So really it was what they did to me as a child, but I didn’t understand the trauma until I was in my late teens/early twenties.

For my father, it is pretty cut and dried. He left home when I was too young to remember, never made any contact apart from promising to take me out on my 4th birthday, I still remember the phone call. That never happened and he disappeared until one day when I was 18 I bumped into him in a nightclub. I approached him, he didn’t know who I was. I asked if he remembered me and his face dropped. Long story short, he took me shopping and I later discovered it was with a stolen CC. So I returned all the goods and signed his name on all the returns receipts. Later in my twenties, after I’d had my first child, I received a letter from him, addressed from HMP Belmarsh. He told me to ‘go f*** myself’ in those words….His loss.

My mother is a more complicated story. She met a new man (latest in a long string) when I was 17 and changed the locks to the house so myself and two of my younger sisters could no longer access our home. The youngest of us elder three went into care, while myself and the 2nd oldest were thrown to the wolves. (as a side note the very youngest of us, was kept home and always treated differently, special holidays etc, she had a different father maybe that’s why?)

I slept in my car out front and then relied on the kindness of friends and strangers to get by until I unexpectedly fell pregnant at 19. At this point, she gave me a small amount of money (it wasn't hers, my sisters had old building society accounts which turned into bank accounts and they received bonus cash for this that they weren’t aware of and that she spent) to pay a deposit for a one bedroom flat for me and my firstborn.

I always allowed her to be part of my children’s lives but reminded them often to be cautious around her as I felt she couldn’t be trusted. She’d given away every pet we ever had as children and seemed to find it just as easy to throw away her kids, so I felt it was only right to be guarded.

After 20 years, her marriage to this man fell apart and I provided a sofa for her to sleep on and an ear for her to listen. My daughter warned me that my mother had actually cheated on her partner and that it was her own fault for being in that mess, but still, she is my mum so I did what I felt was right. After a few weeks, unsurprisingly, she ran away with a new man and left my kids pretty distraught. We haven’t seen or spoken to her since, and that was almost 3 years ago.

My daughter is now in her twenties, renting her own place and at Uni. I still keep her bedroom, and probably will until she marries! I would never want her to feel the abandonment that my parents forced upon me. My son (now 17) might never move out as I’ve babied him sooooo much, but I’m fine with that too! :)