If you feel lost, confused, and sad

Depressed, anxious, feeling bad

When you hit rock bottom and can't see

Any way out, you've got me

If your heart's been broken, shattered and abused

And you are sick of being abused

When hope you cannot see

You have hope in me

When the depths of sorrow are pitch black

You can't find your way back

When the walls close in on you

I am here to help you

Addictions you crave, to soften the blow

To give you a buzz, the only way you know

You are no longer neat

And you never even eat

You feel like you cannot breathe

You've forgotten how to breathe

Forgotten about life

There is no life

Fear not these things, I've been there my friend

All of it, and nearly met my end

I write to bring you a glimmer of hope

When you no longer can see any hope

I was in the depths of depression

Rape caused that depression

I found it hard to cope with my job

So then I lost my job

No job, no more money coming in

My budget became very thin

Soon I failed to pay the rent

And away my home went

Nowhere to turn, noone to run to

My family had disowned me too

Homeless, desolute, no self esteem

I had to sell my body it seemed

I sold my body, I needed drugs

I kept going with alcohol and drugs

Abusive boyfriend tried to choke me

I ran to the brothel to shelter me

Now it's three years later and I am free

No more depression, or fear you see

I sought help and received it

I cherished it and I nurtured it

I came off the drugs and backed off the drinking

Alarmed at how deep I was sinking

I'll never forget the people who helped me

They saw an inner light in me

Now that light can shine and glow

I am here, I am well, and I show

That you can turn your life around

Put your feet back firmly on the ground

For life is worth living after all

I want to live and have a ball

I want this all for you as well

You can do it, and do it well

My Christmas wish to you out there

Is to know that someone cares

To know you deserve to be

Living, loving, and free

I’m a survivor

I’m a fighter

I’ve fought for my life

Fought for my freedom

Fought for my rights

I’m a survivor

They hate me for it

They hunt me down

They shadow me

Try to fighten me

But I’m a survivor

They can’t get to me

I long to be free

No more hiding

Let me be

I’m a survivor

I have battle scars

But they have become

Part of my beauty

I’ve been strong

I’m a survivor

I don’t trust anymore

Earn my trust

Is a must

Can you do it?

I’m a survivor

I guard my heart

It was shattered

I hold it together

Inside its walls

I’m a survivor

But not just a survivor

Against all odds

I healed and thrived

I’m a thriving survivor

I was 4 years old, watching my parents open the mail. There was the familar A4 envelope from the Church, and they eagerly opened it, pulled out the letter on top of the magazine and placed it on the table.

“Is that GOD?” I asked excitedly, pointing at the photo in the top right corner. My parents looked at each other awkwardly, then Dad said “No, that’s Mr Armstrong.”

Confusion filled my little head, and I couldn’t understand this as all the adults totally obeyed everything this man preached, and copied everything he did.

When I was 6 years old, the TV cameras came to our Church. The minister knew they were coming, and told us all that we MUST NOT talk to the TV people. He told the adults to make sure all the kids stayed right away from them too, and use necessary discipline if we failed to comply. Already by then, I found the Church a fearful place, and thought all the rules were not fair, in fact I thought alot of us were struggling because of it. I was bitter and resentful that we weren’t allowed to go near the TV people - I wanted to run up to a reporter and say “Help me!” The show was ’60 Minutes’ and they were investigating claims against us saying we were a cult.

A few months later, ’60 Minutes’ were back again.

By the time I was 8 years old, my mind was full of falsehoods but at the time they were my absolute truths. The Church took it very seriously that they now had a generation and a half of poor souls born into it, never knowing any other way. What an advantage that gave them. I’d had 8 years of hearing teachings about the Man being the head of the household, that only Men could be preachers, and women had to please their husband and totally obey him at all times. Submit was the word. “Submit yourselves to your husbands”. Women were expected to wait on their men hand and foot, and basically be a 1950′s housewife.

