The Step Child (34 page)

If you are strong enough to be one of those people who put children first, through any contact you may have with them, then you have made a contribution. I don’t say that with lightness,
because I know what it is to desperately hope that someone will change things. Even now, I can’t express what it would have meant to me if someone, some adult, had decided that enough was enough. The scraps of kindness I did experience showed me that goodness did exist – I just couldn’t understand how so little of it ever came my way.

Things are changing for me, but as you have been reading this, a child will be living a nightmare. They will be being starved or raped or beaten or humiliated or any one of the thousand things that good people don’t want to think or do anything about. They could be your son or daughter, another family member, a neighbour, a child you teach, a child you see each morning on your way to work, a child that bothers you by their behaviour or attitude. Those children are all around us, but we don’t really see or hear them. It is your choice whether you, as an individual, allow that to continue.

My story ends here for now – my life does not.

Becoming the woman I am from the stepchild I was has been a long, involved process with no shortcuts. But I’m getting there. I’m getting there.

Thank you for listening.

At last.

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