26 January 2010: A true story of parental separation and a lost childhood
Lucy contacted Rffj to offer her support to the campaign after years of alienation by her mum, after her mother passed away Lucy was eventually reconciled with her father; however they cannot replace the precious years that have been lost forever.
From as far back as I can remember, family meant the world to me. I had an older half brother (from my mother), a twin sister, a baby brother and the two most important people in my world, my mum and dad.
I was as normal as any excitable little girl. As I grew up I realized not all mums and dads lived together. I was lucky mine did, not that it seemed to make much difference to my friends because many saw both parents despite being separated or divorced.
When I turned 12 my life changed, not because I was suddenly a teenager but because my mother had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer.
Harsh as the situation was we tried to push through as a family.
Six months later my father left the family home.
He later said, “It was one of the worst times to leave”.
I do not hold my dad punishable for leaving, I never did, I pleaded for him to stay, but as a child you never know how complicated relationships are until you are older, it’s not a fairytale as every child thinks life is.
My mother was not the easiest person to get on with, life with her was full of emotional blackmail and some seriously bad obsessive spending of money the family didn’t have.
My mother still blamed my dad, he had hurt her, and I remember her leaving all of his belongings outside on the porch.
I cried so hard for my dad, my mother said I didn’t love her because I was crying for him.
She would regularly yell at me for pining for him, looking at photos of them together. I was labeled daddy’s girl, not as a good thing but a badge that caused so much hate and mistrust directed at me from the other most important person in my life, my mother.
To begin with the changes were slight; my mother got a job for the first time since I was born and dad came over to see and look after us whilst she was working.
That Christmas mum was very ill. She went into hospital on Christmas Eve at about 7pm. Dad came to stay and look after us, as we were all still very young.
I made sure my sister and brother went to bed and began with the Christmas presents, wrapping and putting them under the tree, not forgetting a present at the foot of each of the beds.
In the morning there were tears, which were to be understandable with mum in hospital, everyone decided to open only one present and save the rest for when mum came home. Dad got us all fed and organized to go to the hospital to see mum.
What happened when we got there could not have been predicted by anyone, my mother had a go at my dad when we turned up, she said, “I’m so embarrassed! How could you bring them looking like that? People will think I have the worst dressed kids! How could you”!
This was the most shocking thing for me; I helped my dad not only to stop my sister and younger brother crying, but get them sorted and to try and make their Christmas as normal as possible.
Not too long after this event my mother found out my dad was seeing another woman, she went crazy.
Dad wasn’t allowed to see us again.
I pined still harder for him, my heart was breaking.
Having my mother say she couldn’t love me because I loved and missed my dad hurt.
We children very quickly learnt if you want an easy life, dad doesn’t exist.
Obviously there were a few times we each went out with dad separately, but they were quickly stamped out by mum.
My 10yr old brother once went to the midsummer fair with my dad, they had a beautiful time, and dad was always a good laugh, fun and happy.
That night my mother went nuts, accusing my brother of not loving her, saying how dad had left all of us, not just her.
The worst thing she said to him that night was that he was an accidental baby and dad never wanted him.
The tears from my brother are like scars on my heart to this day.
My mother ended up with my little brother saying he never wanted to see dad again, she phoned my dad the next evening and gleefully told him that my brother didn’t want to see dad again.
Dad took my twin sister on a trip to the funfair. A fun time for her, time with dad, treated like a princess the same way my brother was treated a prince.
She won an enormous cuddly toy on the hoopla; she was all smiles, full of stories of the night. The daydream turned sour when she arrived back home to my mother.
The blackmail increased, my sister was sobbing her heart out. Facing accusations of not loving mum, how she “couldn’t love us when we betrayed her like that”.
There were so many screams and crying that night. Finally my sister submitted to defeat, she herself phoned my dad and said “I’m sorry, I don’t think I can see you a while until things calm down at home”. She was 14 at the time.
I remember my one night with my dad.