So, little me at 8, held no aspirations for her adult life other than being a good wife and housekeeper. Little me practiced making her bed perfectly.

Part of the great indoctrination was capturing us kids all together and taking us off to camp. The first camp was for 8-13 year olds and I got booted off to it at 8. I was scared and missing my mum. We had to rough it in the bush, doing things we’d never done before. Sleeping on the ground with no pillow. Abseling. Use a compass. Use a leaf or two to wipe yourself after going to the toilet on the ground. We had basic amenities at camp base, and one night I had to get up and use the toilet. After trudging along in the dark, I get there and open the door with relief, but SHOCK!!!!!!!!!! Before me was a naked man, it was Mr WhatsHisName! He was bending over drying his toes and didn’t see me, but I felt instantly unpure and guilty. I remember just relieving myself in the bush instead, still shaking. Terror gripped me, for God would punish me for seeing a naked man.

The second camp was for 13-18 year olds, and by then we had a new General Pastor. He had changed some of the rules, one of them being you could now hug someone for 3 seconds. Any longer, and you would be a sinner as any kind of affection just leads to sex, and only married people are allowed to have sex anyway. This camp went for 3 weeks, a very long time when you have very long days, and lots of Bible Study group sessions. Somehow, we did end up enjoying it, or we thought we did at the time at least. Looking back now, I shudder at the whole experience.

Petticoats. Long skirts and dresses. Females were never to wear trousers, and had to keep the hair long. Pantihose. Girls had to start wearing them very young, I can’t even remember not wearing them. Females had no right to relax, be cool and comfortable, or have fun without a care in the world. Prim and proper, rounding your vowels, behaving like a Lady. Fail with any of this and you were not going to find yourself married, and you were thought of as being ‘rough’ and ‘easy’. High necked tops, no cleavage to be even hinted at. No makeup, no hair dye, only prostitutes do that.

There was no such thing as rape, and really, in my young mind, it was always the woman’s responsibility to not tempt the man. It never occurred to me that this premise was sickly wrong.

Fast forward to 19, I’m in love with a boy my parents don’t approve of. He’s half Greek, very extoverted, dresses wildly in standout colours and doesn’t really care what anyone thinks of him. All those aspects drew me to him and he wasn’t fanatical about the teachings we grew up with. My mother thought he looked like a gangster and didn’t like his lack of refinement. My parents argued and argued about it with me, and got nowhere. One night they were discussing me while they did the dishes, and I was eavesdropping in the hallway. What I heard was going to change everything. They were going to make me choose either my family or him.

My heart was hammering in my chest and I couldn’t breathe. How betrayed by them I felt. How disposable I felt. Anger rose up within me and I had to make a decision before they had a chance to have that conversation with me!

The next morning after they both had gone to work, I rang my best friend and asked her for help. I was going to run away. She came and helped me pack and waited while I wrote a letter of explanation to my parents.

It wasn’t long before my boyfriend and I shacked up together, and little did I know it, my life was about to change completely.

We lived in Melbourne from when I was 7 until I was 11. Coming from Sydney, I felt like a fish out of water. It got colder than I could ever remember and we had to start wearing thermals and skivvys under our clothes, which I hated. At school, the first question I was asked by the kids was “who do you barrack for?” Embarrassed, I said I don’t know, which made them tease me.

Mum told me to just say I went for Collingswood, the Magpies, because her father had played for them. She taught me they wore black and white, and explained that in Victoria they had different football, VFL it was then, and it was taken very seriously. My confidence boosted, the next day at school I proudly informed the third grade of my heritage, which invoked a certain awe from the boys. Overall, I found it all very confusing and overwhelming. The kids were often excited about going to the footy on the weekend, and soon it was discovered I never went and could not go. The footy was on the Sabbath (Saturday) and therefore was off the menu completely. The Sabbath lasted from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset and during that time there was to be no work, no play, it was holy time. Poor little me tried to explain this to the kids, believing entirely in honesty, but was horrified to learn this turned them against me. Thus began the taunting and bullying that took me 2 years to overcome.

