“Please stay”

Two words. All set to take my own life, those two words caught me. Two words by someone who cared, and just like that there was one saved life, and the birth of hope.

And my realisation of how powerful words can be.

Extraordinary. Because I saw writing as pointless. Really, really pointless. In fact, in my mind it was a boring and meaningless task churned out for bosses who binned or filed it. When I was young, I had liked writing, but as I had aged, words had lost meaning to me.

I didn’t even read books.

However. Everyone has a story. This person who saved my life, saw words in me - I had a story in there. Something worth telling. Something she thought worth listening to. So, I started talking, stumbling to find words, and along the way I was asked to jot down a few ideas about signs of abuse in children. Not the overt ones, the subtle little ones - easily missed. It was to be passed on to a group of Australian GPs.

As a child the signs of my abuse had been too subtle for others to pick up on. So this task sparked some interest in me. My only knowledge my own life experience, and with no self confidence, I put together a few pages praying that I wouldn’t embarrass anyone with the poor quality. Then I put it into the trash bin in my own mind.

The final page of that document was a dot point list. Just a few things that I wished that I had been able to tell my GP when I was a child. What would have been little subtle messages, that I needed help. That something was not right with me. Roughly written, non-academic, raw. Nothing fancy. Just a list dictated by the child in my head.

I removed that page at the last-minute thinking it poorly written. Then I put it back in because I was attached to it, then it went out again. Forever unable to effectively make decisions I put the page back in and passed it on.

Ironically, it was that final page that really grabbed many of them. It was the raw, personal stuff that connected, and in a light bulb moment I realised that my trauma-hell-filled life could actually be useful to someone. I started to write.

So…this website is here because of two words, one person who saw (and sees hope in me), and a group of doctors who just happened to like a childishly written one-page dot point list.

Words matter. Really matter. And you don’t need a heap of them. Sometimes all it takes is two and you know you are not alone. You have a way forward.

And there is hope.

And a website.

Just like that.