Healing Image Hi With Eva May – The Impact Of Child Sexual Abuse

Hello, this is Eva May, and I'm speaking to you from the Women's Radio Station for another in my series called Healing Image High. Healing Image High was something that I, I did when I named a project really for myself when I approached some image professionals for some help with how I looked and how I could improve how I felt about myself through the use of clothes and fashion and learning some skills about makeup and things like that. And, and it did really help. It's helped me an awful lot. I've learned a lot of skills. I've met some extremely interesting people who I'm very, very grateful for their help because they're skills that I, I now have. And this followed when I had actually not been able to leave my house properly for nearly 4 years. I couldn't look at myself, my self-care was pretty poor, and so having, having this help it gave me a way and of using, like for example with the makeup, you can learn about how to apply, what it does. A lot of the products I didn't even know what they did, everything's so different from when I, I used to be able to do this sort of thing previously. So I learned a lot about products and what I need for me. So looking after my skin and my appearance and trying to take control of that, be able to look at myself and touch my skin and feel my skin and care for it and choose clothes and understand the things that might suit me or things I like to wear and how I could wear them. It gave— it gives you a fairly instant positive look. There's a positive shift. Now, I do not do this every single day, and in fact, the past 2 weeks have been absolutely not good ones at all for me, health-wise— mentally, I mean. Now, my, my mental health diagnosis is is, um, is for dissociative— I can't even say, I'm sorry— Dissociative Identity Disorder. So it's like complex PTSD, so sort of trauma that's happened over and over and over, and, and it's become— that's why it's called complex. So we're sort of going up a little bit higher than that. It's one step beyond, really, the Dissociative Identity Now, as a survivor of historic child sexual abuse, I got through this, these years of my life, and it was years, and it was rather— it was bad. It's something that should never ever have happened and never happened to, to me or never happened to anyone. So the way that my body learned to cope with this was to sort of shut off. I couldn't sort of fight it or flee it, so my body— my brain was able to leave, my mind went somewhere else while things were happening to me, and this was a way of my body managing the difficulties, the harm, the pain, the confusion. And it sort of took me to a place that I can only describe as being like behind my, my eyes, away from what was going on. But this has happened through pretty much, I think, all stages of my brain development, and it has affected how I function, how I live day to day. And I have to be extremely careful when I do dissociate into two parts. So I've got different parts of me and they actually don't really get along very well. Um, that's— now I'm receiving treatment from a specialist service, the Clinic for Dissociative Studies in London, that after 33 years of receiving support for my mental health as a service user. I have finally got to the right— to a specialist service that can help with what I have, because it's so, it's so important. I, I've got no option but to, to deal with this. It's, it's untreated trauma. It's unhealed trauma. It's a huge, huge pain that I carry around inside of me. I sort of think about it a little bit like being the Earth's core. So where you have that absolutely— this, it's— it can't move, but it's an absolute burning inferno of high, high intensity. And every now and then some of it gets out and it can cause them— wreak some absolute havoc. And when my— I feel like I have this inside of me all the time, and I try and imagine that my body is compressing it similar to the pressure the Earth is putting on that really deep central core that I'm doing that and I have to keep it like that because any cracks or triggers that let that out can be, um, can put my life in danger where the pain is so great that I dissociate into a part. I don't have a choice in how this process works at the moment with myself. It's something that my body does. And I've spent, well, quite a lot of hospital admissions and treatment for physical effects of dissociation, which involve severe self-harm and near-death, so suicide attempts. So it's, it's It's pretty dreadful, and when you think about, you know, I've actually done nothing wrong. I was unfortunately targeted. My family were targeted, and we were all groomed, but I was the main— I was the the target, the focus for this. And it went on for many, many years, um, yeah, a lot of years and a lot of time. So I got this help. So Healing Image Hai is what this is about. And I've had guests through my series, and some of it has just been me talking. And I try to get people to talk with me for the Women's Radio Station about a variety of topics, and I wanted to be informative and open and honest. And last week I wasn't able to record, I was too unwell, so though I'm going to have, um, a previously