Somerset Survivors

What many people do not realize is that the majority of child abuse happens in the child’s own home and more often than not either involves a family member or where the family member are complicit in the abuse.

And while the numbers are lower than where there is a male abuser a significant number of mothers abuse their children with a much higher number complicit in that they know and do nothing or even help the abuser.

The damage, physically but in this case more importantly psychological this causes is tremendous, the child learns that even home isn’t a safe place, that even his family rather than care and love him and make him feel safe actively want to harm him. Add in the emotional and psychological manipulation, gaslighting used to control the child, to minimize and even deny the abuse and it is no surprise that these children, and the adults they grow into, have often sever mental health issues.

With all of this it would be easy to understand why many children that have been abused by a family member decide that for their own safety they need to cut off all contact from their family. It would be easy for others to understand when the now adult has a feeling of hatred and disgust for the family they were once part of.

But for the survivor it isn’t quite so easy. Often along with the fear, disgust even hatred of the mother that abused him there is something more. A hole, a void left behind. One that people who have never had their family and the protection and belonging that it brings ripped away by abuse will struggle to understand.

There are days, weeks, that I deeply miss he loss of my mother, of knowing that that family is there and that even at my age a hug and kind word is there waiting for me. It is a key need for everybody to feel safe, to know, even if the mother has passed away, that there was, is, that love and parental protection. This is missing for so many survivors and leaves a hole, a void that can only be filled by a Mommy Hug, which we know will never be there for us