Speaking the Silence

I never quite realised the impact our story, my family’s story, could have. Not until now.

Storytelling’s powerful. For years, I kept mine tucked away. Maybe because I didn’t think anyone would get it. Even my husband says he can’t quite get his head around my story. “You’re making it up,” he says jokingly, of course. I mean… fair enough, it does sound like a lot when you line it all up. I guess I kept quiet because it felt too tangled, too all over the place to explain. It would take too long to make sense of it all. But deep down, I knew it was something a bit extraordinary, a story with grit, heartbreak, and more than a few miracles. A life crammed with enough living for three lifetimes… and I’m not done yet.

I’ve lived in different countries. Went to nine different schools. I’ve soaked up different cultures, properly thrown myself in (sometimes not very gracefully). I’ve lived in more houses than I can count, criss-crossed counties north and south.

When you move that much as a kid, your nervous system learns one thing above all else: stay ready. New schools, new streets, new faces, every time, I had to figure out the rules before I broke them, work out who was safe before I could relax.

Home wasn’t always a refuge either. Living with my dad felt safe in some ways, but the air in the house didn’t. With my mum, I felt safe too but poverty meant we were never far from the edge. Even in love, there was instability.

So my body never learned what it feels like to rest all the way down. Safety was something that existed in pockets with certain people, for brief moments but could vanish without warning. And when safety can disappear in a blink, you don’t stop scanning.

Even now, decades later, that scanning is still my baseline. It doesn’t drive my behaviour in destructive ways anymore, but it’s there. It’s helped me read people well, sense shifts in a room, adapt fast. But it’s also been exhausting. Writing this, I realise I’ve spent most of my life searching for a place where my nervous system can finally put its bags down.

I’ve crossed spaces more times than I can count not just between countries, but between worlds. I’ve known what it is to have nothing, to live hand-to-mouth, single-parent households, benefits all that jazz. But I’ve also sat in rooms where wealth had nothing to do with money.

I’ve lived in chaos and crisis, and I’ve also felt the true meaning of peace. I’ve seen violence up close, more than once, in more than one way. I’ve seen the worst in people and the best. And I’ve been held in the safety of love, especially with my husband. (He’ll love that I’ve put that bit in.)

I’ve been the girl who gave up on herself the one described as a “no-hoper”, the one most people wrote off (well, almost everyone thanks, Mum, she never did). I’ve been lost in addiction, and I’ve found my way into recovery. And I’ve been the woman who clawed her way back through perseverance, a whole lot of luck, and eventually education and sheer bloody-mindedness.

I’ve known the fear the deep insecurity of not belonging anywhere, always being the new one, the unknown one. And then I’ve felt the relief of finally coming home. To myself. To a community that accepts me just as I am (warts and all). And, most importantly, to the quiet joy of building a family of my own.

Looking back, it feels like every move, every twist and turn, every loss, every fight to keep going was leading me here to this place where I write, speak, and share my truth.

This isn’t a side project or a passing phase.

This is my heart’s mission. And I can feel it a deeper knowing that this isn’t something I’ll pick up and put down like I’ve done with many other things. I’m in this for the long run, no matter what the outcome.

Why now?

For years, I’d long forgotten or at least buried what being from a military family really felt like. I pushed it down so I didn’t have to feel the sadness of it all. But recently, I started working alongside veterans, and it stirred something in me.

Not a memory but a feeling.

The pride. The awe. The deep respect for what my dad and my brother did, and really, for everyone who’s served. And right alongside that, the ache of everything left unsaid.

It made me realise that silence has a cost, not just for the one who serves, but for the ones who stand beside them.

I’ve carried this story for decades. And now, it’s asking to be told.

And I don’t want to tell it just for me. I want to tell it for anyone who’s lived through the aftershocks of duty, for the families, the partners, the children who’ve got their own versions of this story tucked away.

Because our stories matter.

They shape us. And sometimes they connect us. Through that shared experience, something resonates and often it’s felt beyond words. But when we speak them out loud, they can heal not just ourselves, but each other.

So here I am. Speaking the silence. Hoping it connects and maybe, just maybe, helps my nervous system finally put its bags down.