By the time Sarah was 18 she had already had three children and had experienced more trauma than most people do in a lifetime. This is the story of a courageous and strong-willed young woman who, though she has been knocked down many times, always finds a way to get back up and, amazingly, keep her dreams alive. Though the trials are not over by any means, she continues to rise above them with a passion for her own family and for the families around her who face similar difficulties.
My childhood wasn’t normal. In fact it was a very turbulent one, but as I look back now to write my story, I know the things that I’ve gone through have made me what I am today. I can’t rewrite history. I wish some things hadn’t happened…but they did. But now I’m more at peace with myself and I have a family I love and dreams for my future.
I was born on mid-summer’s day, 1973 at Queen Charlottes Hospital in Hammersmith. My mother already had a son just a little older than me, but Mum and Dad split up when I was still a baby. We lived in a house in Kingston that had a long wooden staircase. I remember coming down that long wooden staircase one evening. I was three and I’d wet myself and needed some help. But my mother had gone out for a take-away and left me with her boyfriend. My life changed forever that evening. I ended up in hospital and when I came out I was sent to a foster family.
The first family I was put with was not the easiest situation for me. I remember disliking sausages, and one time when I was given a plate of food with sausages on it I chopped them up and put the pieces in the fish tank. I had hoped the fish would eat them, but they didn’t. Bits of sausage were later found floating on top of the water. I got belted for that. I still don’t like sausages to this day.
I went to two other foster carers after that before my uncle and aunt, who lived in Battersea, went to court and were granted formal care of me and my brother. Their family grew overnight because they already had four children of their own. It was a happy time though. I felt totally accepted and loved and I was treated like one of their own children. Though they were my aunt and uncle I called them Mum and Dad, and their children were like my brothers and sisters. I saw my own mother occasionally, and when I discovered that she was pregnant with another child I felt jealous.
When my brother was 14 he went back to live with our mother, who now had another three children. Although I was loved and accepted by my uncle and aunt, the pull of family was strong, and I missed my brother. When I was 13 I asked if I could to go back to live with him. But instead, social services placed me in a children’s home on an industrial estate, miles from nowhere. I was there temporarily while I was being assessed for a more permanent place. If I’d known that was where I’d be put for asking to be allowed to go back to live with my brother and mother, I would never have asked.
I stayed there for six months and the staff were really good. At least there was some consistency in my schooling. I was taken by cab to school each day. I think I felt a bit ambivalent about it. I didn’t love it, I didn’t hate it, I just had to go. It was about this time that I began to misbehave, I ran away from the home a few times, going nowhere in particular, just hanging around. I’d already had my first cigarette at age 12 and I hated it, but now I began to drink and smoke out of rebellion, and because everyone else was doing it. I truanted from school quite a bit and generally messed about.
After six months I was put into another children’s home, this time more permanently, and I began to visit my brother a bit more. It was a couple of bus rides to get there. It was good to see them, but it didn’t feel like home. My brother seemed settled and older, but it was very strange to be in the house with my mother. She did try to get me home, but she wasn’t allowed to have me there whilst she had boyfriends in the house. After a few months, and with some encouragement from my mother, I confronted the boyfriend and he left. I’d become a mouthpiece for my mother; she seemed unable to deal with situations very well. So when I was 14 I went home, but it didn’t stay peaceful for long. Another boyfriend came to live with my mother, and my brother clashed with him and ended up being kicked out. Once again a choice was being made and it was my brother who had to go.
My mother had become a country and western singer, doing the rounds of the pubs and clubs, and I became the live-in baby sitter to my younger two brothers and sister. She was reliving her youth while I was losing mine. I wanted to go out and meet friends, but I had to stay and do my best for the younger ones. When I asked to go out I was told how selfish I was. I would come home from school slightly later than the little ones. They’d be there waiting for me. No mother, no message, no note. I stayed in not really knowing what I was doing, but trying to do the best I could. I gave up on school because it seemed easier to work and earn a bit of money. I got a job as a trainee in a hairdresser’s. I loved that job and had just begun to go to college one day a week when I found out I was pregnant, so I couldn’t carry on with the course and had to leave.