We went to the local cinema to watch ‘Treasure Planet’ a film by Disney. At the concession stand he got me a treat, I’m very partial to a frozen blue fanta drink.
I remember dad was shocked at the price and said it was the only one I was getting; I smile to that memory even to this day.
Half way through the film Jim Hawkins is remembering his father leaving and not coming back with the song “I’m still here”. I remember looking at my dad with tears in my eyes and he looks sad, he then turns to me and asks if I want another blue frozen drink. I saw him with his guard down.
I saw all the pain he was going through, I saw my dad.
That night the usual happened as could be expected. Mother crying, saying I didn’t love her, how when I was younger she was the only one to protect me from things, how she couldn’t love me because I was hurting her too much and how I should just leave to be with him to put her out of her misery.
I loved my mum as much as my dad up to that point.
After that I didn’t love anyone. I was 14 ½ and I hit the drugs.
Great stuff, it helped me cope living with her; I became bolder and took control in those awful situations. She would throw the tears every time something didn’t go her way.
Up until that point I had cleaned the house for her thoroughly every Friday she was at work, no thanks ever, just a general shrug and was ignored, I felt she preferred her TV shows to us.
I took quite liberally to hating her, not a normal hate but a true hate, my childhood had been destroyed by her.
The emotional blackmail was awful on days I had let my guard down, I was never comforted, and I was severely clinically depressed.
Between the ages of 13 and 17 I had tried to kill myself about 5 times.
If I ever tried to explain to my mother my views and feeling she would say I was ill mentally and she could never love someone like me.
What I have failed to mention up to this point is everyone believed what my mother said. They believed my dad had left without a backwards glance, not a care for his children and dying wife.
She said he never paid maintenance for his children, that he was a compulsive liar and a cheat; he didn’t want to see his children and couldn’t care if we died.
She was a martyr for her friends and family.
They were so proud of how strong she was, they all said it was terrible how the good ones die young.
She never once told any of them how she made it impossible for us to see dad, how he was paying 500 + of the mortgage each month and giving her money to do her weekly food shop.
As I said, I began playing with drugs, actually smoking cannabis every night, it was so nice to sit there and laugh with my friends.
If my dad ever knew I was smoking drugs he would have hit the roof, my mother wanted to earn kudos with her children so she had no problem with my consumption.
It made me a lot more volatile, I would lash out at my brother and sister with increasing regularity but the biggest and most explosive arguments were between my mother and me.
From her alone I learnt how to tear a person verbally to pieces, sometimes in one well-constructed sentence. I did it almost every day to her, this increased my older half brothers hate of me.
I was beyond cruel to her, I admit I should not have said such horrible things but in that situation with a mother like her, what could I do, no one could help, I was seen as a problem child because she never wanted to admit she did anything wrong.
I begged her to admit what she did to us concerning our dad was wrong and cruel, every time I was in tears, dying from the emotional pain she just said I was mentally ill and she could never love someone like me. I admit my faults. They kept on telling me to change, but they always stayed the same.
When I was a week from turning 16 I had an awful fight with my mother. It stemmed from me fighting to stay with my dad on weekends, I wanted so much to have them both in my life; I fought as hard as I could.
She said I could go stay with him that night so I did. The next day she called my mobile and said my stuff was out on the porch and I should have it collected before it got stolen or thrown out.
If you remember, she had done the same to my dad when he left.
I went on crash and burn, I went mental, I started to spend all my time in town with my friends who all did drugs, I got very drunk regularly, being sick, a terrible state, I’m still too embarrassed to this day to admit how bad.
I worked at the local supermarket. I had the same hours as my mother and sister, at the end of a shift I was in the staff cafeteria waiting for dad to pick me up, my mother came up to me and gave me my birthday presents with little cards with poems entitled ‘missing you’ and ‘my special daughter’ for my birthday which was in a day or so.
She said I couldn’t spend my birthday with her and my sister and brothers because it would be too painful for her.
