It's A Great Feeling When You Achieve The Goals You Think That You Can't Achieve.

All of my young life, I put up with being bullied and being put down. Even when I reached adulthood, this bullying didn't stop. I went through a serious cycle of abuse as a child and adult. A consequence of this was losing my children, repeated homes, and my identity; all for something that I did not deserve.

I felt punished.

In the aftermath of this emotionally exhausting struggle, I lost my confidence, self-esteem, independence and I hated myself down to the grounnd.

I have lost count of how many times I listened to the voices from my past telling me that I was stupid, worthless, incapable, slow, fat, and good for nothing. I told myself that there was no hope for myself time and time again.

It took many years of hard work, admissions, bad feelings and failings in order for me to recover myself, and realise that only I could make my dreams come true.

I had to go on a very long journey of self-discovery.

This is not an easy thing when all those echoes from your past are calling you names, and the services who were supposed to help you let you down and destroy every little bit of faith in yourself, by making you feel bad and accusing you of causing the things that are happening to you of being your fault, even though they know that you're not asking for it.

I spent from 1993 up to now going on a journey of self-discovery, though first I had to start with my mental health which had deteriorated badly after all that I had been through. I had to start here:

• Learn to eat properly without feeling bad about myself.
• Realize and understand who I was while fighting the negative echoes of people from my past including those of negative professionals who had made me feel bad about myself.
• Put the past in context, and stop blaming myself for the violent and abusive blows I had taken from others.
• Understand that yes, my children had witnessed me getting hurt frequently, and accept that it was not my fault but the fault of those who had hurt me in the first place.
• Replace 'I can't' with 'I can.' I had spent all my life being told I was worthless and incapable that I started to believe it.
• Re-discover who I was and figure out what I could do.

These goals were not achieved in a year. It would be impossible for anyone going through severe trauma that lasted as long as mine did, to get on their feet at the flick of a light switch.

Change does not happen overnight. It takes a person to firstly figure out who they are, then discover what they can do, and persevere, implement and stick with it in order for change to happen. A person may regress and move forwards many times before implementing permanent change.

After spending many years healing and discovering myself through a long journey of professional and self-help, I started to realize there were things that I was really good at.

One of these things was child care, after recently getting higher distinctions on at least two child care courses I completed recently.

This made me beam with pride, and at the same time, I realized the services were wrong to blame me for the abuse and trauma that I had gone through. They were wrong for criticising the care of my children. They should have looked at the events that I was dealing with, and helped me to get out of the violent situation which was putting many blocks in my ability to care for my children; instead, they blamed me for the violence and abuse I was going through. They accused me of causing it and neglecting my children; leaving myself and my children more at risk.

My motivation behind completing these child-care courses was to understand how the violence and abuse from my past had impacted my children's care, my mental health and my ability to care for them. I got to study the impact of domestic violence and abuse, and I was appalled to find out that the help was there; I was never offered it.

I vowed to never see another family or child go through what we did. I set out on a mission:

• To learn everything I could about child-care, child development, abuse, neglect, mental health and domestic violence.
• Learn about the impact on parents and children; and discover in reality, what the real support available was.
• Stand up for the rights of women and children going through abuse
• To raise awareness about community and local violence, as this was something else I went through and is often ignored by local authorities who tend to focus only on domestic violence.

I have in reality been studying these issues for many years, and I became a domestic violence champion. I write about my experiences to help women, men and services understand the impact of these issues with the goal of bringing about change, by bringing the unseen to light because many professionals cannot see behind closed doors, and often what goes on behind closed doors get's ignored because of this.

Violence and abuse that goes on behind closed doors, and are often unreported. Often there are no witnesses or evidence as not all violence leaves physical scars, and though the laws have changed; proving emotional and psychological harm can be very difficult. Also, abusers can be extremely crafty; even in cases of physical abuse, they will make sure they do not always leave marks in a bid not to be caught. This situation is worse with community violence, in which a woman or man can be attacked in their own home behind closed doors, in the street, and even in a communal area; often professionals only see the subtle highlights of the damage without seeing the whole thing. They are not there all the time, and the victim usually gets blamed in some way.

"It's your fault for letting them in."

This was a statement made to me by a social worker back in the 1990s. She didn't see them kick the door down, push their way in, and attack me. She jumped to conclusion that it must be my fault without creating an accurate picture of the actual events.

Had she listened to me, and had the police, housing and everyone else involved listened to me and got me out of there; I would have been in a better position to be able to concentrate on child care and bring my children up safely.

One could say, "but really; that must have scarred you for life. Should you really be doing this after what you went through?"

My experience has a lot to do with my negative past. I wanted to turn my past into something positive. I found power in myself after spending many long years deciphering the facts from the fiction that everyone had said about me at the time. I spent a lot of years healing and working through the pain, and during those years I had to piece the jigsaw back together myself. So yes, I still have scars.

Anybody would still have scars from a past like mine. Turning those scars into power saves lives.

On my journey, I have had moments when I have nearly given up. It has been the same with my writing. I had to:

Mentally believe that I could do it while pushing the 'I can't thoughts away. This can be exhausting, but it gets better with practice.

You have to be strong and try to ignore the negativity inside your head. You have to learn to believe in yourself and your truth, even when nobody else does or has. Once you do this, you then have to develop your voice and stand up for what you believe in.

In other words:

You have to change your thinking and all those negative beliefs and negative talks that you and others create in your mind.

The above journey has been difficult, though by changing the negative belief that"I can't" to "I can." I have opened new doorways, and though sometimes hard, these new doorways keep leading me to discover new things, and along the way, they have enabled me to understand that the negative beliefs that I held, professionals held, and others were incorrect beliefs in the first place.

It is a long, difficult, road to change how you see yourself when you have been put down and wronged most of your life. However, remember courage is your superpower, and it goes a long way.