n our house, CPTSD has shifted over the years - almost as if when one reaches a plateau, or just plain exhaustion, someone else takes up the mantle.

In the beginning, it was sometimes both of them, but more often than not, when one has struggled, the other has seemed to calm. I have wondered over the years if this is subconscious on their part; they know I can’t handle both of them breaking at the same time, so they are kind to me and provide support.

And of course, I have had my fair share of tumultuous periods - the time when Malbec kept me going. Before the breakthrough EMDR, before I was able to choose life again. 

I felt at home immediately - not just because there was a healthy congregation in the vape/smoke area during the breaks, but because people knew me from the second I walked in.

I was at Restitute’s annual conference. With a mission statement ‘We support the people who care for survivors of sexual or violent crime’ I was very much at home.

Over the last few days, I’ve felt the adrenal fatigue that comes from facing my eldest daughter’s pain and suffering as she fights to get out of a particularly bad CPTSD episode.

Trying to get her into school, even for an hour, has taken immense strength from both of us.

I can tell the adrenal signs - the build-up of stress and cortisol has such physical effects: an aching body, decreased brain function (for example, I both turned up to Body Pump in my UGGs and put a dishwasher tablet in the washing machine yesterday), backache as the adrenals hit my kidneys, and depression.

I uttered those words today as I forced her - well, as much as you can a 15-year-old - and left her with tears rolling down her cheeks in the school reception. She went in for an agreed two hours in a quiet classroom, to try and ease her back in gently. I quelled all else I wanted to say. I was brusque, firm -because in those moments, it’s all I can do, and all she needs to hear to take the jump.

Over the last couple of weeks, watching my daughter confined to her room with anxiety, hearing her utter the words “I just can’t fight them anymore” following the latest school debacle has sparked my grief.

Grief at her lost childhood, lost school years, and grief at the threat to her future. It hurts - it’s dull and hollow, it’s painful.

Quite by chance, our latest Book Club novel is The Names, a story told over the course of a lifetime from the lens of three different narratives - all resting on a mother’s decision about what to name her son and the impact it has on the domestic violence she faces at the hands of her husband.

At the beginning, I told no one - aside from a handful of friends. I couldn’t. I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t know if it would go against me with social services, who had warned me that the local community could become violent towards him if they found out.

On the school run, people must have wondered why I was suddenly there instead of at my office desk. I was there in body but not in mind. I distinctly recall my pallor, a chain-smoker’s pursed mouth, and cobbled-together outfits, as my Zara and COS clothes were relegated to the back of the wardrobe.

I had an amazing support group of friends who bought me food, came round in the dark evenings to share a glass of wine, and offered me an escape - hearing about their lives was far more preferable than thinking about my own. I am forever grateful to those friends who had my back, still have my back, and have never wavered.

I sometimes think back to the 90’s, those halcyon days we were given permission to drink as much as the lads, told that girl power meant we could focus on our careers (and accompanying large nights out in Soho drinking Caipirinhas and Sea Breeze at the Atlantic or the Player) and have children later. But as the test bed of this era, no-one had thought through that it meant you would likely hit the menopause as your children hit teen angst, drama and hormones.

It helps me to visualise the non fucking linear healing journey (I have similar mindset to the inner fucking child, that of love and hate), I have a graph in my head which I can see, it helps me to take account of progress.

I am feeling it this week. Confronted head on with triggers of childhood sex abuse (husband no 1) along with triggers of husband no 2 my brain feels muddled and I am feeling strands of emotion. It still surprises me, that even now when I am ‘cured’ from CPTSD that my ‘body still keeps the score’, it rarely happens but when it does the nerve endings in me jangle and actually ‘hurt’, I know now to cold dip to reduce the inflammation, but until I can find somewhere to do it every movement is a reminder.

When my children first started disclosing, it began as smatterings of words and bizarre statements. Enough, but not enough to make sense of what they were saying. Certainly enough to know something was wrong.

As the case escalated rapidly with social work and police involvement, I was shocked to realise that what they told me just didn’t count - that without testimony during a police interview, in controlled conditions, there would never be a criminal case against him. Even in my naiveté, I knew that my young girls were unlikely to retell what they told me - particularly as it was largely nonsensical - but in a police station, with people they had only just met, the odds were not good.

I was green.

I didn’t know what the process was — why would I — and from the moment I was thrust into the world of being a MOSAC (mother of sexually abused children), I was always ten steps behind what was happening to us.

If I hadn’t been in shock, I would have gone into work mode, researched, planned, and strategised, but I was in a constant state of delirium, and trying to function and do the basics was challenge enough, particularly as I wasn’t sleeping or eating (at one point, I hit under 8 stone, so started to force-feed myself Mars bars).

When I look back at this time, it is blurry, hazy, and hard to recall with the clarity I had in the first few days. I was in shock. Unbeknown to me, shock isn’t a transient thing; it can last weeks and months, and I think this is why the first six to eight months were such a blur. I wasn’t even drinking much at that point, surviving on about four hours’ sleep a night, as Lola was in bed next to me, drawing pictures to go into her ‘book’ of what happened.

Over the last few weeks, as my work life has become balanced, I have started to feel more human, albeit stressed at the prospect of unemployment. But in the last couple of days as my joie du vie has returned so have pangs of loss and grief.

I always say this won’t define us, and it’s true. But then I realise I am still very far away from normal, well not the normal that surrounds me. Sometimes I can’t help but compare to friends, and the differences feel very stark; what we have lost hits me and it seems so much I can’t quite take it in.

When trauma, shocking events, and the calamity of CPTSD hit, it is easy to forget grief. Grief is somehow more stoic, subconscious, and with you by stealth. But it is very much present and important to acknowledge and listen to.

After discovering that the systems meant to protect my children were failing us, I had no choice but to take matters into my own hands and apply to family court. What follows is the story of that first hearing - what I knew, what I didn’t, and how it felt to finally be believed

What happened after my children reported child abuse was nothing more than a Netflix psychological drama - without the hot detective to fall in love with me.

On that first day, when those first disclosures were shared with me, those first signs and words, I called the NSPCC. 

What do you do when you face emotional abusers in your workplace?

How do you react when you can see a manager or colleague in the same patterns as your domestic abuser (or 2)?

I feel pleased I can spot it, almost laugh at the familial patterns and have strength in the knowledge, but seeing the trite attempts to make me feel stupid, triangulate as a power play with colleagues and turn on the charm when cold eyes are the norm, have an effect.

How do you keep the energy and motivation? I have visions of being all Lorelai Gilmore — quick-witted, spritely — but it’s hard to maintain.

I feel bone tired again. It doesn’t take long after the school holidays or a long Easter weekend. A week ago, I felt refreshed and rejuvenated. This week, I’ve been dealing with a multitude of things, and even my ADHD brain is struggling to prioritise what bit of life admin (read: school complaint) I need to do next.

CPTSD is cruel, debilitating, life changing and exhausting. It is also incredibly expensive. Particularly when all three of us had/have it.

For me, aside from the years of excess red wine and Marlboro, which I’ve now thankfully been able to escape from, I’ve only been able to recover from PTSD through an amalgam of many elements.