That was one of the cruellest things she did, it showed just how cruel and heartless she really was. I was so hurt, I tried to talk to her but she would change like the wind; yes no yes no yes no. That went on for days, right through my actual birthday.
By 6 pm that day she said I could come to see everyone, however my dad had taken me out for a meal for my 16th and had had a bit to drink so couldn’t drive.
His girlfriend refused to take me. And so ended my special landmark birthday.
I pushed myself to the edge, I started to take harder drugs and lash out at my dad for how my mum was treating me. I really hurt him with the things I said and did. I just couldn’t understand why he left; none of this would have happened if he’d stayed.
I eventually went ‘undercover agent’ for my mother and took notes to her that my dad’s girlfriend had written, which contained notes for things she thought my dad should say to my mum. It got me back with my siblings but I lost my dad.
By that September I had joined a sixth form college; I made a few friends and finally felt I fitted in somewhere. However I was still doing many drugs and drinking heavily, from 6am until I went to bed.
I would drink 3 litres of vodka a day.
When I started sixth form we had to move from the family house because the divorce was finalized and the house was to be sold, of which my dad got 23,000. My mother had successfully convinced the courts to go in her favour, kind of mad when you consider what she did, but she was good at lying, so much so, she believed what she said.
She walked away with 120,000. My younger brother had to move schools; he was bullied horrendously and became withdrawn. He also had turned to cannabis by this point, as had my sister, life wasn’t worth living.
I was 17 when my mother finally passed away from the cancer, my little brother was 14.
My mother had left a will, in it she detailed our father was to not be contacted about her death and the people to look after us children were my Aunt (mother’s sister) and our half brother who was 13 years older than me.
I did mourn the loss of my mother, she was after all my mother, I feel no loss at her death, and only upset I never got the answers I needed from her. I quit all drugs that night because I didn’t need them anymore.
There were four children, 30, 17, 17 and 14, grieving for a mother. Dad found out about the death eventually and started to become more of a fixture in our lives, it was hard for him, the damage was done and he had to put his children back together whilst having slurs against him from everyone else in our lives.
Having our dad around made us less loved by mother’s side of the family, we were betraying her, and however they were the first to get on the phone to him when something didn’t go their way. Accusing him of dumping us, he never had a choice; we were taken from him and used as weapons to hurt and maim him every chance she got.
In the most recent year facts have come to light that I didn’t know and which shed another whole new extra light of injustice on my life. My mother was mentally ill, Fact. All of her family and my dad told me after. Everyone knew she had “problems”.
They all knew she could fly off the handle at a moment’s notice, that she was skilled in the art of emotional blackmail and changed even the most innocent piece of information into an attack against her, she wanted to be seen as a victim.
Her family who know all of this still don’t believe my story to this day, they make every excuse for her they can think of. I want to know how they can sleep at night, knowing what they contributed to.
I used to question myself after she died because I never had any answers, was she right? With regards to my life, no, she couldn’t have been further from it. If my mother was alive today, I’m sure I wouldn’t be married to my husband, I would be on the streets scoring heroin, I am so certain of that.
My dad is a dream, just like the dad I always wanted, I just wish I could have those stolen years of my life back to share them with him.
He is everything in my world, and guess what? Being daddy’s girl is the best thing in my world!
Every time I see him I revert back to being his little girl, I love him with all my heart and feel so strongly for him, I can’t see my life without him. I’m proud to take after my dad; I love him more than life itself.
I believe that the law needs to be changed, every child needs both parents, it’s how it has been done for thousands of years, don’t fix it if it isn’t broken.
We need a legal presumption of equal parenting when parents separate, there are so many children suffering, it is emotional abuse.
The government are against child abuse, be it verbally, physically, mentally or emotionally.
But why are they are letting this happen day after day, depriving children of both parents?
How can we send aid to Africa when there is so much to be done in our homes and streets right here?