recorded and played broadcast, will be used again because I was just too unwell to do this. I couldn't have done it. And this week I wasn't sure whether I was going to be able to do this today. Um, I, um, I have— if I sound a little bit sort of random and roaming about a bit, I actually had a quite quite a bad fall this week and I lost some consciousness and I was not, not aware of what was going on and I was talking absolute nonsense. Well, I don't know if I can do that anyway, but this was the result of a fall for quite a few hours. So I've suffered, I'm speaking to you and I've got concussion and I've also got a broken shoulder. So following two really bad weeks, not being able to really function very well at all, in a lot of pain— it feels like physical pain, but I think it is, is mental pain— and just, just crying and so confused, just desperate to get out of this feeling and this, this way, it's so very destructive, not only for myself but for, for my, my family, and in particular my husband. There's just the two of us at home now. All our children have, um, you know, got older and left home, so, and it's very difficult for him. It's He tries to understand, but sometimes things can be very good and then it goes very, very badly. And it's a great worry for him to go out to work, leaving me in this situation where mentally I'm not good at all. And if I dissociate, um, you know, I can run, I can go out, I can run. I've ended up in, in several dangerous situations, so, and then my daughter was going away for a week to a place where we like to stay. There's a hotel that we've been to a few times that we like to stay at, so he thought it would be nice as things hadn't been very good to go away for 3 days and meet her. We weren't going to be like— we're not helicopter parents, we don't hover about our kids really, but it is nice, um, to go somewhere and, you know, have the opportunity to spend a bit of holiday time together. Not, not all the time because she was with friends and they certainly wouldn't want us around all the time, But on the afternoon of the first day, I had this very bad fall, and yeah, it was only like 5 days ago, and I'm not quite right. It's my body's taken quite a blow. I'm black and blue. I've got— you know, I have to wear a sling. It's extremely frustrating because I— you need your physical health, like, to get you through your mental struggles, really. And I was, you know, being able to go out for walks with my dog, which I can't do at the moment. I can't drive, I can't go to the gym. I had not that long ago put on just over 2 stone from being on HRT, I was given a gel to rub onto my arms, and I was rubbing this into my arms and just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It was almost as if it was happening in front of your eyes. So the only other place that I, I've been going to is the gym to exercise and to lose this weight, and I have managed to lose to Stone and get myself a bit fitter and also to try and work on my balance because I do have mobility issues and I've had quite a lot of problems with my feet and I think maybe that's one of the reasons that I fell because I'm not all that stable all of the time. So I wasn't sure whether I was going to do this Today I've been asleep, I keep falling asleep, which is concussion, and I know that I'm just going to have to go with this for the next 10 days or so and, and try and look after myself. In fact, in some ways it's easier for my family to understand that I need to recover from this than it is for when my mental health deteriorates. So yeah, pretty bad 2 weeks, um, a lot of crying, a lot of screaming, a lot of just feeling huge amounts of pain that ripped right through me and sort of engulfed me. And it's It's very distressing. It's distressing to me. It's exhausting, uh, and I know it's, it's not at all pleasant or nice for anybody to, to see. And it's not something that I talk about very often, but I think I should talk about it a bit because the impact of child sexual abuse is is massive. And for me, I am now 56 years old and I've been receiving care for 33 years, although it's only since September that I've been discharged from the NHS. They don't offer— they don't have the specialist services that I need for Dissociative Identity Disorder. And I have now got funding. Now, all of this is such a long, long process, and I was very fortunate that I had a very good advocate to support me with this because it's not something that people regularly have to deal with, and it is quite a fight. And you do have to, to go through the process, which is something that's completely new to you. But anyway, I'm there now, and my treatment is predicted to last for the next 5 to 6 years. So I need to do this. You know, this is— it's damaging my whole life, and I'm, you know, I could be be 60, 61. My— the therapist that I see at them at the moment, in their job is that this phase is to keep me stable and to keep me alive because I am, um, a high risk of, um, injury and, and suicide. And I have, have made several attempts to take my life, um, but not, not knowingly. It's not a conscious knowing thing. It's when I can dissociate into parts and I don't have any control or memory of what's going on. So I'd like