From Fed Up to Fabulous: Real stories to inspire and unite women worldwide (2 page)

I had always felt that at the age of seven my whole world had been turned upside down by a major and traumatic event. As I write this now though, I realise that it had always felt in turmoil.

Born to an angry, harshly-punitive and controlling father and a compliant mother, who used him as a threat to discipline my sister, brother and me, I spent my childhood between the fear of not being good enough, the threat of being punished for it and the reality and pain of the punishments. So when in June 1967 the Arab-Israeli war broke out and my mother bundled me and my two siblings into the back of an ambulance to spend the night at the local hospital, supposedly a safe place, life had simply taken a newly traumatic turn.

As I hid under my father's desk in his office at the hospital where he was a doctor, it was him that had sent us the ambulance that brought us there, I listened to the whistling shrieks of the falling bombs hurtling towards the ground. I covered my head with tightly clasped hands and listened intently in the hope that I could somehow tell if the next bomb was going to fall where we were, or somewhere else.

And in the few probably milliseconds of silence, between the whistling shriek and the impending explosion, I prayed hard, "Please God, don't let this bomb fall on me. Please God, don't let this bomb fall on me. Please God, don't let this bomb fall on me."

As each explosion hit the ground and the earth shook and shuddered, I struggled to listen for the next whistling shriek through all the noise. "Please God, don't let this bomb fall on me. Please God, don't let this bomb fall on me. Please God, don't let this bomb fall on me."

And in my seven-year-old mind, I imagined another little girl doing exactly the same thing. "Please God, don't let this bomb fall on me. Please God, don't let this bomb fall on me. Please God, don't let this bomb fall on me."

Maybe I had not been a good enough little girl, and I seemed to have plenty of evidence for it, and she had been. So, God would save her and not me.

"Please God, don't let this bomb fall on me. Please God, don't let this bomb fall on me. Please God, don't let this bomb fall on me."

All I wanted to do was live and I felt that I was somehow wishing this other little girl to die instead of me, and that I was the most horrible, selfish little girl in the world. It had not struck me that we could both be saved and my panic grew.

It got harder and harder to listen for the whistling shrieks above the feeling of my utter panic, the incessant noise and the screaming. My father told me later that I was the one screaming and in his bid to stop me disturbing others, he slapped me. I guess it was not in my father's sphere of expression to simply hug me or console me.

The memories of the next two years that followed, are very scant. I remember three incidents. The first was the night my Auntie came from Alexandria to take me and my sister back with her, I do not remember my brother being with us, so I guess he must have already gone there. She had made what must have been a very dangerous journey on the train and my mother, sister and I were huddled together in a bedroom in relative darkness, it was past curfew time, when a knock came at the door.

My mother was scared, we were not expecting her or anyone else, and she instructed my sister and me to stay in the bedroom and locked the door behind her. She was too scared to open the front door, even though she could hear my auntie's voice asking her to. She told me later that she could see the outline of soldiers on the other side of it and was frightened that it might have been a trap. It took my auntie a while to persuade my mother that the soldiers had accompanied her to make sure that she got there safely, that she had come to take my sister and I away to safety in Alexandria, and her too, if she would come, and that it was safe to open the door.

The second incident was in the playground of the school I had attended in Alexandria. I vaguely remember I had been asked a question by the leader of a group of girls who approached me and me looking around at the high concrete walls surrounding the playground and feeling trapped. I am not remembering the question, I just remember feeling frozen and having no idea what or how to reply. I knew that they had no idea where I had come from or what I had been through and I just wanted to wipe away the last few seconds or disappear. I hated the school and Alexandria, the place that I used to love because we used to spend long summer holidays there, away from my angry parents, who I was now missing. I felt like an orphan alone and unloved, I felt friendless, a misfit that belonged nowhere.

The third incident that I remember was late at night, my brother and sister were fast asleep and I was also supposed to be. We were at my grandparents house along with my Auntie, who had rescued us from the war zone where my parents remained. I overheard my auntie tell my grandmother that my father had been running out of the hospital to bring in injured people out of the way of the falling bombs, I guess to treat them. As fear gripped my heart and tears rolled down my face, I wanted to cry quietly so my auntie did not hear me. I saw the image clearly, the hospital entrance, the parched ground in front, now littered with holes that the bombs had left behind, and Dad half lifting, half dragging a body of a badly injured man towards the entrance and I cried, and cried and cried. I did not want him to do that, I did not want him to be a hero, I just wanted him to be my dad and be here with my mum, my sister, my brother and me so we can all go back home.

My cries quickly turned into deep uncontrollable sobs that came directly from my aching heart and it was a challenge to catch my breath. My auntie heard me and came in to the room to check what was going on. She asked why I was crying and I did not manage an answer through the sobs. My grandmother suggested that I had heard them speaking and my auntie thought not. Either way, I cried my heart out and even my auntie's assurances that my father was fine, did not stop the tears. I kept on crying till I eventually cried myself to sleep.

