Content note: this piece touches on domestic abuse, coercive control, PTSD, suicide, self harm and disordered eating. Please look after yourself while reading, and come back to it another time if today is not the day.

A week ago, I went to speak to my boss.

Not about work.

Not really.

I had just received a letter from social services.

Two days later I phoned and the letter was explained to me, my ex partner had been found intoxicated and attempting to obtain drugs. What caused my trauma to tighten was the location. The services that had attended to him meant he could be within the close vicinity. That prompted a fear to return.

One of the first times in 3 years a service has done what it had a duty to do.

Protect my child

As I listened, I felt physically sick.

Not because I was shocked.

Because I wasn’t.

What devastated me was how familiar it all felt.

For years, I had tried to explain the pattern.

The alcohol.

The drugs.

The chaos.

The risk.

The concerns that had led me through police disclosures, safeguarding referrals, social services involvement and family court proceedings.

Years of being told things needed evidence.

Years of being told the threshold wasn’t met.

Years of fighting to protect my child.

Years of watching systems make decisions that I feared would place her at risk.

And now, more than two years later, I was staring at the wall attempting to not vomit listening to to a safeguarding professional describing the very pattern I had spent years trying to explain.

I remember sitting there thinking:

Why did the family court do this?

Why did the police do this?

Why did nobody listen?

The truth is that PTSD does not care whether you have work the next morning.

It does not care that people depend on you.

It does not care that you have responsibilities.

It simply reacts.

And my body reacted.

The vomiting returned.

Years ago, after leaving the relationship, I lost four stone in seven weeks.

Not because I wanted to.

Not because I was dieting.

Not because I was trying to lose weight.

My body simply stopped coping.

Food became impossible to keep down.

Stress took over every system.

Eventually I regained the weight.

With the support of some incredible people around me, I became healthier again.

But when those old symptoms started creeping back, it frightened me.

Not because of the weight.

Because I knew what it represented.

I knew how much pressure my body had been under the last time it happened.

The list

So I went to speak to my boss.

As usual, I tried to minimise it.

“It is what it is.”

“People have it harder than me.”

“I don’t want anyone worrying.”

The sort of things many trauma survivors become experts at saying.

He listened.

Then he said something that caught me completely off guard.

He told me to write a list of everything I had achieved.

Not professionally.

Not academically.

Everything.

At first, I almost laughed.

Because when life has been relentless for so long, you stop seeing achievement.

You only see survival.

You see the next appointment.

The next safeguarding concern.

The next form.

The next court hearing.

The next problem.

The next thing that needs doing.

The test

Then, a few days later, I passed my motorbike theory test.

I walked into that test convinced I was going to fail.

I hadn’t revised.

I hadn’t opened the Highway Code.

I hadn’t done any preparation worth talking about.

I sat there expecting the result to confirm what I had already decided in my head.

That I wasn’t ready.

That I hadn’t done enough.

That I would fail.

Instead, I passed.

And on the drive home, I found myself thinking about what my boss had said.

Maybe I have been underestimating myself for a very long time.

Telling it, again and again

Three years ago, I left an abusive relationship.

Nineteen months ago, I started repeatedly reliving it.

Not once.

Not twice.

But over and over again.

To police officers.

To social workers.

To safeguarding professionals.

To lawyers.

To court officials.

To agencies.

To organisations.

To anyone who needed another statement, another disclosure, another explanation or another piece of evidence.

I have spent hours recording evidence.

Attended multiple court hearings.

Repeatedly revisited some of the worst experiences of my life because systems required me to explain them again.

And again.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I was diagnosed with PTSD.

Looking back, the diagnosis made perfect sense.

The hypervigilance.

The insomnia.

The exhaustion.

The flashbacks.

The inability to truly relax.

The constant feeling that danger might be waiting around the corner.

Two years ago, I started my Direct Access course.

I loved it.

I was excited about it.

I wanted it.

Then the third court hearing arrived.

Everything leading up to it consumed me.

Everything that followed it took whatever was left.

Eventually, I had to stop.

For a long time, I viewed that as failure.

Today, I don’t.

Today, I see someone making an impossible decision while carrying more than anyone should ever have to carry.

Everything that didn’t stop

Because while all of that was happening, life did not stop.

I still had three children who needed me.

I supported my son through an eating disorder.

I sat beside him after a suicide attempt.

I navigated self harm, CAMHS referrals, mental health services, social care involvement, safeguarding concerns and endless appointments.

I advocated for my youngest child when safeguarding concerns surrounding her protected characteristics meant she could no longer safely remain where she was.

