinch’ as it is formally and publicly known. I had seen it on the news throughout the year but had never consciously made the link. My world was rocked once again and the realisation that the past I had buried so deep down and had pretended was long gone, never to resurface, was actually unfolding once more right before my eyes.

These last few weeks I have felt so many emotions. Desperate and hopeless, exhausted and selfish as I made the decision to step away from the investigation and not proceed in the trials and court hearings to bring the people who changed my life forever to justice. The police were very thorough in reminding me how ‘they’ are still at work and how so many other lives are being destroyed every day because of it. I feel sick and as I acknowledge the tidal wave of tears and emotion climb higher and higher until I can no longer contain it, I bury my head into my pillow and let it all flood out.

Sometimes life is harsh. And at times life is relentless. There are times I have looked into a baby’s eyes and vowed that I will never bring them into this world. There are moments like now where I step back, look at the choice I have to make, and accept I don’t know the right answer.

Admitting my nightmares that reoccur so often aren’t actually too far from the truth has been pretty tough. Owning up to the responsibilities that have been laid in my hands without ever asking for that privilege. Being given the choice to change other people’s outcomes, it’s a choice I wish deep down had never been given to me.

It has taken me so long to get my life back on track. So long to feel normal again. Is it wrong to choose not to go back into my past? It is beyond selfish to finally crave the experience of a life lived to the full? But even as I ask those questions I know I’m sacrificing other girl’s freedoms for my own selfish desires. Oh what I would have given if someone had come forward and stood up against them when I was young. Oh what I would have given to have been rescued years earlier. What I would have given to have been saved before it had even begun.

I started blogging because I want to give people hope. I want to help change other people’s stories through my own. I blog because I want to inspire and encourage, influence and inform. Today’s blog might not seem like it’s any of the above. But like I said from the start, I want to be real. And more than that I want to be honest. Sometimes life isn’t straight cut. At times it’s not easy or simple and at times life definitely doesn’t go the way we want it to go. Sometimes the answers aren’t just a yes or a no. People will judge, people will criticise and people will pretend that they know best.

Operation Bullfinch has become a nationwide investigation. It will be going on for many years to come and just like the police and social workers told me; I can go back to it at any point and start providing the evidence they need. There might come a time where I have the strength to look my culprits in the eye and there might come a time where I will be ready once more to put my life on hold and do what it takes to set others free. But until that time I’m going to trust God that He has every innocent life in His hands. That His power is greater than my testimony will ever be. And that His plan for all their lives and for my life is bigger than I could ever ask for or imagine.

Every day I pray for the right answer. Every day I plead for Him to show me what to do. But this morning, after another restless and exhausting night I suddenly felt a peace. I suddenly saw my whole life in front of me, every moment of pure joy, every laughter, every tear, every friendship, every connection, all the moments of the ordinary and all the glimpses of the extraordinary. So many memories I have stored up, so many gifts I have been given. My life is so abundantly blessed. So vastly full of love and people who make every day count. And in that moment I realised that it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what other’s think, it doesn’t matter if we always get it right or wrong. What matters is the state of our hearts and if we are living in gratefulness and gratitude. And whether or not I have made the right or wrong decision for now, I know I am open to whatever comes next. And I also know that sometimes you have to hold back, so that when you do finally let go, the force of impact is greater than it could have ever been before.

Impossible

March 8, 2016.Reading time 14 minutes.

8th March 2016

“I can’t do it.”

“It’s impossible.”

“I’m not good enough.”

“Just give up, it’s too hard.”

“I’m gonna fail.”

They were my most used phrases. They were the statements I believed every single day. They were the declarations I lived by, the truths I fed myself and the testimony I proclaimed.

I look around and I realise I’m surrounded by people who aren’t fulfilling their potential because they believe what the world has told them for too long. Surrounded by people who have listened to themselves for too long. Surrounded by friends who have no self confidence, no self esteem and put themselves down time after time after time.

