A woman who was silenced by abuse following the death of her mum when she was a baby has spoken out after learning to deal with the grief almost 40 years later.
Under her pen name Annabel Iris Arco she has written a book with the hope of helping others by sharing her experiences.
Annabel, a 40-year-old former teacher living in Southport, discusses the troubles she faced as a child from losing her mum before she could walk to being abused by her step mum before she was 10.
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Now she works for a charity that helps young people that may be struggling.
She had her womb removed as an adult which she feels forced to confront the grief she felt for her mum - something that hadn't fully hit her until then.
Annabel had been a teacher, moving to Southport to pursue her career, but she admits that the ordeal led to a breakdown.
When she saw a counsellor, that is when she was told to write things down to help process them, this process turned into her book, Little One's Whisper.
Speaking to the ECHO, she said: "In the first chapter I discuss the loss of my birth mother at the age of 10 months. Initially, it deals with the grief of that.
"There's unspoken grief when a child loses someone because they don't feel that pain and then it's never really discussed or dealt with. That was the initial trauma, that then leads onto my dad remarrying when I was six or seven.
"His wife, who I call Hans in the book, was physically abusive when he wasn't around. Many chapters then deal with everything I had to endure with that and how it damaged me as a person. I endured all of that and I didn't really understand it as a child.
"I suppose I never had a mum in the house before and I was unsure of what that would look like. Even when I tried to flag it up with my dad because it never happened when he was about I think it was difficult to report it or have a voice in that.
"Certainly, the era I grew up in you didn't go to school and talk about those things and weren't dealt with very well. As well, it was all kind of exacerbated by the fact I was brought up in a very religious community and essentially felt like these people, especially my dad's wife, held a high standing in society.
"I felt like nobody would believe it was happening. It's about how I felt silenced and alone in that pain and using creative language to show this. I was enduring this physical abuse and felt like I couldn't tell family members, I couldn't tell the church, I couldn't tell the school and over time it kind of became normal.
"I had this dual existence where when dad was around things were okay, when he wasn't there was potential for physical violence. I just learnt to adapt to that but the collateral damage was building over time resulting in more trauma.
"As I went into my teenage years I suffered from anorexia and eating disorders because that suppressed pain was needing a channel.
"I was self-medicating with drugs and alcohol. Then so on and so forth I ended up being a teacher and moved to Southport, and potentially thought that being able to move away from that trauma dealt with it.
"It wasn't until I'd been here for a while, my career was going well, I was a successful teacher. Sadly I then became really ill and had to lose my womb.
"Then I think what happened was that was a trigger to me where I realised that I would never become a mother, and I never knew my mother. I then started to really grieve for the first time in my life."
Annabel is hoping to go on to form her own charity, helping young vulnerable people across the country. To purchase Little One's Whisper, click here.
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