When I came into this world many years ago, I wasn’t born into love.
Not into safety, not into warmth.
I was born to a woman whose priorities lay elsewhere.
By the time I was barely a year old, I was already on the radar of social services, marked down under neglect, poor parenting. A file opened. A label given. A lifetime of being monitored, but never truly helped.
They were always there, but they never saved me.
The trauma grew, documented in paperwork, but never understood.
Now I’m a woman. A wife. A mother.
I carry the weight of diagnoses ~EUPD, CPTSD~ but they’re just names for wounds that started long ago. Wounds the system didn’t cause, but never healed. And now, that same system punishes my children for my pain.
Years ago, I broke. A breakdown hit hard. I shut down emotionally. I had no voice, no strength, only the bare bones of a family trying to survive. For three years, we clung together.
And then, one day, the system came crashing in again.
They tore our world apart, not because I was a danger, but because I was struggling.
They acted on fear, on assumptions, on “what ifs.”
My children were taken.
And I was left in silence. In shame.
But in that silence, I found something I never expected.
I found God.
I found home.
Not in some far-off place, not in a perfect miracle, but in a little church that took me in.
In a group of people who saw me not as a file, or a diagnosis, but as me.
They loved me when I didn’t know how to love myself.
They sat with me in my mess. Prayed with me. Held me up.
Through them, I found my voice.
Through them, I found family.
And with their help, I found the woman I was always meant to be.
Today, I stand stronger than I’ve ever been.
Not perfect, but whole. Not fixed, but free.
I am a woman. A wife. A survivor.
But a mother? That’s still being held from me.
The system doesn’t forget. Doesn’t forgive.
So I fight, every day, for my children’s return.
The process is ongoing. It’s real. It’s happening now.
But court orders keep it quiet. Gagged. Hidden.
So here I am, writing.
Not for pity, not for attention, but because silence protects the wrong things.
This is for every parent judged on paper, not in person.
Every child passed between systems instead of into arms.
Every voice that was never heard.
I am that girl ~ the one they watched but never helped.
And now? That girl speaks.
If my voice can open eyes, if it can reach just one person feeling alone in their own fight ~ then it’s worth it.
Because the truth matters.
Because we matter.
~ The Girl Speaks † ~
thegirlspeaks.uk 