I might have a past that has majorly impacted the way I have looked at myself and what I ever thought I was capable of, but regardless of the voices that spoke into my life for so long, we live in a society where we are told too often that we ‘just aren’t good enough.’ That someone else will be ‘more capable’. We live in a world crammed, packed and over-crowded by magazines, tv’s, radio’s and social media broadcasting what some of the most successful people achieved today, earned this week and accomplished this month. In the spotlight in front of the camera’s in front of the billions of viewers; there’s no room for failure, there’s no capacity for error and there’s certainly no allowance for imperfection. Social media has become the biggest culprit of them all. If our lives don’t represent or resemble even an ounce of the success demonstrated by the people on our Facebook walls or on our flat screens – we are failing. We’re not as good. We’re not as capable and our potential is seen as inadequate.

If we tell ourselves something over and over again, it doesn’t take long to actually start believing it. If we watch something or someone over and over again, the result becomes the same.

But you know what? It’s crap! I lived like it for so long. Too long! You see what you believe is what you live. If I have a lot of hatred in my heart, I become an angry person. If I stew on mistakes rather than moving forward and trying again, outwardly I become frustrated and insecure. If I believe I can’t do it and I’m not good enough – guess what? I’m not gonna get very far.

I just can’t help but stop and wonder where this distorted image of ourselves has come from. I can’t help but stop and question how our society and so many people in it have sunk so low to think they are nothing and no one.

Because let me tell you something. Let me just flip what those people have said to you upside down. Let me just throw what you have told yourself, so often, into turmoil. Let me just give you a few facts about yourself…

Do you know that our brains can read up to a thousand words per minute?? A thousand! We don’t often train our brains in that way anymore, but that’s what it’s capable of!

Do you know that inside our bodies there are 60 thousand miles of blood vessels? 60 thousand miles of blood vessels inside of you! You could circumnavigate the Earth two and a half times!!!

Do you know that YOU are made up of 7 cotillion atoms? Just to put that into perspective – there are 300 billion stars in our galaxy, add another 16 zero’s to that 300 billion and you just about get the number of atoms that you and me and every other adult walking around, is made up of.

Do you know that humans are the best long-distance runners on the planet? Better than any four-legged animal. In fact, thousands of years ago we used to run after our prey until the prey died of exhaustion.

Do you know that one full head of human hair is strong enough to support 12 tonnes of weight? The largest and heaviest elephant recorded only weighs 6 tonnes!!!

For every pound of fat or muscle gained, our body creates 7 miles of new blood vessels.

Your body produces 25 million new cells every SECOND! Every 13 seconds, you produce more cells than there are people in the United States of America.

In one day, your blood travels 12,000 miles around your body. That is four times the distance across the US from coast-to-coast.

Don’t ever say you’re nothing.

And now let me tell you just a couple more facts about those so called incredible people who we see on our TV screens every day and who we compare ourselves to all the time… The ones who are capable of so much more than us. The ones who are just ‘better’.

Do you know that Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and failed his first business attempt? Yep he’s the guy that later created the global empire that is Microsoft.

Did you know that Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because he lacked imagination and had no good ideas. After that he started a number of businesses but they didn’t last too long and they ended with bankruptcy and failure. Today he rakes in billions from all round the world.

Do you know that Albert Einstein didn’t speak until he was 4? He couldn’t read until he was 7 and his parents and teachers thought he was mentally handicapped, slow and anti-social. He was expelled from school and was refused admittance to a science school he applied for. Winning a nobel prize, he went on to change the face of modern physics and in the world’s eyes is a total genius.

Thomas Eddison was told by his teachers he was too stupid to learn anything. After finishing school, work was no better. He got fired from his first two jobs for not being productive enough. Even as an inventor, Eddison made a thousand unsuccessful attempts, before eventually creating the lightbulb.

Winston Churchill; struggled right through school and failed the 6th grade. He faced many years of political failures and was defeated in every election for public office. At the age of 62 he went on to become our Prime Minister.

Abraham Lincoln, went to war as a captain and returned as a private (which is the lowest position possible). He started numerous businesses, which all failed and was defeated in multiple runs he made for public office. Today he is remembered as one of the greatest leaders of our nation.

Oprah Winfrey, endured an incredibly tough and often very abusive childhood as well as numerous career setbacks including being fired from her job as a television reporter because she was apparently unfit for TV. Today she is one of the most iconic faces on TV as well as one of the richest and most successful woman in the world.

