How can I find love after facing so much torment?

DEAR BEL, ONE of your responses to a reader’s letter left a deep impression in my heart. Your reply to Jane (published on December 22, 2018) was loving and heartening, and I’m sure it brought comfort to countless readers, as it did for me.

You told Jane: ‘There is always hope, always possibility,’ and encouraged her to see that she could ‘fly’. Now it is me who needs encouragement.

I have reached some pinch points along my long, arduous journey to self-love and selfacceptance. I’m 40 and have been painfully shy for most of my life.

I experienced traumatic domestic violence for close to two decades while growing up.

When I left school, I felt I had lost my self-esteem and ability to communicate. I couldn’t look most people in the eye when they asked me a question, but did find solace in literature, classical music and films.

My parents discouraged everything I did. I’ve now severed ties with them, and my whole family, although sometimes they are unwelcome visitors in unpleasant dreams.

I met my former husband when I had very low selfesteem; we were married for a few years and I have no ill feelings towards him.

I studied arts at university and now work in education. I love my job — but dealing with adults still poses difficulty.

Slowly I’ve been learning to set healthy boundaries for myself. I was only able to articulate this, in these exact terms, a few years ago. At first I only noticed I had trouble saying ‘no’ to others, and that plagued me immeasurably.

Learning to set personal boundaries, to say ‘no’ whenever I want, has been formidable! I’ve made huge progress over the past few years.

I long for a partner, but I know I have to learn to love and accept myself unconditionally first. I still struggle with this.

Sometimes I feel deeply alone. I don’t know if I will meet a kind-hearted and sensitive man. (If he happens to love literature and music and arts, that will be wonderful.) But I know I have to do my work first. I feel exhausted and overwhelmed.

I’d love you to give me some encouragement — and maybe others would benefit, as I did from your advice to Jane. GIULIETTA

For me it is very gratifying to hear a response on this page can so reverberate, so thank you for telling me.

Sometimes I daydream that we’re all taking part in a great conversation, which can be enlightening, usually rather worrying, and always confusing — as we struggle towards understanding the human condition. And trying to help each other along the way.

Like you, I have always found consolation in reading (especially poetry) and art and music — because you can contemplate one of rembrandt’s moving self-portraits in old age or Cezanne’s portrait of his old mother, and listen (say) to Schubert’s Death And The Maiden or to the lyric of that moving 2006 song Never Went To Church by The Streets and realise that there is no choice but to come to terms with mortality.

So my first words of encouragement are ‘ open your heart to art’ — even more than you do at the moment.

All the doubt, fear and pain we suffer has been experienced before by men and women of genius who have poured those emotions into creativity. oh, and the joy, too.

You confessed that you had to ‘hit send before I lose courage and delete [the letter]’. It’s a telling indication of how self-effacing and afraid of life you are.

Yet no wonder. As a child you

witnessed ‘ traumatic domestic violence’ and that, surely, is the wound you will carry for ever.

The people who should have protected you exposed you to ugliness, conflict and hatred. No wonder you still have problems dealing with adults — the child in you learned early that they must be mistrusted and feared.

You probably always felt you had to appease adults, too, and that must have fed into your chronic inability to say ‘no’ to things as you grew up. Many of us say ‘ yes’ because we long to be needed, but it can allow us to be exploited.

Yet you are learning. You are getting there. Even though tired and easily disheartened, private details in your letter indicate it’s only lack of confidence which is preventing you from seeing just how far you have come. So take heart and believe in yourself. Naturally I’m wondering if you have ever had counselling to help you come to terms with the bitter unhappiness of your childhood.

Your innate mistrust of adults might shift through regular sessions with a sympathetic professional who could help lay the ghosts of your past to rest.

Do think about this. I disagree with your conviction that before you enter a relationship you need to ‘ love and accept myself unconditionally’.

There’s a danger in over-thinking, you know.

Maybe you just need to accept who you are, love your really useful work and the things that make you happy, embrace change — and always look up and outwards.