I am expected to trust them.
To cooperate.
To sit in rooms and answer questions with calm and respect.
All while the same system that failed me now questions my ability to parent.
But where was that concern when I was a child?
Where was their urgency when I needed protection, when I was growing up in fear, in chaos, in pain?
They didn’t act then.
They watched.
They noted.
They waited.
They turned my trauma into a file they would skim over and forget.
Now, years later, that same system looks at me and sees a “risk.”
Not a person. Not a survivor.
Not a mother doing her best while carrying wounds they helped inflict.
Had they done their job back then, I wouldn’t be standing here now, branded, judged, dissected.
I wouldn’t be navigating life with scars I never asked for.
It’s a cruel twist:
They take children from loving, struggling parents, parents who need support, not suspicion.
And at the same time, they leave others trapped in real abuse, too blind or too disorganized to act where it truly matters.
Their focus is dangerously misplaced.
And the damage is generational.
How can they expect trust when they’ve never earned it?
How can they expect cooperation when the cost of compliance feels like betrayal to the child inside me?
I carry that child every day.
She remembers what they ignored.
And I refuse to let them rewrite the story again.
~ The Girl Speaks
thegirlspeaks.uk 