Harrison Ford was told he didn’t have what it takes to be a movie star. Marilyn Monroe was told by modelling agents she should consider becoming a secretary instead. Steven Spielberg was rejected from the University of Southern California School of Theatre, Film and Television three times. J.K. Rowling was completely penniless, severely depressed, divorced and trying to raise a child on her own while attending school and writing a novel. She went from depending on benefits to one of the richest woman in the world. Elvis Presley was told he wouldn’t get anywhere and should go back to driving a truck. The Beatles were told by recording companies they didn’t like their sound and guitar music was on its way out. Beethoven was incredibly awkward on the violin when he was young and despite his love for composing, his teachers told him he would never make it as a musician or a composer.

And finally let me finish with Michael Jordan – probably known as THE best basketball player of all time. Jordan was actually cut from his high school basketball team but luckily he didn’t let this setback stop him from playing the game. Jordan has stated “I have missed more than 9 thousand shots in my career. I have lost almost 3 hundred games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the winning shot, and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And THAT is why I succeed.”

———————-

And that right there – that’s the key.

Do you know what all these people have in common apart from success?

It’s Failure.

But each one of them didn’t let it stop them. They didn’t start listening to that little voice of negativity that would have no doubt also been in their minds. No, they didn’t let anything get in the way. No matter how rough a starts, how big the obstacles or how harsh the voices telling them they weren’t good enough – they kept going.

Can you imagine a life without Harry Potter, Disney, Beethoven, Microsoft or light bulbs?? Can you imagine how different life would look now if so many of them had given up at the first hurdle? How different their lives would have looked?

But they’re no different to you and me! The only difference is the choice of who and what they choose to listen to. The determination to keep getting up every time they fall. And the discipline to do whatever it will take to get out that potential that lies in each and every one of us.

Our bodies are walking miracles and our minds are capable of more than we will ever be able to fully understand.

Let’s not give up because it’s too hard. Let’s be careful who we choose to believe and what we choose to listen to. Let’s be wise in the words we choose to let our mouths speak out. Let’s become people who are capable, unwavering, tenacious and persevering.

Let’s stop saying I can’t do it and believe we can do it.

Trust that we are good enough.

Accept that we will fail, but understand that failure also brings success.

And let’s change that big word impossible and finally just accept that really it IS Possible.

Mastered Mind

February 29, 2016.Reading time 13 minutes.

29th February 2016

The hefty and more than impressive camera’s are set up and ready. The bright lights giving the room an aura of subtle yet intense dazzling radiation. To most the studio looks professional and intriguing, a dazzling performance about to unfold before their eyes. To me there is nothing intriguing or dazzling about it, I am fully aware of the horrors I am about to face and forced to endure.

The total income of all hardcore pornography in the U.S is estimated at a mind-blowing 13 billion dollars a year with 6 billion of this ‘supposedly’ being legal. Adult movies alone generate billions of dollars and has become the fastest and bestselling hardcore porn available on the market.

My body feels numb as I’m dressed in a tiny Ann Summers style outfit sitting on a chair in a dark side room. I’m alone which makes a refreshing change to being ordered about continuously whenever I’m in ‘their’ presence. But in some ways it’s worse. My mind wonders as I try so hard to stop myself from thinking what’s about to happen. I start giving myself a pep talk in my head telling my mind how ridiculous I’m being. “I’ve done this so many times before, man up and get over yourself.” But I can’t get rid of the deep bottomless sick feeling that’s slowly penetrating every inch of my body. Luckily the drugs start kicking in and it doesn’t take long for the tingling numbing calming sensation to overtake the sickening nerves.

As I walk through the door the camera’s have already begun rolling. In the made-up showroom in the middle of the studio four men are warming up and getting themselves ready. It’s in this moment before the pain and the torment begins that I wish I could be anywhere but here. That I crave being curled up in the safety of my mum’s arms like nothing else. That I wish fear didn’t stop me every day from telling her about the people I had accidentally crossed paths with and the world I had been forced into. The hatred I felt towards myself for lying to everyone around me and the double life I was now living starts consuming my every thought and feeling . I want to turn and run. Run away so far and never look back. But the consequences of that choice I knew would make life even more unbearable and so just existing remained my best and only option.