to hope that this as a country and as a society, we can try and understand more about this. It's not about having an awareness day, it's about doing some real work, some real research, and putting in some real resources to help people. Our mental health service has had so many more referrals since the pandemic. I'm not sure how they're going to cope with it, and I worry about every single one of the people who needs the help. And in this country, in the UK, to try and get help for complex PTSD or DID, dissociative identity disorder, is extremely difficult because there aren't guidelines that that are written by NICE, N-I-C-E, um, for the UK. They don't have any. I don't really understand why when other countries do. A lot of European countries do, and certainly the States. So it means that we don't have the specialists that we need who are trained to identify and to diagnose and put in some early intervention for some individual specialist care because this is something that no one would choose to live with, but it's got to be processed because living with unhealed trauma is exhausting, it's wearing, and it's— the long-term effects are, are massive. So anyway, I'll try and talk a little bit about that today. Um, I got home from my 3 days away having knocked myself out and broke my shoulder to, um, opening the post. Now I don't really get a lot of post, obviously, because it's all emails these days, but there was something for me. And I got back, and even though I'd, um, you know, had this fall, and I was making sure that I got some rest. And I met up with my, uh, my husband and my daughter. I'd try and get myself up for lunch and her friends to meet, to do that, and then I'd go back and rest again. I've been in a lot of physical pain with this. I am— my arm really hurts and So does my head. I gave it quite a wallop and I am quite black and blue. Um, and I actually had— I had a nice time. And in a way, having a physical injury, although it is restricting, and that's, that's something that I really— as for anybody doesn't need that. Um, it's actually meant that I've had to take care of myself and slow right down. So I get home and there's a letter addressed to me, so I open it and it is, um, I used to receive the Personal Independence Payment, the PIP benefit, which is a non-means-tested payment that's awarded for people with disabilities or conditions that affect their day-to-day living. Well, I've been receiving that, you know, the low rate, which is fine, and it helped because I don't work. I lost my job when I had a breakdown when I went through the police investigation process into my abuse. I found that was— it shocked me to actually learn and understand and see and read and have questions videoed under oath, signing statements. It went on hours and hours, days, days, weeks, months. It was horrendous seeing the impact as well on my family. And my friends. There are some members of family and friends that I don't see anymore. They've gone. I don't know— I actually don't know why, and that's caused me a lot of pain. People who I really cared about and who I really loved who are no longer in my life and haven't been in my life for many years, and they won't— they won't be coming back. I've now dealt with that, need to move on. So it really, really does have a massive impact on such a wide range, not just yourself but your family and every aspect of your life. So I've also had, um, been taking part in the Truth Project which it was launched by the government to be an independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. And this study, I think it started in 2017, and we're now March 2022, or you'll be listening to this in April because it's pre-recorded. They've been publishing various findings, and they have research teams that target and report on specific things. So I got this letter, which I opened up, and I used to get my Personal Independence Payment, and then everything— I think it's an automatic process where you get reviewed, and my circumstances had changed. It changed for the worse, not for the better. I actually then lost my detrusor muscle, which is your bladder muscle. It stopped working. I don't know, my thoughts on it are that being very stressed a muscle that is a muscle, though it's internal, that it was so stressed that it then just gave up. So every time I need to empty my bladder, I need to self-catheterize. I also got problems with my feet, both of them, and I got some infections in there, and my mobility has been affected and I'm not— my balance isn't very good, so maybe it contributed to my fall last week. But it's so difficult trying to— I went to the assessment. They originally, they were going to send me to one like 30 miles away from where I live, and I said no, there's one in my town. I can't do that journey and go through an assessment process. So they sent me to the local one, which would you— one would have thought would have been the first choice. And then I got the, the results back saying they were going to stop all my benefits, that I didn't reach the score. And every question they can give score, but you're not involved in that consultation. You just answer what they ask you. You're not sure what level. There's nobody really to