An important personal message from the founder of NAAVoices.
On 20 November 2026, it will be three years since I left my abusive relationship.
Three years that have changed almost every part of my life.
Three years spent trying to understand what happened, what followed, and why the systems I turned to for protection left me with so many questions.
Three years of documenting, researching, writing, learning, challenging and trying to find my way through experiences I never imagined I would have to face.
And somewhere during those three years, I created NAAVoices.
What began as a private space to write about my experiences became something much bigger. A website containing extensive resources, research, practical guidance and information about domestic abuse, safeguarding, psychological trauma, legislation and professional accountability.
I know that work has helped people. I know because they have told me.
But this week, I made a decision that I have struggled to make for a long time.
NAAVoices will shortly become an archive.
And for the first time in what felt like an eternity, I slept.
It was never just a website
On Tuesday, I spent much of the day upset.
I hadn’t told anybody what I had decided. I couldn’t explain why I was so emotional.
At one point, I found myself upstairs crying to my boss.
I couldn’t tell him why.
How do you explain that deciding to stop maintaining a website has brought you to tears?
But NAAVoices was never just a website.
It was my safe place.
When I first began writing, I did so under a pseudonym. I needed privacy. I needed somewhere to express myself without fear that my former partner or those around him would have access to everything I was trying to process.
It started as a personal blog.
Then it became NAAVoices.
The website grew. People continued to find it. People continued to contact me.
And gradually, NAAVoices changed.
It became less about expressing what I was experiencing and more about understanding it.
And about creating resources that could help others.
Eventually, I decided that I would no longer be ashamed of writing about what had happened to me.
I put my name to it.
What I learned behind closed doors
People who know me probably have little idea how much I have learned over the last three years.
I have spent thousands of hours researching legislation, safeguarding responsibilities, domestic abuse policies, police procedures, court processes and professional standards.
I have created timelines, evidence logs, guides, articles and educational resources.
I wanted to understand the law.
I wanted to understand what professionals were supposed to do.
I wanted to understand what should happen when someone reports abuse, and what recourse exists when they believe those responsibilities have not been fulfilled.
Much of that knowledge came from trying to understand my own experiences.
But over time, it became something I could share with others.
As a nurse, I already understood aspects of psychological distress and trauma professionally.
What I hadn’t understood was how profoundly those experiences could affect my own ability to function.
I could recognise distress in others while struggling to understand what was happening to me.
I kept going for my children, even through the hardest times.
And I kept my career through it all.
Work was my safe place. An escape. A place where nobody knew what I was going through.
Caring for my patients gave my days structure and purpose when very little else did.
And I recognised the times when I couldn’t be there.
And I could spend hours researching legislation while finding ordinary everyday tasks almost impossible.
My professional knowledge did not protect me from what happened.
But it has helped me begin to understand it.
And that understanding is something I want to preserve.
The conversation with my son
Yesterday, my son said something that affected me deeply.
We were late for school. I had been struggling to sleep, and with the anniversary of leaving approaching, I was already finding things hard.
My son questioned why I was so bothered about him being late.
I explained that his education mattered.
He told me I hadn’t always cared.
That I never used to be bothered.
And I found myself trying to explain what those years had actually been like.
I was having a breakdown.
Not simply a difficult day. Not ordinary stress.
A prolonged period of psychological deterioration during which I struggled to eat, sleep, go into shops alone or manage things I had previously taken for granted.
Later, I messaged him.
I told him:
“I didn’t CHOOSE not to. I couldn’t go into a shop alone, eat, sleep or function past waking up every day…. That didn’t mean I didn’t care…..”
And then:
“It meant I DID care! Because I didn’t just give up when I needed to.
I cared enough to survive because of you three…”
Those words were written to my son, not for public consumption.
But they explain something about the last three years that I have struggled to put into words.
I didn’t stop caring.
I was surviving.
I still had three children to protect, provide for and keep safe.
And when my psychological capacity became so limited that I couldn’t manage everything, those were the things I prioritised.
I was trying to do for everybody else what I felt nobody had done for me.
What hurt was realising how differently my son remembered that period.
He remembered the things I wasn’t managing.
I remembered everything I was desperately trying to keep doing.
And both experiences matter.
My children lived through those years too.
They couldn’t see what was happening inside my mind.
They saw a mother who was exhausted, overwhelmed and sometimes emotionally unavailable.
I cannot change that.
But I can help them understand it.
And perhaps more importantly, I can make decisions now that allow us to experience life differently.
Surviving doesn’t always look like surviving
Before my own experiences, I understood mental health crises professionally.
But I had never fully understood what it meant to experience such profound psychological despair that continuing to exist could feel unbearable.
Then I did.
For a prolonged period, I lived with feelings I had previously understood only through clinical knowledge.