I was about 13 or 14 when it first happened. As my body lay rigid on the bed, despite the drugs, the excruciating pain never ceased to surpass and take the lead. I was suddenly paralysed and immobilised. The pain completely vanished and the next thing I knew I was looking down on myself from above. I must have been about ceiling height because I could see the bed, the men, the camera’s, the lights and the whole studio below me. Was I dead? Had I overdosed on heroine? It was the strangest outer body experience I’d ever experienced. I don’t remember a huge amount of it and it was all pretty vague but from that moment it started happening every time I had to go through anything related to ‘them’.

As the months and years went on I started remembering less and less of the experiences but very soon after the first episode, it begun happening in normal day to day life too. I had brain scans, MRI scans, was tested for epilepsy and brain tumours on a very regular basis and eventually when I was in my late teens I was finally diagnosed with a Dissociative Disorder. During my most intense physical and emotional abuse my mind had developed a coping mechanism to help me survive by dissociating my body from everything that was going on. Dissociation wasn’t a choice, it became my mind’s involuntary way of coping with life. Except for that very first time I rarely remembered anything about it and wouldn’t be able to tell you much of what had happened during my periods of dissociating.

After I finally got my life back and turned my back on that dark world forever I thought it would go. But it didn’t. My dissociation became beyond uncontrollable and it started having a detrimental affect on my life.

You see this is the power of the mind… If I was faced with any pressure, any major stress, any pain or fear I would dissociate. I wouldn’t know where I was, who anyone was or even who I was. My mind and my body would be completely gone and I used to just start running. The power of that feeling of wanting to run away in that studio all those years ago had been such a powerful desire yet it became my most dreaded implementation.

For the past 13 years I have gone missing hundreds and hundreds of times. I have had full police forces, helicopters and sniffer dogs pursue me and spend, probably now in the millions of pounds, in staff and resources trying to find me. I have walked and ran thousands of miles, ending up in places all round the country. I have run onto motorways, jumped off bridges and into numerous rivers, walked barefoot in minus degrees, gone missing for not just hours but days and days and once almost a week, suffered with severe dehydration and hyperthermia time and time and time again. I have been on the news, woken up in hundreds of hospital tied up and sedated on more occasions than I will ever be able to list or remember. What started off as my mind’s incredible way of keeping me alive and allowing me to survive the abuse and the pain, became my most hated and feared default. For years and years I couldn’t live a normal life. I was in and out of general hospitals, psychiatric institutions, mental wards and police cells. No one knew what to do with me because I was either running having no clue who I was or what I was doing or I presented better than most normal people without any issues!

And then my miracle happened – and when I say miracle this didn’t happen overnight. But it’s my miracle because I was given insight into my disorder and into my brain in ways most people I’d come across had never been given the opportunity. I will be forever grateful for Mercy Ministries – the programme I got onto to help me sort my life out, beyond grateful for my therapist, Gemma, who I have been working with for the past however many years now and who has become just an incredible person and friend in my life and for my support network for who I don’t even have any words. Without them there is no way I’d be in the place I’d be in now. Between them all they’ve encountered so many sleepless nights, been involved in so many police chases, been sat at home waiting to hear the dreaded news that this time I had not survived, and gone through the agonising pain of just waiting for any news at all of my whereabouts.

It’s been hard work. Oh my days, like beyond explanation! You see the way Gemma described it to me was that my brain had formed my dissociative coping mechanism during the most severe, intense and hardest times. However, as that period of my life has now disappeared, my subconscious can’t distinguish between what is a house on fire and what is just toast burning. It smells smoke (which can be stress, fear, pain etc…) and it’s the trigger for my mind to know there’s danger (however minor that might be) and dissociate. It’s taken literally months almost years to start to completely re-train my brain and change the default coping mechanism into something that is now more appropriate for my life today.

Why am I telling you all of this? Because of the power of our minds.

The mind is a such an incredibly powerful force. It can enslave us to a point of no return or empower us beyond measure . It can plunge us into the depths of misery or take us to the heights of ecstasy. For so many years I was enslaved to it. I was victim to my own insanity and reasoning. I felt hopeless, out of control and was plunged into the depths of despair time and time again. It has taken a huge amount of patience, faith, studying, reading, talking, insight and understanding to begin to realise how my brain works and change the way it thinks and acts. But it’s been possible, and despite the work it took, it’s transformed the life I am able to lead today. And not only that – the techniques and skills learnt through it all I’m able to use with anything life throws at me however small or insignificant it may seem.

