"Mummy, Can I Play Out Please?"

I never go back to my childhood home, because the street fills my head with tormenting memories from my past.

However, not everything was negative about my childhood. There are also happy memories mixed in with sadness.

I don't remember what my first childhood home looked like, but I remember throwing two balls against a wall while reciting poems and rhymes made up in my head:

"Under, Over, Under, Over

Drop one, Drop another

Back on the wall,

Black cat's clover."

I didn't have many friends, but I used to play against the red brick wall as a team with just three friends. If we dropped two balls while reciting this rhyme that we made up by ourselves, we would have to go back to the start of the game.

Our pavement wasn't very wide, but it was wide enough for us to chalk a hopscotch game onto the pavement. We would use stones and land on the squares that matched the number the stone landed on, if you wobbled or fell over, then you'd have to go back to the start. This was our rhyme:

"One, two, three,

Both feet in D,

Five, six, seven,

Whose home for tea?"

Little games like this kept us going. The few friends I had were all being bullied like myself, so we felt safe playing games like this in the safety of our garden.

As West Yorkshire borders North Yorkshire, when it snowed, it used to pile up really high!

"Mummy, can I play out please?" I would beg.

I would grab my coat, hat, scarf, mittens, and boots, then head into the back garden alone where I would craft giant snowballs and snowmen. I would use currants to form eyes and a mouth, and a carrot for the nose, then wrap a scarf around the snowman's neck and add a hat.

I never understood why snowmen had scarves, given they were cold anyway; but they sure gave my snowman a fashion statement!

I always thought snowmen were cool, and I often named them after my grandma and grandad.

Snow was exciting to me, not for the snowball fights but because I could be as creative as I wanted to be.

Nothing makes a child going through difficulties happier than being creative.

Summer in the park was my most precious time. I hardly ever used other park equipment, but I loved the swings.

"Push me higher mummy."

I would say.

It took me a long time to get my feet going, but once I did, I didn't care how high I flew on the swings.

I'd often swing until I was dizzy!

Long walks in the woods, holidays, and camping are all comfort memories for me from a childhood that was not easy.

I didn't like sleeping in small spaces. One week when we went camping, my sleeping space was tiny, and I couldn't sleep. It was warm outside, so I decided to sleep out of the tent.

I got drenched in the rain, but I found it really funny when I woke up soaked!

I loved the dancefloor, and every time we managed to go on holiday there was a club with a dancefloor and many disco lights.

I was always the first one to get up, and I'd dance from the start of the disco, right to the end.

I sang at karaoke too. Singing and dancing topped many of my favorite things. My heart still bursts today when I am singing and dancing, even when there is no disco.

The majority of us have painful and traumatic childhood memories which are often mixed with positives. Sometimes; after pain and trauma, our brains go into black-and-white thinking mode, making those horrible events come to a front and cause more pain.

In this situation, it can be very easy to see our childhood as all bad.

We can ease those bad moments, by trying to shed more light on the good times which fill our hearts with joy. However, after many years of pain and trauma, this is not easy to do.

I started by journaling a life story. I couldn't always remember dates, but I journaled everything that I managed to remember; including the bad times. This way, I was able to get comfort from reminding myself of the good times which often entered my mind the more I did it, and as I did that,

I found I was remembering more and more good times, and that was the key to unlocking the door to healing from what was a traumatic past.