Creating My Own Safe Home From Within

When I meet my inner thirteen-year-old, she remembers not being allowed to lock the door while she was showering. She remembers waking up in the middle of the night and seeing his silhouette through the darkness. She remembers being backed against a wall, being towered over by her father shouting in her face so loudly that she was forced to shout even louder back. She remembers her and her sister running away from his fury, locking themselves in another room, and realising that they did not know what they would do or how they would fare if he kept bashing the door until he eventually managed to break the lock. She remembers being called selfish and inconsiderate, and his face looking deep in her eyes as he called her a horrible person. She remembers all of the apologies that were never really apologies – “I’m sorry” always followed by “if you feel that way”. She remembers him telling her that he loved her more than anything else, the confusion as her father acted as though these events didn’t occur just minutes after they happened, and having to be in a good mood as soon as he was, or else she was prolonging the fight. She remembers straying farther from her own emotions every time she was shouted at to stop crying. She remembers being frightened of everything, and having panic attacks at school that were so encompassing that she thought she would die. She remembers the first social services investigation, and with that, the last time she saw our father. She remembers the second social services investigation, and sitting alone and afraid in a harshly lit room in a police station, a camera in the wall recording all of her answers to the policemen. She remembers her first day of Year Nine, being pulled out of maths class to be met by more social workers, for a third social services investigation.

When I meet my inner seventeen-year-old, she remembers a family struggling to cope, processing the same violence in different ways. She remembers not wanting to take up any space, and answering “yes” when her GP asked whether she had thoughts of ending her own life during an anti-depressant check-up. She remembers feeling as though nothing that bad really happened to her. She remembers feeling as though she had made it all up, and worse, remembers being told that she had made it all up. She remembers reaching rock bottom, and speaking to a receptionist at CAMHS, who recommended she reach out to Free Your Mind. She remembers meeting Natasha, and with her guidance, our inner child, who lay hidden under the rubble of destruction that were our formative years.

When I meet myself now, I am happy, I am free, I am empowered, I am easy-going, I am fun, I am loved, and I am loving. I am a compassionate daughter, a caring sister, a good friend, a loving girlfriend. I have a first-class degree in the subject I am most passionate about, and travelled across the world alone to become a qualified yoga teacher. Finally, living a life that is my own. Was the shame I felt so viscerally mine to feel? Or the anger deep in my bones? Or was it just a projection of many generations of trauma that lay before me? I have made it my life’s mission to become myself, to ritualise the daily practice that is coming home to myself, again and again.

Giving myself permission to live this life, that I love so dearly, has been the most powerful and liberating journey of them all. The little girl inside of me, who begged the very person that gave her life to value it, has not felt unloved or unworthy for a very long time. Five years ago, I saw her for who she really is. A child who never needed changing – a victim who adopted thoughts and behaviours that served a life-saving purpose when living in emotionally dangerous conditions. I parent her every day. I let her express herself wholeheartedly, and nurture the parts of her that shone bright through the darkness. I brush her hair and wash her face. I calm her down when she panics, and whisper words of affirmation in her ear. I let her express herself through song and dance, and find relief for her through yoga. I give her hugs, I surround her with people who also see her and love her for who she is, and I let her guide the way.

Navigating life as a twenty-something year old young adult is complicated for everyone. As a young adult who experienced childhood domestic abuse, I not only have to navigate the path that lies ahead of me, but the one that paved the way. I tend to the garden that is my life by not only planting new flowers, but by giving so much love to those that were neglected many years ago. It is no coincidence that the more these flowers – both old and new – blossom, the more my landscape evolves into something more beautiful and fulfilling every day. I am an apple that has fallen far from the ancient tree of generational trauma, and used my seeds to plant my own roots far away, anchored to a life of ease and love. Practicing meditation, breathwork, and yoga has invited me to meet the path that paved the way with curiosity instead of judgement, to respond to any self-doubt and fears of getting it ‘wrong’ with a deep knowing that I will love and support myself without conditions or restraint. This constant journey of unlearning and learning, of simultaneous release and becoming, has demanded more resilience than surviving domestic violence itself. When you grow up in a burning house, your nervous system tricks you into believing that the whole world is on fire. Instead, I choose to see the outside world for myself – to see the miracles in the ordinary – to feel the warmth of the sunshine on my skin, to smell the flowers and listen to the birds sing. For the majority of adults who grew up as young children with the knowledge that someone would love them regardless of any mistakes they would inevitably make, navigating the big scary world isn’t so scary. As a survivor of childhood domestic abuse, allowing myself to experience the uncertainty that this world has to offer has been scarier than my father himself. It has demanded I build my own parachute, take a deep breath, and jump right out of the aeroplane into the windy skies without a test-run.

Ultimately, I navigate my adult life with a deep sense of gratitude, a gratitude that I am not sure I would have if it weren’t for my childhood experiences. I am grateful for the profound knowledge that I have of myself, and the deep love that I feel every day. I am grateful for realising that I can begin again at any time, that the only person I am destined to become is the person I decide to be, that I feel life coming from me, and not at me. On some days, I want the entire world to know that it has demanded an incredible amount of strength for me to be this soft, that I had to bare my open wounds to the uncertain winds of life to let them breath, that in order to accept love, I have had to fight violence itself. On others, I just want to live a happy, quiet, peaceful life, one in which I do not even know what the word violence itself even means.