“You’re so posh! Why do you talk like that?”

“Ooooh look at Miss Goody-Two-Shoes all prim and proper in her full uniform, she’s from Syd-ney, she’s too good for us”

I pleaded and begged with my mother to allow me to wear a more casual form of the uniform, and no uniform at times too, so I could fit in. She wouldn’t have a bar of it.

We had standards to uphold, she told me, and were here to set a good example. Would God want you to dress like a slob? Would you see the Queen dressing like that? I gave up in the futility of my quest.

Fortunately for me, I developed two friendsships, Narelle and Lisa, and they were not like the other girls. We thought the other girls were boring. I sat with them in class sometimes and played with them sometimes. Later they would become my best friends, but meantime I was often on my own, running away from the boys taunting and threatening me.

I refused to cry when they caught me. No matter what they did, they were not going to get the satisfaction of seeing me cry. They hit me, pulled my hair, and kicked me. I’d eventually escape to their peels of cruel laughter and find a teacher to dob them in to. But nobody ever did anything about them.

At night I couldn’t sleep, reliving the horrors of the day and dreading tomorrow. I started to take a book and a torch to bed with me to read until I fell asleep. Months later, things had deteriorated so much, I cried every night instead. Pleading every night with my parents not to send to school anymore, I was beyond desolate.

One day, the bullies decided they were sick of getting no reaction from me, no crying. After a particularly brutal beating at lunch time this day, Trevor grabbed me by my long blonde hair, and bragged that this will make me cry. With a forceful tug of his fist, I began to be dragged along the asphalt. I still didn’t make a sound. He kept going, kept going, until tears stung my eyes and my grazed body wept with degradation.

“Stop!!!” I yelled. “Stop doing this to me!!!”

Shocked, he dropped me. Speechless, he held my gaze for a moment, then scampered away with all his mates.

Mum was enraged. That was it for her, she would sort this ratbag kid out and he won’t DARE touch her daughter again. Suddenly everyone was taking me seriously and it felt strange.

The very next morning, Mum walked to school with me, her confident hip-swinging stride giving my heart a faint glow of hope. Not knowing what Mum would do or how she would do it, but hoping fervently that she could magically make this bullying stop, I felt nervous and scared and excited all at once.

We got to the school, and as usual in the front yard there they were.

“Which one is he? The ringleader, the one who dragged you by your hair?” Mum asked me. I pointed to him.

Mum marched boldly up to Trevor and addressed him firmly and loudly by his full name. Turning around and caught off guard, Trevor looked scared. Mum grabbed his shirt collar and hoisted him up in the air so he was level with her eyes. She shook him, then said loudly, “Don’t you EVER touch my daughter again, do you understand?” He got the look in her eyes and quivered, saying “Yes, Mrs Wilson”. She tossed him back on the ground and glared at his open mouthed mates. “The same goes for the rest of you. Don’t let me find out any of you hurt my daughter again!” she growled. Then she turned on her heel, and stalked back to me to say goodbye, and leaving bewilderment in her wake.

Suddenly everything was different. Trevor’s mates turned on him, and teased him for being scared of my Mummy. The terrifying Trevor existed no longer. Without his pack, he was nothing. He never was let back in, and I was not bullied again at that school.

Next in store for me, was a real surprise. Trevor wanted to “go out” with me. Oh I laughed at that, after all he did to me how dare he? Having noticed his long curly black eyelashes that I envied, I realised this would be a weakness to him. I started telling everyone he was the “King of Mascara Man”. It worked, and from now til 6th grade he came to know how alienating he had been, he knew how it had made me felt, and he became a sad looking boy.

By 6th grade, I’d felt it was wrong that I’d done that to him, thinking two wrongs don’t make a right, but it was too late to do anything about it now. I just hoped when he had a new start in highschool, he wouldn’t forget this lesson, and never hurt a defenceless girl again.