I plan to write a lot more about this topic, about my dissociation, what I’ve learnt through it and the skills and techniques that are out there on offer for us all to use at our disposal; but I hope this has given you a taste of how uniquely powerful our minds really are. It can plunge us into the depths of misery or take us to the heights of ecstasy – I know which one I choose. If we can learn how to master our brains and how we act, feel and think and realise the power that lies inside each of us; the possibilities become endless, the opportunities limitless and our chances infinite.

Beneath the Surface

February 22, 2016.Reading time 15 minutes.

22nd February 2016

Behind every corner hides a shadow

In every cupboard lives the dark

Every light is just exterior

It’s what’s underneath that leaves the mark

I look at everyone’s Instagram photo’s

Facebook, snapchat – all so swanky and slick

but I know that behind the polished perfection

lies people’s real stories, so many so dark and horrific

I’m hit with a sudden realisation

that wherever I turn it’s not true

We have become so skilled and practiced

‘Yeh I’m good thanks, how are you?’

But is it even a question?

Do we really want to know?

Or have we become so distant from each other

What was once so bright now an overpowering shadow

“A soya cinnamon latte please” I say to the lady at the counter. After hours of driving I’ve finally managed to find some dimly lit small shabby services on the side of the road. It’s dark and I’m tired and it’s taken me a good hour to find something that’s actually open at this hour. Scotland is such a trek! “We don’t do soya or cinnamon”, she replies blankly barely even acknowledging me. Great! Crappy services and now also a woman who’s made me even more moody than I already was. “Just a latte then” I reply brusquely.

I’m 17 years old and on my way to another training camp. At least twice a month I make the long trip up from the South to the Glasgow National Hockey Centre to keep my place in the Under 21s International Hockey Squad.

You know – I’d forgotten all about that woman until this week. And what I find incredible is how such a small and insignificant incident has become the inspiration behind my latest blog.

For whatever reason, and it wasn’t because my experience there had been anything more than substandard, I ended up back there again the next month. And the next. And the next. I never intended to stop there. One month I ran out of petrol, the next I needed the toilet so bad I thought my stomach was going to explode. My car was making a rattling noise, I got lost… The reasons just kept coming. I vaguely remember thinking at the time ‘why do I always end up here?’ A couple of times I was even embarrassed about walking back in there AGAIN! But I honestly never stopped to think about it long enough for it to ever make any sense to me. The same woman was always there. Did she own the place? Did she do anything else besides work there? No idea! But as my visits increased, our conversations expanded. Then one week, by this point my visits were no longer unintentional and it had become my stop of point each time, I walked in and she smiled at me! “A soya cinnamon latte?” She’d remembered! I’d never asked for another once since that very first time all those months ago. And not just remembered. She’d gone and bought soya milk (which at that time wasn’t quite as popular as it is now!) and cinnamon syrup. I gave her the biggest smile and asked her how she was. I don’t think I’d ever have been able to anticipate her reaction. She nodded, and then just started crying. I was a bit more awkward with people and emotions back then! And I wasn’t quite sure what to do or how to react. But actually, I didn’t need to be an expert. She told me how her little girl had recently died of leukaemia and how her husband had become violent and a drunk. She spent her nights here because she felt safer. It was one of those moments I look back on now and just wish so much I’d done more. But actually there probably wasn’t much I could have done. I listened to her and told her how sorry I was. I wasn’t a Christian at this point. I didn’t really understand church to the extent I do now and I definitely had no idea how to help someone like her. But despite being completely useless in that moment, I remember she looked lighter when I left. I thanked her so much for my latte and she seemed genuinely grateful and happier than I’d ever seen her before.

What’s the point of that story? Yeh it could be that sometimes all it takes is for someone to really notice someone. But actually my point goes deeper and beyond. I walked away in a mood the first time I met this lady because she was blank, downcast and unapproachable. I can’t remember my exact thoughts at the time but I know they weren’t nice and they weren’t pretty. If i’d been with others I would have walked off and bitched about her. Made myself feel better by putting her down. Would I have ever done that or had the same reaction as I did if I’d known she’d just lost her daughter to leukaemia? Thought the same thoughts if I’d known her husband was hitting her and she was stood on her own in these tiny services in the middle of nowhere because she felt safer there than at home? Not in a million years.