The first step is not the hardest; we need a change in law, it’s has to be now.
Denying the changes in law is agreeing to child abuse. Parents to be treated equally after they split must start now or more children will be hurt, they are the future after all.
Lucy Warner
I was as normal as any excitable little girl. As I grew up I realized not all mums and dads lived together. I was lucky mine did, not that it seemed to make much difference to my friends because many saw both parents despite being separated or divorced.
When I turned 12 my life changed, not because I was suddenly a teenager but because my mother had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer.
Harsh as the situation was we tried to push through as a family.
Six months later my father left the family home.
He later said, “It was one of the worst times to leave”.
I do not hold my dad punishable for leaving, I never did, I pleaded for him to stay, but as a child you never know how complicated relationships are until you are older, it’s not a fairytale as every child thinks life is.
My mother was not the easiest person to get on with, life with her was full of emotional blackmail and some seriously bad obsessive spending of money the family didn’t have.
My mother still blamed my dad, he had hurt her, and I remember her leaving all of his belongings outside on the porch.
I cried so hard for my dad, my mother said I didn’t love her because I was crying for him.
She would regularly yell at me for pining for him, looking at photos of them together. I was labeled daddy’s girl, not as a good thing but a badge that caused so much hate and mistrust directed at me from the other most important person in my life, my mother.
To begin with the changes were slight; my mother got a job for the first time since I was born and dad came over to see and look after us whilst she was working.
That Christmas mum was very ill. She went into hospital on Christmas Eve at about 7pm. Dad came to stay and look after us, as we were all still very young.
I made sure my sister and brother went to bed and began with the Christmas presents, wrapping and putting them under the tree, not forgetting a present at the foot of each of the beds.
In the morning there were tears, which were to be understandable with mum in hospital, everyone decided to open only one present and save the rest for when mum came home. Dad got us all fed and organized to go to the hospital to see mum.
What happened when we got there could not have been predicted by anyone, my mother had a go at my dad when we turned up, she said, “I’m so embarrassed! How could you bring them looking like that? People will think I have the worst dressed kids! How could you”!
This was the most shocking thing for me; I helped my dad not only to stop my sister and younger brother crying, but get them sorted and to try and make their Christmas as normal as possible.
Not too long after this event my mother found out my dad was seeing another woman, she went crazy.
Dad wasn’t allowed to see us again.
I pined still harder for him, my heart was breaking.
Having my mother say she couldn’t love me because I loved and missed my dad hurt.
We children very quickly learnt if you want an easy life, dad doesn’t exist.
Obviously there were a few times we each went out with dad separately, but they were quickly stamped out by mum.
My 10yr old brother once went to the midsummer fair with my dad, they had a beautiful time, and dad was always a good laugh, fun and happy.
That night my mother went nuts, accusing my brother of not loving her, saying how dad had left all of us, not just her.
The worst thing she said to him that night was that he was an accidental baby and dad never wanted him.
The tears from my brother are like scars on my heart to this day.
My mother ended up with my little brother saying he never wanted to see dad again, she phoned my dad the next evening and gleefully told him that my brother didn’t want to see dad again.
Dad took my twin sister on a trip to the funfair. A fun time for her, time with dad, treated like a princess the same way my brother was treated a prince.
She won an enormous cuddly toy on the hoopla; she was all smiles, full of stories of the night. The daydream turned sour when she arrived back home to my mother.
The blackmail increased, my sister was sobbing her heart out. Facing accusations of not loving mum, how she “couldn’t love us when we betrayed her like that”.
There were so many screams and crying that night. Finally my sister submitted to defeat, she herself phoned my dad and said “I’m sorry, I don’t think I can see you a while until things calm down at home”. She was 14 at the time.
I remember my one night with my dad.
We went to the local cinema to watch ‘Treasure Planet’ a film by Disney. At the concession stand he got me a treat, I’m very partial to a frozen blue fanta drink.
