AND FINALLY
YESTERDAY’S Mail had an article that brought tears to my eyes.
Impelled by horrifying statistics revealing an epidemic of self-harm, my daughter Kitty wrote a brave, honest account of a time in her life when she hated her own body enough to take a Stanley knife to her arms and legs. Reading her words brought back sorrowful memories — as well as a reflection on the pain of parenthood.
Encouraging Kitty to write something I believe could help people understand selfharming, I had returned to my detailed journals of 1996/7, unread since then.
What a catalogue of disasters: my wonderful daughter overwhelmed with horror at the Dunblane massacre and the death of Princess Diana (to name two events that shocked a vulnerable teenager) while all the time coping with terrible multiple hospital visits, continuous recurring agony in her gut, terrible anxiety over GCSEs, worries that friends would go off her, and so on.
A never-ending cycle of hospital, nurses visiting at home, pain, humiliating procedures, operations. Then comes Sunday, September 14, 1997:
‘Tonight I had a shock. Kitty and her Dad were deep in conversation in her bedroom over a letter from a United Bristol Hospitals Trust psychotherapist Kitty has seen. It appears she has been intermittently cutting herself — a way of expressing her frustration with and hatred of her body. I was horrified — felt shrivelled, helpless.’
Friends now ask if I cried. The answer is no. When life is that stressful, there’s no time for weeping. You have to pick yourself up, soldier on, keep things afloat… and any other brave cliche you can think of. But I felt immensely guilty that she hadn’t confided in me — and that still breaks my heart.
Recalling bad times that no worldly success could protect us all from, I want to run back in time and intervene. Make it all better. But no parent can shield a beloved child from the wounds life will inflict. All you can do is be strong in love — and endure.
Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week. Write to Bel Mooney, Scottish Daily Mail, 20 Waterloo Street, Glasgow G2 6DB, or email bel.mooney@dailymail. co.uk. Names are changed to protect identities. Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.