I started blogging just under 3 months ago and the response has been slightly more than overwhelming. Thousands and thousands of people have read my blogs and I’ve received hundreds of messages. So many of those messages have been ones of appreciation and encouragement but even more have been ones sharing their pain and struggles. Many stories from people I’ve never met but so many too from people I have known for many years or currently know from so many different environments. And over these past few weeks it’s hit me hard. It’s hit me hard how little we actually often know about people and the reality of their lives that goes on behind closed doors.

That man you’re beeping so hard at or driving so close behind because of his infuriating slow speed – he’s not intentional trying to wind you up but lost his wife and two kids in a car crash and has only just mustered up enough courage to get behind the wheel again.

That girlfriend who keeps letting the group down in social situations isn’t trying to be a letdown or get the nickname ‘sick-note’ but has suffered from severe bullying in her younger years and now struggles hugely with anxiety especially in social group situations. Inside she wishes every day how she could just be ‘normal’ and just go and have the fun she craves so much with her friends.

That boy who smells so bad in class you hate him for it – his mum is an alcoholic, doesn’t cook or buy him new clothes and his dad left when he was just two years old. He fends for himself on a daily basis and most of the time he wishes he was dead.

That woman who sits at the Tesco till scanning through your shopping, who remains angry and unappreciative despite your greatest attempts at making polite and cheery conversation, is getting raped and abused by the man who is supposed to love and protect her and can no longer put on her daily mask pretending life is fine and good.

The work colleague who no one can stand because she’s bossy and arrogant, acting like she’s higher than everyone else, was told every day growing up how she wasn’t good enough by her dad and now just attempts in any way possible that she is good enough.

I stop and look around and am suddenly profoundly embarrassed at my judgement and critique every single day towards people I don’t know and those who I think I do know. I’m so quick to judge, so quick to criticise, so quick to talk badly about those who haven’t quite matched my demeanour or behavioural quota for that day. Every day we encounter countless people, every person on their own journey, facing their own issues and daily struggles. Who are we to judge?

I quit hockey when I was in my prime. People thought I was an idiot. Thought I had given up on something just like that. Didn’t understand how I could just walk away from something I’d been gifted in and was incredibly talented at. There were rumours that went round. Of course my closest friends never faltered from supporting me no matter what, but anyone one step removed from a best friend thought the training regime had become too much, thought I couldn’t hack the discipline, came up with their own reasons and judgements. I was playing for Birmingham at the time and even my coach gave me a lot of stick. In reality my eating disorder had gotten so bad I was fainting every time I had to bend down, my trauma from years before had resurfaced to such an extent even the most normal daily activities had become an unbearable chore. Socialising became one of the most challenging undertakings. I know I was judged and sometimes all this time on I still am for stuff I did back then and decisions I made. But everything I did came from a place that was deeper than most people would ever see or understand.

And this week I’ve been learning that same hard lesson. People’s lives ALWAYS go deeper than the surface act we get to see and experience. Who are we to judge? Who are we to criticise? Next time that person you come across doesn’t display that desired attitude we expect from everyone apart from ourselves, let’s stop and think before we act or say, judge or critique.

Because behind every corner hides a shadow

In every cupboard lies the dark

Every light is just exterior

It’s what’s underneath that leaves the mark

Everyone’s Instagram photo’s, Facebook and snapchat

They all want to portray something swanky and slick

but we know that behind the polished perfection

lies people’s real stories, often dark, awful and horrific

Lets finally let that realisation sink in

that the surface face isn’t always true

Lets stop being so shallow and so good

at just saying ‘I’m good thanks how are you’

Lets get deeper with people

and try and really understand

Lets not just brush them off

Say hey and let them expand

And if the hey is all that’s appropriate

that’s fine; more isn’t always right

But let’s make sure we accept their shadows

And show them that there’s always a light

My Little Sister

January 28, 2016.Reading time 9 minutes.