I’d met Roy sitting on a wall on an estate in Roehampton. It was his 21st birthday, and he cheekily asked me for a birthday kiss. We got together and very quickly I fell pregnant. I was still living at home caring for the younger ones, but one night I didn’t come home, and I was chucked out the next day. At times I didn’t know if I was a child or an adult, life was very strange. I was old enough to look after three children but not old enough to go out with my friends. With nowhere to go I had my first experience of sleeping rough. An old sofa in an underground garage that was cold, damp and smelly, kept us going for a few nights. Then we were able to stay with Roy’s mum for a short time.
All was well for a little while but after three or four months the beatings started. If I asked where he’d been, he’d hit me. Any questions seemed to provoke a slap or a kick. When I look back now I’m not sure how I coped. It was at that point I learned to smoke cannabis to block everything out. One day I completely I blacked out and that really frightened me so I stopped. I never enjoyed it, it just seemed to be an easy escape. I was put in a mother and baby unit in Streatham where I was taught parenting skills and helped by the staff there. Whilst I was in the unit I was safe, but I couldn’t stay there all the time, and when I came out Roy still found time to punch and kick me.
It was a miracle for me to have a baby really as I had been told when I was in my early teens that I wouldn’t be able to have children. Today I have seven children and one beautiful granddaughter. After I had my baby, a boy, I stayed in the unit for around six months. I missed my friends but I did feel supported by the staff there. I took my baby to my mother’s but it wasn’t a happy place. I wasn’t made to feel welcome and I could hear her rowing with her boyfriend all the time, so over for the next couple of years I lived in temporary accommodation.
By the time I was 18 I had had two more babies, three boys altogether. Roy had done a spell in Wormwood Scrubs prison and I sometimes took the two boys to visit him. When he came out nothing had really changed. He’d disappear for weeks or days at a time, and if I dared to ask him what he was doing it would result in another punch, another hit. When my third baby was due, on my due date, he went to go out and I got very upset. I was worried about who was going to look after the two little ones if I had the baby. I was frightened of being left on my own to cope, and cried. This resulted in him kicking me in the stomach and leaving. The midwife came for a visit and said my contractions were coming and I needed to get to hospital. I had to go to the shopkeeper down the road to borrow some money from him to phone my mum to help. I went off in an ambulance and Roy came to the hospital a few hours later, but as soon as the baby was born he disappeared again. When I was allowed home he didn’t come to get me, so I stayed another day in hospital and my granddad took me home the following day.
When I got home I found him with another girl, someone who I thought was his friend. I was so shocked and upset. I found myself on my own in a cold damp house with two little ones and a brand new baby. I cried and cried but I just had to get on with it. Sometimes Roy would climb in through the window at night, coming and going when it suited him. I had absolutely no control. I was frightened silly. He used to threaten me, saying he’d kill me if I ever left. So why did I stay? At the time I believed him, though my friends and family kept saying, “leave him.”
Believe me when you’re scared it’s not that easy.
What I really needed at that time was somebody, just one person, to put a protection around me and my babies. I wanted big wings round me keeping me safe. I was too young and vulnerable and scared to cope by myself…but nobody was there. That’s why I stayed.
We were given a house in Hounslow and there I did meet someone else, someone from the army. We became friends and he would find babysitters so that we could go out. I began to enjoy life a little. He helped me to recover and allowed me to be myself. He knew I had a violent boyfriend and a bit of my history, but he liked me, was kind, and I was happy.
One day Roy found a letter I’d written but not posted, in which I mentioned my new friend. He went mad. I ended up running down the street to my friend’s and when I went back Roy was crying, begging me to let him stay. I said no, and so he left, as simple as that. Somehow I had found the courage to say no. The desire for, and possibility of happiness was strong. I didn’t ever again want to be waiting for the next punch, with no celebration of life. I wanted to experience what life should be like, enjoying my boys, celebrating Christmas and birthdays. There had been none of that before. Special days went by in a blur, birthdays came and went with no happiness in the home. My boys deserved better and I wanted more for them.
The first day my new friend came into my house I was so embarrassed. All I had in my sitting room was a chair, a small portable black and white television and a wardrobe. In my kitchen I had a tiny fridge, no washing machine and no cooker. I slept on a mattress on the floor and my boys slept in cots that were too small for them. I had to take the ends off to make them long enough. Over the years any money I was given for the family and any social security money had all been taken from me. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and the first thing he did after he got paid was to go and buy me a lot of the things I’d never had. It was heaven to sleep on a bed! It also felt very weird because no one had ever bought me anything before. My clothes were mostly borrowed from my mother and held up with safety pins because they were too big. I was not used to kindness. I took the boys to get their hair cut, I’ll never forget it. They screamed the place down and I kept apologising. They were used to being shaved but I wanted them to have proper haircuts.