I remember dad was shocked at the price and said it was the only one I was getting; I smile to that memory even to this day.
Half way through the film Jim Hawkins is remembering his father leaving and not coming back with the song “I’m still here”. I remember looking at my dad with tears in my eyes and he looks sad, he then turns to me and asks if I want another blue frozen drink. I saw him with his guard down.
I saw all the pain he was going through, I saw my dad.
That night the usual happened as could be expected. Mother crying, saying I didn’t love her, how when I was younger she was the only one to protect me from things, how she couldn’t love me because I was hurting her too much and how I should just leave to be with him to put her out of her misery.
I loved my mum as much as my dad up to that point.
After that I didn’t love anyone. I was 14 ½ and I hit the drugs.
Great stuff, it helped me cope living with her; I became bolder and took control in those awful situations. She would throw the tears every time something didn’t go her way.
Up until that point I had cleaned the house for her thoroughly every Friday she was at work, no thanks ever, just a general shrug and was ignored, I felt she preferred her TV shows to us.
I took quite liberally to hating her, not a normal hate but a true hate, my childhood had been destroyed by her.
The emotional blackmail was awful on days I had let my guard down, I was never comforted, and I was severely clinically depressed.
Between the ages of 13 and 17 I had tried to kill myself about 5 times.
If I ever tried to explain to my mother my views and feeling she would say I was ill mentally and she could never love someone like me.
What I have failed to mention up to this point is everyone believed what my mother said. They believed my dad had left without a backwards glance, not a care for his children and dying wife.
She said he never paid maintenance for his children, that he was a compulsive liar and a cheat; he didn’t want to see his children and couldn’t care if we died.
She was a martyr for her friends and family.
They were so proud of how strong she was, they all said it was terrible how the good ones die young.
She never once told any of them how she made it impossible for us to see dad, how he was paying 500 + of the mortgage each month and giving her money to do her weekly food shop.
As I said, I began playing with drugs, actually smoking cannabis every night, it was so nice to sit there and laugh with my friends.
If my dad ever knew I was smoking drugs he would have hit the roof, my mother wanted to earn kudos with her children so she had no problem with my consumption.
It made me a lot more volatile, I would lash out at my brother and sister with increasing regularity but the biggest and most explosive arguments were between my mother and me.
From her alone I learnt how to tear a person verbally to pieces, sometimes in one well-constructed sentence. I did it almost every day to her, this increased my older half brothers hate of me.
I was beyond cruel to her, I admit I should not have said such horrible things but in that situation with a mother like her, what could I do, no one could help, I was seen as a problem child because she never wanted to admit she did anything wrong.
I begged her to admit what she did to us concerning our dad was wrong and cruel, every time I was in tears, dying from the emotional pain she just said I was mentally ill and she could never love someone like me. I admit my faults. They kept on telling me to change, but they always stayed the same.
When I was a week from turning 16 I had an awful fight with my mother. It stemmed from me fighting to stay with my dad on weekends, I wanted so much to have them both in my life; I fought as hard as I could.
She said I could go stay with him that night so I did. The next day she called my mobile and said my stuff was out on the porch and I should have it collected before it got stolen or thrown out.
If you remember, she had done the same to my dad when he left.
I went on crash and burn, I went mental, I started to spend all my time in town with my friends who all did drugs, I got very drunk regularly, being sick, a terrible state, I’m still too embarrassed to this day to admit how bad.
I worked at the local supermarket. I had the same hours as my mother and sister, at the end of a shift I was in the staff cafeteria waiting for dad to pick me up, my mother came up to me and gave me my birthday presents with little cards with poems entitled ‘missing you’ and ‘my special daughter’ for my birthday which was in a day or so.
She said I couldn’t spend my birthday with her and my sister and brothers because it would be too painful for her.
That was one of the cruellest things she did, it showed just how cruel and heartless she really was. I was so hurt, I tried to talk to her but she would change like the wind; yes no yes no yes no. That went on for days, right through my actual birthday.