I now understand why people withdraw from those they love.
Why they stop responding.
Why everyday activities become overwhelming.
Why someone might keep going to work, because it is the one place where nobody knows.
And why the ability to function should never be confused with being well.
There are still days when I withdraw.
When I shut down.
When I simply don’t have the emotional capacity to engage with people, even those I love.
Sometimes that is how I protect what little energy I have left.
And that energy belongs first to the three most important people in my world.
My children.
They are why I survived.
They are how I survived.
But I am beginning to realise that I want to live for myself too.
What comes with me
I am not going to allow the years of work I have put into NAAVoices to disappear.
I have downloaded and preserved everything. Every post, every page, and the first blog where it all began. It is my history, and it is safe.
Everything I have learned, I will use in a different way now.
My writing will continue too.
My earliest memoir was written during a period of profound trauma. Looking back, it was almost like the police statement I felt had never properly been taken.
I needed to write everything down.
I needed to get it out.
That original work was withdrawn from sale.
Since then, I have rewritten my experiences from a different perspective.
Not simply recounting what happened, but reflecting on what I now understand about the relationship, the behaviour and the psychological consequences.
I have published that work quietly.
I haven’t advertised it. I haven’t announced it to the people around me.
Within the first 24 hours, 34 copies had sold.
I found that hard.
I don’t want to turn writing into another obligation. I don’t need to advertise everything I do or build an audience around my experiences.
I want to write because I choose to.
Because I have something to say.
Or simply because it helps.
What I want now
I want to move my career forward.
I want to return to university, continue developing professionally and pursue the ambitions that have spent too long sitting behind everything else.
I want to use my knowledge and experience in ways that belong to my future.
I want to enjoy being a nurse.
I want to write when I feel I need to.
I want to ride my motorcycle, spend time outdoors and enjoy ordinary things without feeling guilty that I should be researching another piece of legislation or working on another document.
I want to sleep.
Keeping NAAVoices going has taken my evenings, my weekends and the hours I should have been sleeping.
I want evenings that belong to me.
And I want my children to have a mother who is emotionally present.
Not just someone who manages to get through each day.
Someone who can laugh, make plans, take an interest in their futures and enjoy being with them.
I want my son to know that his education matters to me.
That it always mattered.
But also that I am now in a different place from the mother he remembers during those years.
I cannot promise that PTSD will disappear.
I cannot pretend everything has been resolved.
And I will continue addressing the matters that still require attention.
But those things no longer need to occupy every available hour of my life.
For three years, much of what I have done has been about understanding what happened to me.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life living inside what happened to me.
To everyone who has followed NAAVoices
Thank you.
To those who have read the resources, shared the articles, contacted me with their experiences or found something here that helped them feel understood, thank you.
I hope you are safe.
I hope you find the support you need.
And I hope that the resources I have created continue to help people long after I stop maintaining the website.
The existing blog and resources will remain accessible as an archive wherever possible, but they will no longer be routinely updated. Current legal, safeguarding and professional information should always be checked with the relevant official services.
I am not walking away because I have stopped caring.
I am stepping away because I have finally recognised that caring about other people does not mean I must continually sacrifice my own wellbeing.
NAAVoices has been part of my survival.
It gave me somewhere to write when I couldn’t explain what was happening.
It helped me turn confusion into knowledge.
It allowed me to use my experiences to help other people.
And for that, I will always be grateful.
But I am no longer the person who first created it.
I have changed.
My priorities have changed.
And now I need to allow my life to change too.
I spent three years learning how to survive.
Now I want to learn how to live again.
Not by forgetting what happened.
Not by abandoning everything I’ve learned.
But by recognising that my past does not have to occupy every part of my future.
And this time, I want my children to see me living it.
NAAVoices.com, November 2026
If this post has raised anything for you
- Samaritans: 116 123 (free, 24 hours a day, every day)
- Live Fear Free (Wales): 0808 80 10 800 (free, 24 hours a day)
- National Domestic Abuse Helpline (England): 0808 2000 247 (free, 24 hours a day)
- In an emergency: call 999. If you cannot speak, stay on the line and press 55 when prompted on a mobile.
About this post
This is a personal reflection by the founder of NAAVoices on her own lived experience. It does not identify any other adult, does not disclose the content of any court proceedings, and does not identify any patient, colleague or workplace. References to the author’s nursing career are general and contain no patient information. It is not clinical, legal or professional advice.
Supporting records: The decision to archive this website is recorded in the WordPress exports of naavoices.com and its predecessor site, created on 12 November 2026 and retained with a full site backup. The sales figure refers to the author’s Amazon KDP sales report for the first 24 hours after publication. The messages quoted are the author’s own words to her son.
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