Lorna's Story

When they took my daughter away my heart was broken. I couldn’t stop crying. I felt like the one thing I was supposed to be good at had been ripped away from us. Before she was removed, I could do a few days without drugs. After they took her, I didn’t want to come down ever. I couldn’t cope with the pain.

I fell pregnant at 16. It was a shock. I was so young and I barely understood how women get pregnant at that point. By then, I was already taking a lot of pills and smoking a lot of weed. But while I was pregnant I stopped the pills and just smoked weed and drunk Guinness. I thought it was OK to drink Guinness when you were pregnant. I was just very naïve and immature.

I gave birth to my daughter when I was 17. Her dad, he just wanted to party, but I wanted to settle down. But with everyone around me partying, I would end up taking my daughter and settling her in a bed in the next room while I was getting off my head.

Within 18 months I fell pregnant twice more and had two terminations. It completely screwed me up. Looking back I feel like it totally ruined my life. I was just so young, and I didn’t know you could get pregnant so quickly after giving birth. But we knew we couldn’t cope with having another child, we just couldn’t do it, even though the idea of termination really distressed us. We were both so young.

The terminations, particularly the second one, were really traumatic. I was almost 12 weeks for the second one and I remember looking at the scan. It looked like my daughter. That image has stayed with me ever since. I was sobbing and crying in the room, my partner was outside of the room crying. But we knew we couldn’t cope.

After a while my partner cheated on me, so I was living back with my mam as a single mother. I felt really alone and trapped. I wasn’t even 18 yet.

By 18 I was living in this homeless accommodation, just me and my baby, and I was coming off drugs, trying to be a mam. But one day my addiction caught hold of me again. I got my friend to look after my daughter and I ended up getting drugs. I was out for two days.

When I got home I went to bed to try and sleep. The people running the accommodation were checking in on me but I didn’t hear the bell so this guy came in and found me naked on my bed which obviously concerned him, so they rang social services. They ended up taking my daughter from my friend’s house and putting her with her dad’s ex – it sounds strange but I liked her looking after her, she was a bit older than me and lived with her mam.

I was told if I wanted my daughter back I needed to get off drugs. But the pain of her being taken was unbearable so I couldn’t face the world without them. And anyway, I didn’t know how to get off drugs. I’d never known anyone do it. My dad was an alcoholic and my mam was addicted to drugs since I was young. All I knew from being a kid was carnage.

*****

Growing up was really chaotic. I didn’t realise at the time that my mam was a drug user, but at one point she ended up with us squatting in this five bed house. There was a lot of domestic abuse, too, and I found myself living in hostels and doing runners. In total I went to eight different primary schools and four high schools.

I remember having no friends and looking different from everyone else. We had moved away from the North East and so I was this dead tall Geordie who wore a faded uniform from lost and found. I stood out for all the wrong reasons. I would wag school, and they’d get the police to do checks on me in school which I found really intimidating so I refused to go in. I didn’t do my GCSE’s or anything.

I felt like I was always walking on eggshells and I felt scared. My mam had every bone in her face broken by her husband at one point. And as a teenager I remember if you chewed loudly or talked wrong you might get your head put in the food or something. There was a lot of violence. My brother had special needs and would only come home weekends and holidays. So social services were quite involved anyway with my mum and she’d get loads of support from them. But I felt nobody noticed me and what I was going through as a child.

When I was 15, I asked my mam to write a letter saying that she’d chucked me out, which she did, and so I was able to get into young people’s accommodation.

Fast forward to me being 18 and having my daughter taken off me and it was my mam who they put her with full time. My mam had always dealt with social services so it was like she knew how to play them, what to say. My mam’s boyfriend at the time head butted her and they helped her get into a women’s hostel. They said she had to choose between her boyfriend and her granddaughter and she chose her granddaughter. But I knew that she was still dabbling with drugs even then.

My mam had all this support but I had nothing, I had nobody helping me or speaking for me and I was only 18, still a child really. And I was just heading deeper into addiction.

*****

While my daughter was living with my mam, I met this guy who I ended up living with for twelve years. He was really controlling and physically, mentally and sexually abusive. But I never had the strength to walk away. I felt like a failure.

I was also worried about my daughter. My mam was violent with me growing up and whenever I visited her house to see my daughter I could tell she was scared of her. I was scared of her.

There were times when my daughter was about five or six that she was allowed round to mine, and I had all these maternal instincts kicking in. But my partner would kick off about me holding her hand or letting her cuddle me. He’d get angry, sometimes violent, and I felt I had to abide by whatever he said to keep things calm. I was massively scared of him, I still am. He doesn’t have a clue where I am living today but I’m still scared of him..

At the start of 2016 he kicked me out. I went to live back at my mam’s and saw the full extent of how she really was with my daughter, shouting at her all the time. Then my mam had a nervous breakdown and I got my daughter back. There was no court or anything, they just automatically gave her back to me.