By 6 pm that day she said I could come to see everyone, however my dad had taken me out for a meal for my 16th and had had a bit to drink so couldn’t drive.
His girlfriend refused to take me. And so ended my special landmark birthday.
I pushed myself to the edge, I started to take harder drugs and lash out at my dad for how my mum was treating me. I really hurt him with the things I said and did. I just couldn’t understand why he left; none of this would have happened if he’d stayed.
I eventually went ‘undercover agent’ for my mother and took notes to her that my dad’s girlfriend had written, which contained notes for things she thought my dad should say to my mum. It got me back with my siblings but I lost my dad.
By that September I had joined a sixth form college; I made a few friends and finally felt I fitted in somewhere. However I was still doing many drugs and drinking heavily, from 6am until I went to bed.
I would drink 3 litres of vodka a day.
When I started sixth form we had to move from the family house because the divorce was finalized and the house was to be sold, of which my dad got 23,000. My mother had successfully convinced the courts to go in her favour, kind of mad when you consider what she did, but she was good at lying, so much so, she believed what she said.
She walked away with 120,000. My younger brother had to move schools; he was bullied horrendously and became withdrawn. He also had turned to cannabis by this point, as had my sister, life wasn’t worth living.
I was 17 when my mother finally passed away from the cancer, my little brother was 14.
My mother had left a will, in it she detailed our father was to not be contacted about her death and the people to look after us children were my Aunt (mother’s sister) and our half brother who was 13 years older than me.
I did mourn the loss of my mother, she was after all my mother, I feel no loss at her death, and only upset I never got the answers I needed from her. I quit all drugs that night because I didn’t need them anymore.
There were four children, 30, 17, 17 and 14, grieving for a mother. Dad found out about the death eventually and started to become more of a fixture in our lives, it was hard for him, the damage was done and he had to put his children back together whilst having slurs against him from everyone else in our lives.
Having our dad around made us less loved by mother’s side of the family, we were betraying her, and however they were the first to get on the phone to him when something didn’t go their way. Accusing him of dumping us, he never had a choice; we were taken from him and used as weapons to hurt and maim him every chance she got.
In the most recent year facts have come to light that I didn’t know and which shed another whole new extra light of injustice on my life. My mother was mentally ill, Fact. All of her family and my dad told me after. Everyone knew she had “problems”.
They all knew she could fly off the handle at a moment’s notice, that she was skilled in the art of emotional blackmail and changed even the most innocent piece of information into an attack against her, she wanted to be seen as a victim.
Her family who know all of this still don’t believe my story to this day, they make every excuse for her they can think of. I want to know how they can sleep at night, knowing what they contributed to.
I used to question myself after she died because I never had any answers, was she right? With regards to my life, no, she couldn’t have been further from it. If my mother was alive today, I’m sure I wouldn’t be married to my husband, I would be on the streets scoring heroin, I am so certain of that.
My dad is a dream, just like the dad I always wanted, I just wish I could have those stolen years of my life back to share them with him.
He is everything in my world, and guess what? Being daddy’s girl is the best thing in my world!
Every time I see him I revert back to being his little girl, I love him with all my heart and feel so strongly for him, I can’t see my life without him. I’m proud to take after my dad; I love him more than life itself.
I believe that the law needs to be changed, every child needs both parents, it’s how it has been done for thousands of years, don’t fix it if it isn’t broken.
We need a legal presumption of equal parenting when parents separate, there are so many children suffering, it is emotional abuse.
The government are against child abuse, be it verbally, physically, mentally or emotionally.
But why are they are letting this happen day after day, depriving children of both parents?
How can we send aid to Africa when there is so much to be done in our homes and streets right here?
The first step is not the hardest; we need a change in law, it’s has to be now.
Denying the changes in law is agreeing to child abuse. Parents to be treated equally after they split must start now or more children will be hurt, they are the future after all.
Lucy Warner
