INNER STRENGTH
You may find the three stories that follow are painful to read. They are sadder and more upsetting than you will generally find on the pages of Good Housekeeping, but they are important. They illuminate the most terrible of times, the most extraordinary o
Finding a light in the darkness
‘I HELD ON TO THAT TINY, FLICKERING BEAM OF STRENGTH’
After unimaginable loss, Lisa Wilson has found the courage to turn grief into something positive
TThere’s a phrase that has come to feel important to me: Turn an end into a beginning. It has brought me comfort in the darkest of times. When emotion and heartache threaten to drag me down, those words will always remind me to keep looking forward. Before the phone call that changed everything, life was a happy kind of ordinary for my husband, Graham, and me. Our daughter, Pippa, was at the University of Birmingham, and our son, Tom, had just moved to London and had a new job with a property development company. He was settled with his girlfriend, Daisy, and he was a talented athlete, mad about hockey.
LIFE-CHANGER When the phone rang one afternoon in December 2015, it was one of Tom’s friends to say that he’d had an accident while playing hockey with his club, the Old Loughtonians. ‘You need to get here now,’ his friend said, with quiet urgency. My first thought was that Tom might have broken his ankle. Then, cutting through the frantic voices in the background, I heard someone ask if Tom was still breathing.
Graham and I arrived at the pitch to find a helicopter, flashing blue lights everywhere and Tom on the ground, surrounded by
paramedics. I remember sprinting towards him. Tom had been struck on the side of the head by a hockey stick and collapsed instantly. He was rushed to hospital and a scan revealed he’d suffered a major brain haemorrhage. Unconscious and unable to breathe on his own, he was taken to intensive care and put on a ventilator.
After an agonising 12 hours, the consultant took us aside and told us Tom had been pronounced brain dead. The damage to his skull had been immediate and fatal. No procedure or operation could save him. We had to let him go. My thoughts were uncontrollable, flitting everywhere to avoid facing reality. It was Graham who broached the subject of organ donation. It was the last thing on my mind, but a nurse told us that in his first year at Nottingham Trent University, Tom had signed up to donate all his organs in the event of his death. I knew then that if this was what Tom wanted, we should give our consent. More than 650 people came to Tom’s funeral. I stood outside the church, not sure if I could go in. But I needed to hold on to that tiny, flickering beam of strength within me, for the sake of my family, and I managed to maintain dignity.
Those weeks following Tom’s death were
I have found sanity in routine
unbearably sad. When Graham got out of bed one morning and stumbled, at first I thought it was a physical reaction to the grief. But over the next 24 hours, his condition worsened. When he realised he could no longer grip a pen to write his name, I took him to the hospital for tests. The news was almost too shocking to be believed. My wonderful, loving husband, my rock through the loss of our son, was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumour. Soon after, he started intensive chemotherapy. At first, he seemed to be responding well to treatment, but a week later, he developed sepsis. Within hours, he had died. Pippa and I were at his bedside; we just clung to each other.
FINDING PEACE
What happened to our family in such a short space of time was tragic and cruel. Sometimes I think I still haven’t accepted it. Yet I knew I had to pull myself out of the darkness. If I didn’t seek out a sense of peace, the anger and despair would drown me. That phrase, ‘Turn an end into a beginning’, stayed in my mind, spurring me on to make something good come from such tragedy. And it has. Through donating his organs and tissue, Tom has saved and improved the lives of up to 50 people. I’ve seen a video of the toddler who has part of Tom’s liver – once gravely ill, she’s now running around, full of life. The family wanted me to see it, and I feel enormous pride every time I watch it.
I know Tom and Graham wouldn’t want me to sit and weep, so I try to save my sad times for when I’m at home on my own. Pippa and I often talk about the boys and their quirks. Despite her grief, she managed to complete her degree, and achieved a First. I think her loss spurred her onwards with a sense of resilience. She did it for them.
My support network has been invaluable in steering me back on course and giving me purpose again. I’m now back at work, and have thrown myself into my role as deputy head teacher of a centre for children who have been excluded from school. I work long hours, but I have found sanity in routine. My experiences have given me new determination to drive forward the values I hold dear. I teach the kids to work for their goals, and live each day to the full. Life, as I’ve discovered, is a fleeting, fragile thing.
‘I KNOW THAT THE STORM WILL ALWAYS PASS’ After suffering with severe depression and surviving two suicide attempts, Mandie Holgate has learnt the value of listening to her mind
WWhen depression crept up on me, it seemed to come from nowhere. I was in my 30s and had just had my second child when I began to feel odd – disconnected somehow. Five months after my daughter, Sophie, was born, I was putting her and my son, Harrison, then two, to bed when I looked out of the window and saw my cat get run over. It felt jarring and shocking to see that happen, right there in front of me, and I still felt shaken the next morning. I tried to put on a brave face, and continue my life as normal, but that growing feeling of unease signalled the beginning of a downward spiral.
As the weeks wore on, I felt increasingly unsettled. I had vivid nightmares about a gargoyle trying to claw my eyes out, and I’d wake up screaming, scrambling for my husband, Andy. He couldn’t understand what was causing my behaviour.
My GP diagnosed depression, and prescribed medication to help me get up in the morning, and go to sleep at night. But it soon became clear that I was part of the small percentage of people with depression for whom drugs don’t work. Meanwhile, my internal struggle raged on.