I remember for years feeling that I could not cry about anything, even when I wanted to, and that I had somehow cried every tear I had in my body, forever.

That feeling of not belonging stayed with me for many years as did nightmares that I was being shot whilst hiding in a ditch with my mother and sister. Soldiers would be jumping over us and not noticing us, or not wanting to. I would feel that maybe the war was over and that this is why they were not taking any notice and we would be saved. As I look up, the very last soldier looks at us, stops and shoots. I used to wake up in a panic, frantically feeling around for the shot and, of course, it would not be there. I used to wonder if I had died and gone to Heaven, because in Heaven the shot would have been healed.

I lived with the fear, most of my life, that something 'bad' was going to happen to me that would result in my death, even when the nightmares had stopped. I felt threatened around strong male energy and chose to be with men that I was less scared of, hoping for an unlikely lasting relationship.

I got through school and did well enough to go on to higher level qualifications and university. I chose to study architecture which I later came to realise was a compromise between my artistic creativity and what seemed like a robust career that my father would approve of. Everything in my life felt like a compromise, a way to feel normal, accepted, good enough to feel acknowledged and loved by my parents and others, and none of it seemed to work.

I suffered regular bouts of tonsillitis at university and ended up repeating a year, after having an operation to remove them. Even though I got through to final year, I allowed my fears to take over and never graduated.

I applied to change to a business course and then chose to get out to work instead. It seemed to me that learning the reality of business versus the theory was the way to go. Possibly, I was scared of repeating my previous experience at university and failing to get a degree, although I had certainly had enough of living on a student grant and liked the idea of earning money.

I started working at a financial consulting company, as I thought it might be useful grounding for running my own business later, which I had felt to be my ultimate goal. I worked my way up the levels of certification and seniority quickly. I was very disciplined, gained lots of new clients, took great care of them and got many referrals. I hit all my targets and won many accolades, as well as earning a very good income.

I got married, bought a house, drove a nice car and had lovely holidays. Life seemed pretty good, even though it was beginning to feel routine after a few years and I was very much missing having a child. After a couple more years, and one pregnancy resulting in an early miscarriage, I chose to refocus on my work and go for a management position with another company to have a new challenge. It certainly had an effect and I was pregnant very shortly afterwards.

Having my son, was a major turning point in my life. Although I felt nauseous, unwell or uncomfortable for most of my pregnancy, it seemed to awaken my soul. I finally felt what it was to truly love and feel loved and I was constantly amazed by my intuition, which seemed to have been awakened by motherhood. There was a beautiful bond between us that grew as I started learning to trust myself. It seemed to create a connection with myself, even though it took me a long time to totally trust and create room for it to blossom within me.

I simply allowed the opportunity to fizzle away as I pushed myself with every ounce that I could muster to get back to work to earn money to pay the bills, especially when I found out that my husband was pretending to earn money that he was not earning. I left my son at home with him whilst I scrambled for the motivation to get up every morning to work. I used to cry when I saw a woman in the street pushing a pram, I wanted to do that and be with my son.

It took several years of fighting, moving jobs, changing industry, separating, divorcing, getting in and out of a disastrous second marriage, the illness and alarmingly fast death of my first husband and then the illness and death of my father, to claw my way out of the giant hole that I had created in my heart and life.

I spent two years in depression, I simply worked to earn money and went about my day like a robot. There were many times when I felt I would never make it out, that I would be stuck, miserable and alone forever. I never thought I would trust my judgment again, especially when it came to men so, once again, I refocused on what I knew I did well enough, work. It got me back to earning a lot of money and this time a six-figure income. So, even though I felt that there must be more to life than this, and wondered how long I could possibly keep it going for, it was hugely challenging to be letting go of it. I felt tired of it and I was too scared to stop because it made me a good income.

What a huge trap that was and is. The feeling that this is not what I want to be doing in my life and being too scared to give it up because of what it buys me. The feeling that I am meant to be doing something else and being too scared to find out what. I would keep edging towards it and pulling back. Like giving up the idea of being employed and instead being contracted. I was too scared to be letting go of the regular income altogether and create a new way of life, even though I knew I wanted to work for myself.

I told myself that I must not take the risk for my son's sake. I was responsible for paying expensive school fees, as I had chosen to take my son out of government education after his father's death had thrown him into a whirlwind of kicking against the system and everything else. I was scared of being the cause of further trauma in his life and feeling even more of a terrible mother, since I was already feeling responsible for the trauma that divorcing his father must have caused.

When he finished school and was on his way to university, I was running out of excuses, it was now time to act, or never.