Wow, ((((Tupp))).
In addition to big stress, it also keeps striking me that you have big vision.
That you still dream, have deep imagination, and remarkable resilience (as I sit here comfortably with an iota of the load you carry) is incredibly inspiring to me. Thank you. You'll never know how valuable your story here is to others, but I just want to say it.
I SO wish that beautiful cottage could be yours tomorrow. And more.
When I talked about a T I was thinking of the compassionate one you trusted in your previous city. It seems WRONG to me that a person living with all that you carry isn't helped by access (and financially supported access) to a therapist. But if wishes were horses, we'd all be riding.
I am awed by your determination, your courage, and the fact that when you fall or sink, you get up or swim. There's enormous depth to you. You have character where it counts, in spades.
Be proud of yourself today. Truly proud.
hugs
Hops
Thank you, Hops. I get very down when I don't have a dream. The thought of my life carrying on like this until I die makes me very depressed. I need to have something in mind to work towards, even if just in imagination most of the time! I struggle without a bigger picture to focus on. And yes, that T from many moons ago was lovely but she is two hundred miles away now and I've not found anyone since who was like her. I think I'm quite likely to punch the next person who tells me to practise mindfulness which probably won't go down well
Lol.
Anyway, I wanted to share with you a public sector experience that kind of epitomises my struggle with them, in one way or another.
When my son was 11, I decided to have him re-assessed, with a view to him attending a special needs school. You can't get in to one without an assessment so I started contacting private doctors with a view to getting this done. One of the doctors I contacted used to work at a large Children's Hospital here and advised me to contact them to get the assessment done on the NHS. I did and they agreed to see him, but I had to get a referral from a local paediatrician. It took me over a year of fighting local doctors to get a referral in place, and then the waiting list was another year so he was thirteen by the time they assessed him. They sent me a lot of forms to fill in beforehand, all about his developmental history, birth and so on, and I also sent a copy of every assessment he'd had done to that point, both private and NHS (it was a lot of paperwork).
I also explained that I was a qualified teacher and had given up my career to teach my son at home and sent in quite a detailed explanation of all the child abuse allegations my mum had made over the years, along with a copy of the letter I eventually received from social services in which they admitted all of the information they had used against me was inaccurate and that my version of events was the one that should be taken as being factually accurate. I included information from well respected domestic abuse organisations here about various types of emotional abuse and how my mum's actions fitted these forms (this is from a domestic abuse group that works with the police and court system and the definitions are part of UK law).
I stated, several times, that I was more than happy to provide more information should they need it, that I had written evidence at home running into hundreds of pages that I was happy to bring with me if need be and that they could verify anything they needed to with the relevant department managers.
To me, I did everything I could to be open, honest, transparent and assist them in their assessment. We were there for a total of nine hours over three assessments and I was asked no further questions about any of the child abuse stuff or the situation with my mum. We left with a sixty page report and the consultant repeatedly told me she 'took her hat off to me' ( I don't know if you have the same phrase in the states but here it means someone thinks you're doing a good job).
Fast forward two years and I had some paperwork sent through once we'd started the education application that I'm still battling on with, as son had to be assessed by social services. Unbeknown to me, the same doctor had made a referral to social services. I just had a bullet point note in the file so it just read that we'd moved from Place A to Place B (they were both places we'd never even visited, let alone lived in), that my son had never had a proper assessment done (literally hundreds of pages of assessment information on him) and that he'd previously been on the at risk register (absolutely untrue).
Although this was about two years ago I've only just had a chance to start looking into it. I requested his records from that hospital - the file is just under a thousand pages - and it isn't indexed so I've had to scroll through the entire thing on my computer. I eventually found the letter the doctor wrote. She has basically taken the things I wrote in my own explanation that sound damning and missed out all the information that explained and contextualised them. She's claimed we lived in places we never lived (and that's really weird because our address is all over the paperwork and you have to refer to social workers in that area so she'd have had to have sent it to a county different to the one she claimed we lived in). She's described my relationship with my mother as 'complex' - despite all of the information I provided that showed it's an abusive relationship, not a complex one. She's mentioned my mental health difficulties, which I was very open about, but she's chosen to miss out the explanations I gave for conflicting diagnoses, childhood abuse and trauma and the fact that, by that time I'd had no problems at all for nearly a decade.
She claimed that my son was on the Child Protection Register - again ignoring all the information I'd provided to the contrary and essentially has just demonstrated a horrible level of prejudice and a refusal to engage with fact. I'm perplexed, endlessly, that time and time again I provide honest, factual information that can all be verified and it's ignored and/or manipulated to meet someone else's agenda. Is that gaslighting? They all do it.
For the record, no action was taken (which is why I knew nothing about it). Social services did check, discretely, and found that nothing she stated was true so no action was taken. I had originally planned to complain but I know all that will happen is a long process which eventually will end in someone telling me I'm right and no action being taken.
It makes me sick, sad and angry that these people are just so blinded by their own views. At no time has anyone recognised that my son has been abused by his grandmother, not by me. How do people not see it? Why did they never investigate the sexual abuse I went through? Why is it overlooked by every single person? Time and time again my attempts to get help for my son failed, and time and time again I was blamed for it. The madness of it frustrates me but I hold on to the glimmer of hope that in six months time we will be out of the clutches of these stupid people. It can't come soon enough for me. Sorry to moan but our records are full of things like this, there have been so many people try so hard to find something to pin on me, if only they'd worked as hard to help my son.