We were together for three years. He’d never really wanted children, and was a very strict disciplinarian. I had another baby and he seemed to get more and more strict. The old familiar feelings of being out of control came back to me. When my mother and sister moved up North I followed them for a while. We broke up for about six months. He was living in London while I was living up North. We only saw each other at weekends.
Things were difficult between me and my mother. I wanted some questions answered. Why didn’t she believe me? Why would she choose someone else over her daughter? I wanted her to apologise to me and sort things out a little, but that wasn’t going to happen so I decided to make a move. I found a council house exchange and eventually ended up in Leatherhead eleven or twelve years ago. The last few years have seen more change as my boys have grown up and my family has grown.
The boys used to hang around together, and like a lot of kids began smoking around ten, eleven and twelve. I’ve only recently found out that they started experimenting with cannabis at that age too. They all responded to their schooling very differently. One seemed to go through smoothly, one struggled a little and the youngest was given a choice to either leave voluntarily or be kicked out. Boarding school seemed to be the answer for him but now I’m not sure how much it helped him or added to his problems. His second boarding school only lasted a month.
I love my oldest boys to bits, but at times I find them very difficult to live with. I know they care, and I get glimpses of that occasionally. My dreams and hope for them is that they could be at peace and be able to trust; that they would meet the right girls and love and really appreciate their partners. I want them to live their own dreams and have someone to share their future with and, if ever they have their own families, to love their children.
In 2006 I married Peter. I’d met him a couple of years earlier, and together we’ve had another three children, two little boys and my first and only little girl. Family life is hectic and never dull. There’s not much time for sitting still or dreaming but I’m still young and I do have my dreams. One of them is to live on a drug free estate…or how about a drug free town? I have smoked cannabis myself a bit. I thought it was just supposed to chill you a little so at first I wasn’t too worried when my boys and their friends started smoking it. I soon realized though, how much it can change an individual’s personality, bringing out the aggression and violence. I’ve witnessed so much destructive behaviour. I’m sure they can’t always see how much their actions affect others around them, but drugs can literally rip a family apart. They make a person feel that everyone is against them so that even their own families seem to become the enemy. It’s a terrible thing for a mother to watch her own kids self-destruct and feel powerless to help. You feel like a lioness, wanting to be there and protect them from danger. I’ve felt so desperate, on many occasions I’ve cried till there’s no tears left. So I do dream of living in a place where kids can be happy being themselves and not get messed up, where there’s positive, constructive things to do and there’s hope for their future and for their kids’ futures. I don’t want to see younger and younger children caught up in drugs and suffering the effects of that. We have to have hope that things can change.
Family life has not all been doom and gloom though. One of my happiest memories was midsummer’s day 2009. It was my birthday and my boys had got together and decided to take me out for a meal. We went to an Italian restaurant in town. We all sat round a table, I was at the top end and the rest of them were all around me. I felt so chuffed that they’d treated me to the meal and given me gifts. They even topped the evening off by buying me a £30 bottle of champagne. We laughed and celebrated together, and I went home feeling like a kid again. It was my happiest birthday so far. The only thing that would have made it even more superb would have been Peter being there. But he was at home looking after the little ones so that I could have my night out with my boys. Thank you Peter! And thank you boys for my wonderful evening.
Recently my ambition to be a midwife has also resurfaced. I’d never totally forgotten it, but now I’m really hoping it is something that I can pursue. I’m still young and, I hope, still able to see my dream fulfilled. I would love to be there for others in their special moment because giving birth is a miracle every time. I would love to be part of that miracle for others. I do have some obstacles to overcome, learning to drive is one. But maybe one day I’ll be wearing that nurses uniform and helping to deliver a baby.
When I hold my granddaughter in my arms it is so important for me to know that things will not be the same for her as they were for me. No matter what life might throw up for any of my children I always want to be there for them, to encourage them to live their lives the best way they can. I’ve still got unanswered questions. I accept that maybe they will never be answered and I may never understand why things have happened the way they did. But I’m stronger now, and I’ve got hope for my own future and my family’s.
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