Valerie
"During my twenties and thirties, if asked what my childhood had been like I would reply 'Oh - pretty normal, really. My mother died of cancer when I was 14 which was hard but I dealt with it. And it's not like I was abused or anything like that.'
At the time of writing this I am 52. 10 years after my mother died I fell apart physically and emotionally following a particularly painful relationship break-up. I eventually ended up in psychiatric hospital for a month. I pulled myself back together and continued on but that was the beginning of my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome which persists to this day. I passed my driving test, bought my first home (on my own), began a relationship with the man I subsequently married, qualified and practised as a barrister and genuinely believed I had dealt with my outstanding issues.
8 years later the same thing happened again. I fell apart, was unable to work for 18 months, put myself back together again and continued as before. Then, 10 years on again, 2 further traumatic events occurred - 1 personal and 1 professional - which completely destroyed my career, my reputation, my confidence and my health. This time, I could not recover. I spent the next 10 years in and out of hospital, went through 5 major lifesaving operations, nearly died a couple of times and lost all pretence of emotional resilience.
In 2000 I met Andina. Without her and my husband I would undoubtedly have died - either through suicide or insufficient physical/emotional resources to endure the surgery, constant medical testing with its attendant terror and never-ending medication. Through my work with Andina - both individual and group sessions - I began to re-visit my 'normal' childhood. I resurrected memories (which were not new but had previously been unintelligible to me) and began gradually to piece together the horribly fractured jigsaw of my life. The process was - and still is - both excruciatingly painful and agonisingly laborious.
As a child, I was severely abused and neglected. To me this was normal as I knew nothing else. I wasn't in denial - I just had no idea that there could be a life that was - at least for some of the time - joyful, nurturing, authentic, supported in times of crisis and individually and collectively rewarding.
This pattern of abuse from my childhood was repeated and reinforced for me as an adult through a series of unusual and intolerable events. My health is probably irreversibly damaged - physically, emotionally and intellectually. I am often asked - usually very obliquely - why, after all this work, I am not fully recovered. It's also often suggested that really I should just pull myself together and 'move on' because the past is past and there's no point in wallowing in it.
To those people I would say this:- you're very welcome to the first 52 years of my life. Why don't you give it a try and see how you get on with it? As Harper Lee put it so simply in 'To Kill a Mockingbird' - you can't tell what it's like for the other guy until you get into his/her shoes and walk around in them for a while. Andina and her work have helped save my life. Now we need to reconstruct that life in such a way that it's worth living again. It's still hard to feel much hope but such hope as there is can mostly attributed to Andina's unconditional love, support and commitment to her clients."
Valerie