28th January 2016

In a world where fat or anything above a size 6 is unacceptable, mocked and made fun of, I look around and wonder how we let it get to this. In the UK alone it is estimated that more than 1.6 million people are affected by an eating disorder.

Anorexia Nervosa – with the highest mortality rate of any mental disorder it has become the biggest killer of any them all.

I walk into a shop and I’m greeted by countless size 0 supermodels staring back at me as every front page of every magazine seems to follow suit. I turn on the tv and every other advert is telling me how I can best lose a stone in a week. Bookstores are filled with self help weight loss books and state of the art latest low carb diet programmes. The internet a source of information overload as every article seems to beat the last, telling me I can now become perfect in just 8 minutes.

This is the story of my little sister who at just 11 years old almost became one more statistic. Almost ended up becoming one more precious young life to find her early grave.

Born identical twins and a 13 year age gap between us, my little sisters were my pride and joy from the second they entered my world. Delivered by an emergency c-section 2 and a half months early they were miracle babies to survive against the odds and I am grateful every single day I get to have them in my life.

But the last few years have been pretty tough.

It was subtle. So much of it so insignificant. I have a history with eating disorders but what I was sensing and had started picking up seemed trivial to everyone else around me. She just wanted to be healthy. Just wanted to be fitter, better at sport. The sugar was cut out, the snacks in between meals no longer existed. Every bit of food which was consumed required double the exercise routine to make up for it.

It didn’t matter how often we took her to the doctors, or how alarmed we were at her weight loss, we were told she was fine time and time again. Overreacting, she was naturally skinny as it was.

Breakfast was no longer important. One meal a day was now enough. The more time that passed, the bigger the battle became.

November 2013. A time I will never forget. Despite being rejected by doctor’s time after time, mum knew something wasn’t right and showed me how powerful a mother’s instinct can be. She rushed Rosanna into A&E and without question saved her life.

She should have died. Her weight was so low even the doctor’s couldn’t believe she was still walking, breathing and talking. They couldn’t believe how her body was still functioning in any way.

That day marked the start of one of the hardest journeys we have had to walk out as a family. It has impacted all of us in so many ways. It’s been hard, it’s been exhausting, it’s been draining and debilitating and at times it’s been unbearable. I have learnt how painful it can be to love someone no matter what.

But it has taught me so much about my own journey too. It has drawn me closer to my family than ever before. It has helped me find hope in the times of utter hopelessness, shown me how to love when she was unloveable, given me patience when frustration was all I could see.

And most of all it has given my little sister a fight in her she has never possessed before. At times it was all too much for her, the battle too big and she would crumble. During those times I have never prayed harder or bigger for God to pick her up once more and keep her going. For her body to find just that tiny bit of strength from somewhere to be able to fight on just that little bit longer. And she would…

Almost 3 years on and we are still on the road to recovery. But the light is starting to pierce through like it has never done before. As tough as it still is at times she is so close to breaking free forever, so Rosanna this is for you, because I know you have it in you. I know the strength that lies inside of you. I have seen it come out time after time over these past years.

You have taught me so much about life. You have shown me how you keep fighting when everything inside of you says there’s no fight left. You’re starting to come out the other side of this and you still have your whole life ahead of you. Don’t let this illness steal one more day.

And to everyone else who may be fighting this same battle. Anorexia is horrendous and as far as mental health disorders go – it is one of the worst. It steals your joy, your personality, your health, your friends and your life. It robs you of so much more than just your weight. And through my own experiences and through my little sister I have seen how incredibly tough it is to beat it.

BUT… It’s possible. Through therapy, support and MASSIVE personal choices I’m starting to see the old Rosanna re surface. I’m beginning to see her spark return. And once more laughter and fun has began to outnumber the tantrums, the screaming and the fighting. It’s a battle that at times seems impossible but by one choice at a time I now know it’s 100% possible.

Despite the fact that we face so many unrealistic pressures every single day – I have realised that it is never too late. I have seen my own life transform when I thought it was too late and I have seen Rosanna become her own walking miracle when we all thought it was too late.

In a world where we are surrounded by endless false fabrications of what perfection and beauty has become do we choose to succumb and accept what is so far from acceptable? Or do we choose to take a stand and change the direction of where the future is heading…