I attended meetings.

Completed forms.

Made phone calls.

Chased referrals.

Protected.

Advocated.

Parented.

Then got up and did it all again the next day.

At the same time, I continued working full time.

I continued caring for patients.

I advocated for people.

I identified serious illness.

I improved systems.

Created databases.

Developed resources.

Introduced new services.

Built governance tools.

Supported colleagues.

I created a workplace training database.

Built induction resources.

Introduced new clinical initiatives.

Alongside that, I supported people through family court proceedings.

Supported others through criminal proceedings.

Spent countless hours helping survivors of domestic abuse navigate systems that often feel impossible to understand.

I founded a website from what started as a personal blog.

Then rebuilt it.

Expanded it.

Turned it into something bigger than myself.

A place where other survivors might find information, support and understanding.

At home, I became whatever was required.

Decorator.

Builder.

Plumber.

Problem solver.

DIY specialist.

I knocked down walls.

Built new ones.

Fixed toilets.

Painted rooms.

Tiled walls.

Put up shelves.

Worked things out because there was nobody else to do them.

In fact, today, on my day off, I spent part of the day tiling a kitchen wall and putting up shelves.

Just another job that needed doing.

And somehow, through all of this, I kept learning.

I completed postgraduate study in Neuroscience and Psychology of Mental Health, graduating with distinction.

I became an accredited Neurodiversity Coach.

An accredited Trauma Healing Practitioner.

An accredited Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Professional.

I completed advanced education in safeguarding, domestic abuse, trauma, neurodiversity, learning disability, autism, eating disorders, suicide awareness, menopause care, contraception, cervical screening, cardiovascular disease, respiratory medicine, governance, emergency care, Parkinson’s disease and more.

The majority of that learning was completed in my own time.

Apart from statutory updates and vaccination training, most of it was done in evenings, weekends and stolen hours around work, parenting, court hearings, safeguarding concerns and PTSD.

Reading all of that back feels uncomfortable.

Not because it isn’t true.

Because none of it feels remarkable.

It just feels like life.

It just feels like surviving.

Maybe that’s what trauma does.

It minimises resilience.

It shrinks achievements until they feel ordinary.

It teaches you to focus on everything you haven’t done instead of everything you have.

It teaches you to see the gaps rather than the progress.

Which brings me back to that motorbike theory test.

I sat there expecting to fail.

Not because of the test.

Because somewhere along the way, I learned to doubt myself.

What the evidence says

Yet when I look at the evidence, the evidence tells a very different story.

The evidence says that over the last three years I have survived things that should have broken me.

The evidence says that while surviving, I continued to parent, work, study, advocate, build, create, protect and support others.

The evidence says I have done far more than simply survive.

But if somebody asked me today what my greatest achievement is, my answer would still be the same.

Not the qualifications.

Not the distinction.

Not the accreditations.

Not the website.

Not the career.

Not even the motorbike theory test.

My greatest achievement is survival.

Not because survival was passive.

Because survival was work.

It was getting up when I wanted to stay in bed.

It was showing up when nobody would have blamed me for walking away.

It was protecting my children while trying to heal myself.

It was helping others while carrying my own pain.

It was continuing when continuing felt impossible.

Three years ago, I wasn’t sure what my future would look like.

Today, I am still here.

Still parenting.

Still learning.

Still building.

Still helping.

Still hoping.

The worst day

And tonight, my mind went back to the worst day.

The day I came closer to breaking than I ever have.

The day my deepest fear for my daughter felt real, and no matter how loudly I tried, I was not heard.

I will not set out what was said, or where, or by whom. There is still so much I am not free to write.

But I remember the fear.

I remember the particular cruelty of watching someone walk away untouched, never held responsible, already rewriting the story so that he was the one who had been wronged.

I remember thinking, with a certainty that frightened me, that I was watching a risk to my child go unrecognised.

And then I thought about what my boss had asked me to do.

The list.

Everything I had achieved.

I picked up a pen.

And the only thing I could write was this:

I SURVIVED.

This piece is written in a personal capacity. It reflects my own experiences and views. It does not relate to any patient, and is not connected to my employer.

If any of this feels familiar

You are not alone, and support is available.

If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 999.

Live Fear Free, the all Wales helpline run by Welsh Women’s Aid, offers free and confidential support 24 hours a day for anyone affected by domestic abuse or sexual violence. Call 0808 80 10 800 or text 07860 077 333.

Samaritans is there for anyone struggling to cope, free and 24 hours a day. Call 116 123.

Beat offers information and support for anyone affected by an eating disorder. Call 0808 801 0677.