prepare you for this, and then they just give it a score. And I think it can depend really on who it is on the day. So I asked to go to the local one, which is 1.2 miles from my home in the town where I've lived for 33 years. And one of their reasons for taking my award away was that I was able to drive a car, which proved— there was a very long paragraph, a cut and paste job, saying that, listing the fact that if you can drive a car, then you've got cognitive skills that involve you doing this, that, and the other, and you've got spatial awareness and physical strength. And I, I mean It's, um, I was quite shocked really to read some of these things, and these forms, they're very difficult to understand, and they have like notes in the side. It's not set out terribly well, and there isn't really any support. You're on your own with it. So I I tried to phone them up and discuss it, and they said then I should send some more things in, like write some more things and send in some more evidence. So I did. I made notes as I spoke, and I did that, but they didn't wait for my things to get there. They sent out another piece of paper telling me that it definitely was like not— I was not going to receive this benefit. And I was like, they hadn't received my paperwork. They'd done this without even waiting for something they said they would wait for. So yeah, it's, it's, it makes me angry. And it's not a lot of money, but it certainly helps. It helps with my travel to London for my treatment. It helps sometimes. I need a companion with me, and I don't have a job, and they've taken this away from me, and I don't know why. And I don't know because I haven't done anything wrong. And I'm now— I've now been discharged from the NHS, which is like government-funded and then the government who fund the PIP are like acknowledging on one hand that I've got something that needs specialist service, and then on the other hand taking away something that I need to access this specialist service and to live my day-to-day life. So I would— did have an appeal. I had an appeal in January which at some points, like, we thought we'd won it. And it took place in January 2022, but this all comes from like a tribunal service of courts. It all looks very official, and it's all quite— it's almost— it's quite frightening receiving this sort of stuff. But they put that my hearing was in January 2020. They didn't even get date right. So eventually, I have an advocate for this, they managed to get some sort of help to put in a correction notice, which means now we have to go and appeal against the appeal, which I knew about. I was upset about, but I knew about. I don't understand why it has to be so difficult. And the people who are reviewing my claim and receiving my medical paperwork, they're not medically trained. So now we have to go to a tribunal, about the tribunal in April, but after getting back from my 3 days away, I've got a letter from the Secretary of State, something like, I don't know, it's a submission something or other, I can't remember, I'm sorry, but they've got involved and they've written out something that I can't understand. It's got abbreviations in it that mean nothing to me at all. The only thing that I could take in was one of the points that they'd put that they could direct the tribunal towards was to strike my appeal because I hadn't filled the paperwork out in time. I didn't actually know about that, and I'm not someone that can manage things like this. I, um, and I've been extremely upset and distraught about this, and I'm not going to have to wait another sort of month really until this goes through and try and submit stuff to the tribunal for the judge. One of the things that I need is something from my GP. Can't get through to them at the moment, and they do say on the phone, the message, to use an e-consult. So I did the e-consult, and then I got the 'we've received it' email, and that you'll have a response by a certain date. Well, that date passed 4 years ago and I've not heard a thing, so I'm gonna have to pick up the phone tomorrow and try and battle this one out. So I wasn't— I didn't think I was going to be able to record today because I couldn't record last week, I was too unwell, and I feel a bit the same this week, although I think I would have been an awful lot better if I hadn't had a fall. But because the 3 days away were actually quite nice, if you took the fall out, then it was fine. So I thought today, because I have read articles— I do try to keep myself up to date and informed about mental health provision, about people being able to access benefits with support, because it's their way that they, they have the process and you have to fit in it. And it's very difficult. Forms are quite frightening. They only give you a certain amount of space. There's an assessor, uh, a center that you go to that gives you a score. How they reach that score, I don't know. Different people come up with different ideas of scores, but it's— yeah, it's been pretty distressing. And so I'm going to talk about the Truth Project, the government's inquiry into— it's an independent Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, and they've been carrying this out now for a few years. I