So she was living back with me and my ex and I was in the middle of a really bad addiction. It was amphetamines, mainly, so I’d be up for days on end, not eating properly. My house was a shambles, there was no hot water or anything. And I had all the abuse from my partner still going on.

So I left. I took my daughter, went back to the North East and moved in with my dad. My drug use got better when I was away from my partner. I was only smoking dope by that point and I started going to SMART recovery meetings. Then I remember one of the social workers from back home came to visit and took us out for a meal and she told me I was doing really well but that if I ever got back with my ex, there was no way I’d get my daughter back.

I still don’t know why to this day but for some reason I called my ex. I don’t know if it was some kind of trauma bond but I pined for him. He promised he would change, and he said we’d be a happy family and I believed him. I honestly don’t know why or what made me ring him but all I’d known in life was chaos and pain. So I gave up my lovely life in the North East, taking my daughter to school every day, getting better, to go back to him.

It wasn’t long before I was back on drugs, and my weight had deteriorated badly. I felt so weak and my doctor informed social services, so we were having meetings with them again. I would go to social services without my partner and I would tell them I wanted to leave him but that I was scared. I think it had gotten worse because I’d gone back to him again so I think he felt he had more power over me. But then when he was at the meetings they told him what I’d said about him and it made everything so much worse. I didn’t dare say anything again. I felt like I had no voice at all.

So my daughter got removed once again and went to stay with my partner’s aunt. She seemed happy there.

*****

My daughter wasn’t allowed to our house so I’d go visit her every two weeks for Sunday dinner with my partner’s aunt. Because I’d had a taste of having her back with me I wasn’t content. I knew I needed to get away. I was crying all the time and it was really painful. I had to get away from him and I had to get away from the drugs. Things had just got worse and worse.

So I told him I was going to Newcastle to look after my dad. And I told my daughter I was leaving and I think she knew that I was really going for good. I moved back in with my dad and I just stopped taking drugs. But it was really stressful. My dad was a chronic alcoholic and he was just falling over all the time. I think if I hadn’t been going to SMART meetings I’d have ended just going back to my partner, but one of the women at the meetings got me into abstinence based accommodation.

Sadly, my dad became really unwell and I spent two and a half years looking after him, worrying about him, cleaning up his piss and shit. Then he died.

I was devastated. My dad was like my hero. He was the only man I ever trusted.

*****

Since losing my dad I moved back into his flat, which has been a really good thing because it means that my daughter can come to stay with me when she moves up for college. She’s doing criminology and forensics.

I’m terrified, to be honest. I’ve rung social services over and over to check they’re OK with her coming but nobody’s got back to me. My support worker managed to get in touch with them at one point and they just said they’re not involved anymore.

My daughter’s put in some ground rules though. She says when she’s crying to leave her alone unless she shouts for us, because for the last few years she’s had to look after her emotions herself. And she says don’t mess my room up and act normal when my friends come round. She’s seeing a counsellor at the minute and I’m trying to find out where she can get counselling when she moves up here too, to keep it going.

I’ve always treated her like a best friend, even in addiction I would tell her about everything. Things I shouldn’t have. But since I got into recovery the dynamic has massively changed. And I’ve told her she has to make dinner once a week and she’ll whinge about it but I guess that’s what being a parent is about. It’s nice to feel like a mother and not just a best friend.

Things are much better for me today too. I’m still in recovery, still going to meetings and I’ve got friends. I’ve never had real friends before now. I’m at college once a week too.

And I look after myself now. I change my knickers every day! I went to the dentist and got my new dentures, which was a huge game changer for us. I’ve got hope today as well.

But I want to be something other than an addict.

I went to get my eyebrows done recently and when I was asked if I had been to work, previously I’d’ve been like, nah I’m an addict. But this time I had actually been on a training course and when I told them I was treated really different to how I used to be. She started chatting about me going on holidays and stuff and it was lovely. I went along with it cos it felt really normal. It made me realise I didn’t need to tell the world I’m an addict.

*****

Looking back, I can see I was addicted not just to the drugs, but to my partner too. My mind was always playing tricks on us, telling us that both the drugs and him were good for us.

I do feel the fear, but when I face the challenge of my fears I feel more empowered, more assertive, I feel like I’ve got a voice today. I used to keep everything to myself because I didn’t want to cause stress for people. But now I know if I’m in pain I need to express it.

I’m in a good relationship today, too, which feels weird. He works very hard, I’ve never been with anyone who works. And he treats me with respect, and lets me make my own decisions. It’s weird cos when you’re not used to it you look for the problems. He understands that my daughter comes first and he encourages me to be the mother I want to be.

And that’s exactly what I’m working on at the moment. Being a mam.