On the face of it, I was a regular stay-at-home mother, holding everything together for my children. Our home was tidy, they were fed and clean, and I’d do my hair and make-up every day, desperately upholding the pretence of normality. But beneath my mask, I was falling apart. I’d started to self-harm, and would go to my bedroom and hit myself over the head with my hairbrush, over and over again. I was afraid to leave the house, and often felt so panicked that I’d ring Andy at work. When he arrived home, I’d be hiding behind the sofa, crying.
My self-confidence was at an all-time low. I’d tell Andy to take the children and leave me, that I wasn’t worth staying with, that I was ugly, pathetic, a waste of space. I didn’t laugh, and I couldn’t cry. I no longer found joy in anything.
A HELPING HAND
It was Mind, the mental health charity, that saved me. By the time I discovered it online, my depression became so bad that I’d tried to kill myself twice. I remember walking into the waiting room for my first appointment and looking around at the other people there, noticing how different we all were. I began to realise that you can’t put everyone with mental health issues into one, convenient box. We’re all individuals, with our own thoughts and feelings. It was the beginning of a shift in my mindset.
Through Mind, I accessed counselling and cognitive behavioural therapy, and slowly, gradually, felt myself changing. I came to understand that it was good to express your emotions, and okay to have difficult days. The mask finally began to drop.
Depression is an illness like any other. I needed time, space and respect for my mind and body in order to heal. I feel like a different person now. I’ve realised I’m as valuable as anyone else. And I’ve started my own company helping people in business to improve their confidence at work.
FEELING THANKFUL
It’s hard looking back at all the moments I’ve lost to depression, and I still have bad days. But I’ve learnt to rationalise my feelings. I know the storm will always pass. Andy continues to offer support, and we’ve decided to renew our wedding vows to celebrate coming through the dark times together. Harrison and Sophie are now 15 and 13, and are growing up into kind, caring teenagers. I no longer hide my emotions from them because I understand the importance of looking after your mind – something I hope they’ve learnt, too. Every day when I wake up, I pull open my curtains and look out on to the garden, taking a moment to breathe in and be thankful for all that I have. The flowers outside my window remind me
that life is beautiful. I’ll never forget that again.
Beneath my mask, I was falling apart
‘FORGIVENESS IS THE BEST FORM OF REVENGE’ She was a schoolgirl when she was raped by strangers. Years later, Madeleine Black has finally found a way to put the past behind her
AAs a teenager, I was assaulted and raped by two boys. They were American, and a few years older than me. My friend and I met them in a café, and they took us home to her flat in London while her mum was away. Yet what began as a fun evening soon spiralled out of control.
The boys put my friend in one room while they beat and raped me in another. The attack lasted four to five hours and, to this day, I can remember looking up at the ceiling, counting the number of bows on the patterned wallpaper over and over again; distracting myself, willing the pain to end.
When it was over, the boys just walked out. They told me if I reported the attack, they’d come back and kill me. I woke up with my friend in the bed next to me. She hadn’t been touched at all. Despite my injuries, I was too terrified to go to the hospital. Neither of us said a thing. I didn’t tell anyone. I felt ashamed, dirty and worthless, and lived in a state of constant, paralysing fear. My friend and I never spoke about it, and after I left school at 16 I never saw her again.
REACHING OUT
Surviving in the shadow of such trauma took its toll on my mental state. I suffered from anorexia, attempted suicide and ended up in a children’s psychiatric ward. My parents put it down to teenage anxiety, and the medical professionals treated my eating disorder and depression with counselling and medication. Nobody thought to dig deeper.
Three years after the attack, the burden had become too much to bear alone. I left a note on my pillow for my parents explaining everything. My dad wanted to phone the police, but I refused to let him. I was still convinced my attackers would come back to kill me.
As time went on, I gradually regained some semblance of normality. I trained as a beauty therapist and make-up artist, and met my partner, now my husband, Steven. In many ways, he saved me. I never thought a man could love me, but Steven offered me loyalty and devotion. When, a few years into our relationship, I finally found the courage to tell him about the rape, he told me it didn’t change a thing. I remember asking him, ‘Why do you love me?’ ‘I just do,’ he’d answer. Slowly, I came to realise that was enough. At first, I was adamant I’d never have children. I associated giving birth with a lack of control, and feared being examined by men. But after Steven and I had been together for eight years, I changed my mind. I didn’t want the rapists to take away any part of my life. We went on to have three daughters, and for years, I thought I’d put the past behind me. But then the flashbacks began. My eldest daughter, Anna, had turned 13, and I think her age triggered memories I’d blanked out. I’d wake up sweating, feeling the presence of those two young men in the room, remembering their weight on my body.
MOVING FORWARD
I was doing a psychotherapy course, and I decided the time had come for me to have counselling. I needed to talk about what happened that night so that I could truly come to terms with it, and make peace with myself. I’d spent most of my life hating the men who raped me; wishing them a slow, painful death. But therapy has shifted my outlook. I came to see that no matter what my attackers did to me, they could never touch the essence of who I am. I had survived, but they had to live with the guilt of what they’d done, and I began to wonder what had happened to them to make them behave so violently towards another human being.
Forgiveness, I realised, was the best form of revenge. I’ve taught my daughters that no matter what happens, they should always remember that. I want them to know the value and power of acceptance, of letting go and moving forward.
Now I’m a trained psychotherapist, and I can honestly say I have no fear, hate or revenge in my heart towards my attackers any more. It’s why I have called my memoir Unbroken. After so many years of struggle, I’ve finally found peace. I’m determined to live my fullest life, braver and stronger than ever.
I had survived, but they had to live with the guilt