am one of the 6,000— well, slightly more than 6,000, I don't know the exact number— who took part in this, and it was, it was a difficult thing to do. It's triggering having to talk about what happened to you, having to hear those words and look at people you've never met before and their reaction, and they are people who are used to hearing about these things, but it is It is shocking, it is very bad, and they ask you about your life and how your child sexual abuse has impacted on your life. Now, I don't, I don't think I, I can't remember if I said yet, but, um, I had to go through, when I went through the police process and I spent my 4 years staying in the house because I was just so blown to pieces by the whole thing. The people, the police, you know, they deal with it, they're trained in it, they have an agenda, but they can't— you have to do— you're the person that's giving the information and they need to make sure it's right. They need to make sure that they've got everything documented correctly. They need to present evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service, and they don't want things thrown out on a technicality. So the support is a little bit— they can't— I mean, you're there, if you're there for 6 hours doing a video interview, you don't then want— all you want to do is to go home. You don't want any of that talk about it anymore. There's also somebody who transcribes where they're listening in to what you're saying, and at the end of everything you need to read it and sign your name. Now, I got so sick of signing my name and seeing it with all this horror stuff and shock and everything that I actually changed the way I write my name. And I don't know, that might be something people find helpful, but I can't look at the way that I used to write my name, and so that's changed. You can— some people, you can change your name by deed poll, so you don't actually have to see your name printed in relation to— in the context of abuse, because that's really hard too. To see your name because that is your personal identity. So for people who don't understand, I feel at the moment quite powerless and worthless that the Secretary of State has a department that has gone and looked and seen how I fill out forms, they're not medically trained, but all my medical evidence has been submitted, that they can just say the tribunal could strike this out because of the fact that I didn't fill in a form in time. The truth is I couldn't, I needed support to do it. And getting that support took a while. I wish my trauma had an end date, but it doesn't. So the, um, the government's inquiry into child sexual abuse has written some reports. The absolute full findings don't come out um, until later on in the spring of 2022. So we're nearly there for it, but I— the impact of it is just so— it's so complex, it's so huge. It affects every single piece of you, every fibre in your being, and it hurts incredibly. It's, it's grief, it's disbelief, it's confusion, it's anger, it's rage. And that's through all stages of brain development, and from, you know, as a very young child to Well, mine went on for 3 years. I don't really want to say how long for really, but yeah, a long time. So then I have the head of the Child Protection Services that, you know, we were at in my house and we had to go through some, some evidence and things, and he was really distressed and I was looking at him and so was my husband and we were like very confused as to why he was distressed and he said that I was— my case was in the top 3 of the worst cases that he'd been involved with in his long serving career. I just found that information too much. I didn't need to know that. It's not a competition, and you know, to be told I might have got the gold, silver, or bronze in something like that, I really didn't want it, and I think it shocked my my husband a lot too. I've now found out the, the context of this statement, and it's because the abuse that occurred to me was organized abuse, which is when there are— it's a group, there's a group, but there's a primary person the group. So the person that targets the child and then grooms— grooms me, grooms my family— and then everything starts to happen. And they are also the person who tries— when, um, you know, when the child is— when I was hurt, so when things were happening to me, when, yeah, when I was cold, hurt, distressed, drugged, whatever, like it was pretty bad, then he would— there would be a person who would give treats, make it better, you know, yes, blanket, cuddle me, stroke, stroke my arm, make me feel better. So it's the fact that organized abuse is rare that made it in one of his top 3. He's not— not many people come across cases of organized abuse when it's groups, but it does happen. Now, it would be so much better if absolutely none of this happened, like, not just like one perpetrator or a group anything, but it does, it has happened, and the government have gone and done an independent inquiry. So I've been reading one of the reports that's on their website, and there's a lot of things that you can access through there. There's an awful lot that's come from here, and They are trying to gather evidence and data so that they can then