The Beauty of a Magnolia

“The beauty of a magnolia.”

But this wasn’t just superficial admiration; it was a deep recognition of love.

My youngest and I went to see Stranger Things last night. It surpassed all expectations - it was just brilliant. At its crux is a simple truth: in fear and trauma, you need to run towards love.

I’ve reached a place where I am losing hope. I see bleakness ahead, glimmers harder to find. The saying you are only as happy as your child reverberates around me, because I can step towards love and light, but until they can, will I always be wading and fighting a battle beyond my grasp?

I chose to live. I am choosing to live. But I feel the grip wavering. I feel like I am losing hope for my children - and in that, for myself.

Has my naïveté kept me strong? Did I need the false belief that I could make them whole? Are the tendrils of abuse so strong, so all-encompassing, that they can never truly heal?

The toll of trying to support them as a single working parent is diminishing me. To the outside world I am strong, capable. I still wear “outfits”. I still perform at work. But inside, it feels as though Vecna has started to take hold.

I think it’s exhaustion.

Supporting 13 and 16-year-old teenagers is tough at the best of times. But with one in hospital education about to take her GCSEs and the other visibly struggling, I feel powerless.

The relentless battle of getting my eldest to step out of her room for the hospital education tutors. Wading in to wake her amidst the debris of a teenage room - discarded vape pods, a multitude of cereal bowls, and encrusted ketchup from the crinkle (they can only be crinkle) chips.

And we are clashing.

She says all I do is shout at her to study; that I never talk to her about anything else. I say she shuts us out — doesn’t eat with us, doesn’t engage with us.

And I ask myself the question again: will my actions after the disclosures of sexual abuse be the thing that ultimately damages them the most? Will that be what haunts them in future therapy sessions?

Despite surviving when others wouldn’t, has the toll on me — losing the “fun mum”, the engaged mum — and replacing her with the drinking mum when I was deep in CPTSD… has that damaged them more?

I’m still haunted by losing the greatest love of my life last year. Losing him because he chose to run to fear, not love - because his trauma shut out his capacity for love.

And I don’t want that for them.
Or for me.

So I know I have to keep fighting those tendrils of fear, even when it feels impossible.