I decided to write a short autobiography to show that there is always hope, on re-reading I think it sounds a bit self pittying but it wasn't intended that way.

I was born into a single parent family and lived with my mother, grandmother and 14 yr old brother in Bristol. My mother had suffered 8 miscarriages trying for me and had had a baby which died at 6mths 10 years before my arrival, from which she would never recover, subsequently she was on a cocktail of alcohol and tranquilizers which made it difficult for her to bond with me. My father was a rich older married man with a family of his own.

My mother owned a wool shop and worked hard to support my brother and me, my grandmother was my main carer until I was 3.

By my 3rd birthday my mother was living with a new man who wanted to marry her and adopt me, the once regular visits from my father were slowly tapering off, My grandmother had moved into a residential home (though she still played a large part in my care) and my brother had been sent to a young offenders institute.

Before my 4th birthday they had separated and we moved in with relatives where we lived for 6mths. By this time we were impoverished and it is suspected that during this stay I was being sexually abused by a cousin.

At 4 ½ we moved away from our family and my Nan to Manchester where we stayed in a squat for 6 months with alcoholics and drug abusers, here I suffered from physical abuse as well as my usual serving of emotional neglect.

By my 5th birthday we had moved again, this time to a high-rise flat on a rough council estate, just mum and me. I started a new school (my 2nd) and things were on the up. Less than 3 months later my mum was dating a new man and spending more and more time in the pub, leaving me with friends, neighbours or alone. I was bullied at school because I was unkempt and I was targeted by bigger kids in the neighbourhood because I was alone and vulnerable, I was teased, beaten and molested and found every day a terrifying ordeal.

When I was 6 my mother re-married (this was her 3rd husband) and we moved to a nice house in a nicer neighbourhood. My real father cut all contact with me at this age telling me that he was no longer my dad because mum had re-married. Her husband's 14 yr old daughter moved in with us and my brother re-appeared. I started a new school, a fresh start. Within a month of there wedding they were having violent fights, I witnessed a lot of the fights and heard the rest, Both mum and my step dad were drinking heavier and I was either left with my brother, who would take me out with his friends while they took drugs or with my step sister who would take me out while she was shop lifting. My brother ended up in prison and my step sister was thrown out for prostituting herself (at 15), I was sent to stay with relatives because I was in the way at home. Whilst staying with relatives I was sexually molested again by my cousin, this time I knew what had happened and it is still a clear memory in my mind.

By 7 my mother had divorced her 3rd husband and was working full time to keep the house which meant she was drinking far less and things were looking up, unfortunately we lost the house and had to move to a council house in a rougher part of town. I again started a new school and mum went back to the bottle. She frequently forgot to collect me from school, or to come home in the evening. When she did come home she was usually drunk and often with a new man. I was insecure, frightened and bed wetting. I had a high IQ but was unable to concentrate at school and was constantly in a day dream.

Soon after my 8th birthday we moved again, moving regularly was imperative to avoid alerting local authorities to the problems at home. This time we found a house where we stayed until I was 15. In the 7 years at this house things were far more consistent for me although I attended 2 more primary schools and 2 secondary schools. I was old enough to fend for myself and pretty much kept out of the way of my mum and her various partners. My brother had met a woman and they had 3 daughters so I spent the most part of my time helping them raise the girls as they were usually out of there heads on drugs or alcohol.

At 10 Mum had befriended a man named Dave (among others) through the personal ads where she advertised herself as a single mum looking for male friends. Although Dave wasn't as interested in her as he was in me! He spent the next 2 years 'grooming' me, buying me gifts, taking me to nice places, spoiling me and even taking me away for weekends at a time. When I was 12 the day came when he would make his advance and had I been a naïve and sheltered child then I might not have had the lucky escape that I had.

When my hormones kicked in at 13 I became very depressed and took an overdose of over 80 pills, I was serious….it wasn't a cry for help….I didn't want attention….I just wanted to end my miserable and lonely life, I was still an underachiever though I was very bright, I was unable to make attachments because I had serious trust issues with people and therefore had no real friends and of course as it had been since my first days at my first school, I was bullied mercilessly for being poor and unkempt. My mother found the note which I had left stating how many pills I had taken and my given reason which was the sexual abuse at the hands of my cousin and the guilt and shame I had carried for the 7 yrs since. And on reading the note, she went to bed. An hour or so later she returned to the bathroom which I had locked myself in after taking the pills, called my name and when I didn't respond called an ambulance. After having my stomach pumped I was kept in hospital for 10 days, suicide watch, she visited me in there 3 times, once drunk and with a strange man in tow. I spent several hour long sessions sitting in silence with a psychiatrist who deducted that I was severely damaged before sending me home back to my mother. A week later she again sent me to live with relatives because I was 'a difficult child' I had to stay at the house that I'd been abused in, although the cousin was no longer there, I was in the same bed, in the same room. It was too much for me and within a fortnight I had run away.

Between 13 and 15 things went on as normal and I was eventually taken into care at 15. I became very promiscuous at 15 as it was the way I'd learned to get 'love'. I started to abuse drugs and alcohol during my time in care and also to self harm.

I was pregnant at 17 and married the father of my child and went on to have another with him. I was unable to be happy in a 'normal' relationship because it was foreign to me so I had numerous affairs during our 2 year relationship and eventually left him for someone I knew would treat me as I deserved to be treated (badly) I spent 4 years and had 2 children with this partner who was emotionally cold towards me and was addicted to the highs of drugs and crime. We had a volatile relationship with frequent violent fights, sometimes in front of the children; I was on tablets for depression and again started self harming.

They say you can't start coming back up until you've hit rock bottom, which happened to me when I was 23. I contacted social services because my life was patterning that of my mothers and I realised that I was inflicting the horrors of my childhood on to my children. Social services however were not sympathetic and helpful as I had hoped and instead took my children into care… The bottom fell out of my world, they were my purpose in life and the only people I had ever felt something real for so I fought with every ounce of myself to get them back, I left my partner sought out a therapy group went to parenting classes and jumped through legal hoops to prove that I could be a good mother, I won my children back within 2 months, continued to attend therapy 3 times a week and turned our lives full circle.

I'm now engaged to and have a child with the most wonderful, loving and hard working man anyone could hope to meet, my children are happy, secure, loving and intelligent little people and other than in writing this, I never look back.

Thank you for reading this, please leave a comment. Nikki x