work out where the gaps are for research to try and help people. So this one was called The Impacts of Child Sexual Abuse. It was written by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse research team in July 2017. It was, uh, the authors are Kate Fisher, Alexandra Goldsmith, Rachel Hercombe, and Claire Soares. So that they have, it's quite a long, uh, report. You can get the shorter version as a summary version, but obviously these are in-depth findings. So they've used existing evidence to base the impact on, and they've also looked at the impacts that occur to victims throughout their life course. So the more information that is gathered about this for people who, you know, I'm now 56, so they've got my information about what happened to me and the impact it's had on my whole life. So hopefully they're gathering up that. Um, they're also looking at the impact on families and also on the wider society. So there's some interspersed in the report, there are some quotes from people, from survivors and victims who took part in the Truth Project. They're done in an anonymous way, and I could have said this, I don't know, but some of them certainly apply to me. Now, this is one that I'd like to read out. It says, "What he did to me affected my whole life, every relationship, my personal identity, and general trajectory of my life." Child sexual abuse manifests itself in all aspects of my life, and that's, that's true of, of what it's done to me and to my family. And so to read someone else, I feel very sad that it's happened. But to actually know that some— this is, this is a normal response, a normal feeling. Someone else put that the effects of what happened have stayed with me undetected and with unprocessed thoughts throughout my life. The damage from my early years has colored everything else at all stages of my life. I know it sounds dramatic, but I'm just telling it as it is. And it, it does. I mean, people know about child sexual abuse and they are shocked by it, but having to live with it every day And there are triggers in the world every day as well that you may or may not come across. You can plan for some, get rid of them, change them, make people aware of them, but it's always going to be triggers that can get you— catch you totally unawares. So this, the impact of child sexual abuse research team focused on sort of physical health, emotional well-being and mental health, um, interpersonal relationships, socio-economic issues, religious and spiritual beliefs, and vulnerability to re-victimization. And also external link behaviors. So let's have a little look at some of those. Um, they're saying that, you know, the, the impact and the, the effects of trauma on mental and physical health can happen at any time, and that they have got evidence that survivors have been able to find a way back to an adaptive or positive functioning, functioning person after a period of difficulty, but that these periods of difficulty can be decades. And that's been for me. And the impact of child sexual abuse also increases the likelihood of the need for survivors and victims to seek medical care for physical conditions. So, uh, that's also happened to me. That 73% of survivors and victims have complex PTSD, and 49% have, um, self-harm or suicidal, um, thoughts and ideologies even during treatment. The risk of suicide is 6 times greater for victims and survivors of child sexual abuse than the general population. So I think I might submit this to the DWP for my PIP thing, because if they want to throw it out because I didn't fill a form in and nobody told me about the number of months, and they send out massive pieces of paperwork that are over 150 pages that, you know, people usually going through things like that would have a lawyer, and all of a sudden you're in a tribunal situation, which is terribly frightening. And, and then at the same time, the government have published a research report saying that somebody in my situation is 6 times greater at risk of suicide, and then they're trying to stop my my funding which pays for me to, to travel and get to my medical appointments. So yeah, I think I might send them this. We're also 5 times more likely to be charged with a criminal offense. Well, fortunately I've not had that happen to me and I'm planning on keeping it that way. Relationships, poor relationship stability, interpersonal violence, and just difficulty being intimate with people. I thought when I disclosed that everyone would just, just love me, that like it would all be over, it would be a release, a relief, and I'd get hugged and cared for, and I could curl up and I'd feel secure, and, um, I could rest and finally sort of try and mend a broken soul, because that's what it does, it breaks your soul. But that didn't happen because it blew, blew everybody's lives to smithereens, and my my family, my friends, my kids, my sort of extended family, to such an extent that it has divided some of us. It's divided us, and there are members of my family and friends that I either don't see— I don't actually understand why that they decided to remove themselves from my life, but they did because I haven't done anything wrong. And there are also some friends and people that I find extremely uncomfortable around, and it's also not something that people find easy to talk about, and it's not something that I find easy to talk about to people, and I might try and explain or say something that, that is just how it was, and it can really upset and shock people. So for me now, being with the Clinic for Dissociative Studies is the best thing because I've got someone to talk to who gets supervised to deal with anything that they find difficult to deal with. When dealing with their clients, and that I can say things to and they don't look completely shocked as if they're never going to cope with it, because feeling that you can't be managed is just like one of the worst feelings ever. Um, yeah, so there's always going to be triggering situations, and those are— they're kind of quite— they're everywhere. It's sights, it's smells, it's sounds, it's a movement, it's, it's just, um, it's just out there every single day. I mean, I can't go to the supermarket on my own. I have to have help. It's just too much, there's too many people. Um, it's Mother's Day today. You'll be hearing this and Mother's Day would have gone because this was recorded earlier, but, um, you know, I've, I found today really, really difficult. And, um, I did lose a child and I actually emotionally, I was not up to going to the cemetery today. It's the first one I think I've missed, but I will have to just do it, go when I can, when I feel a bit better. But I think coming home to a letter where, um, I, you know, I haven't really done anything wrong. All I've done wrong is are not filling a form, then maybe they need to spend a little more time reading up on current, current government-funded reports rather than trying to cut off funding for somebody who is trying to get well. That's the bit that I can't get. So the other thing is that the impact means that on society is there's an increase in uptake of using of public services, the criminal justice system, healthcare, welfare benefits, and education provisions. So it really, really impacts you. And thinking that it's all over, it's in the past— it's not. It's not in the— it's in, it's in me. It's part of me. It's changed me. It's given me parts that were useful when I was in situations of harm or distress, I could take myself away from them and go to a place that I can only describe as behind my eyes. But I've gone through so many years that there are so many dissociated parts, and as I got older, the nature of the abuse and the things that occurred and changed have also added to the fact that I had to dissociate, and I've now got different parts. And these parts in me, they're not really getting on very well. So, um, it's, it's something that is very difficult to explain. It's lonely, it makes me feel very angry, it makes me feel very tired, and I find everyday things very overwhelming. Even just running the house I find quite a challenge. So I really hope that, you know, if you are interested in The Truth Project, uh, under IICSA. There's a lot on the internet and there's an awful lot of things that you can read. There was, um, another quote from a survivor that says, when I talk about it, I can see it, I can feel it. I can hear it, I can taste it. I try to say the words. I feel dirty inside. I feel more dirty talking to you about it, and because it hurts me so inside, it really hurts. I won't be— let a doctor, a male doctor touch me. I'll talk to them, but I won't let them touch me or anything. There's got to be a female there. And yeah, it does make me— I've not met anybody who took part in this project. It was all We weren't to say where it was and things like that. It was all kept secret. Um, I've certainly not told anybody where I— where it was held, and I've never seen or met anybody. But certainly reading through these, if you do know somebody who needs support, or you are someone looking for support, or you're someone who is generally interested because society needs to address these issues, they're not going to go away. Then have a look on, on their website because there— I've been— I've only read the, the sort of summary version. There is a really, really in-depth one that I've— I'm really not up to reading that much, So, um, I hope, um, I hope that you can get something from this. Um, it's been really difficult to do this today. Um, lots of reasons. Um, lots of pain, lots of tears, lots of confusion, lots of feeling very hurt and like a victim. By people who should be helping me. So yeah, next week I hope I'm feeling a bit better. And but you know, this is— we are talking here openly and it says women's radio station, you know, we really talk. Well, I think that's what I've had to do today is just really, really talk and ask people to try and be kind and be patient and to understand. And also those people who are in a position to provide specialist individual services, to make sure that we do get this right and that we do help those people that deserve it, because I have I spent 33 years in a system that has not been able to meet my needs, so I have deteriorated. And yeah, I'm, I'm very fortunate now to be here. So I'd like to say goodbye. So this is goodbye from Eva May, and I look forward to recording another series for you Next week.