Of the 2000 dogs murdered in the UK in that 9-year period:

• 9% were killed by a stranger

• 61% were killed by their owner

And before you assume I’m being alarmist or click-baity, I’m not. This is data collected in cooperation with multiple police agencies from across the country. Let me give you a few more stats that should have made it to news headlines but, for some unfathomable reason, did not:

• 49% were killed using a knife or other sharp instrument

• 27% died of strangulation or asphyxiation

• 17% were killed using a blunt instrument

• 16% were killed with the body used as a weapon (beaten/kicked/slammed etc)

• 38% were killed after they had tried to run away from their abusive owner

• In 162 of the dog murders reported upon in the period, the dog’s puppies witnessed the murder of their mother

• 128 of the puppy-witnessed killings were perpetrated by the dog’s owner

And this isn’t just a UK problem. Globally, 140 dogs die at the hands of their owner or someone in their family every day which equates to 1 dog every 10 minutes. In 2023, 85,000 dogs/puppies were intentionally killed, 60% (51,000) were killed by their owner/other family member (globally).

Now, I’ve been lucky enough to own four dogs in my adult life. They all died of natural causes and their end was peaceful, facilitated by vet-administered euthanasia. I’m so grateful for that. After years of fun and loyalty and companionship, that end is the kindest. Those dogs of mine meant so much to me that I can’t bring myself to consider ever getting another dog because I understand the heartbreak of the loss when that time comes. So, I fully understand what dogs mean to us. Their devotion, their trust, their patience and loyalty. That’s what makes these numbers so devasting and when I first encountered the information, through my research for my current WIP, I had to dig further, actually, I went digging closer to home. I live in Scotland and so I set about accessing the data relating to my region through the Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (2018/20), to see if this is real. Is this happening near me? Are my neighbours doing this? Are dogs I know being abused? Will one of them be killed? Here’s what I discovered:

• Only 1 in 6 (16%) incidents of owner abuse is reported to police

• 32% of incidents - puppies were present in the house

• 71% of incidents - puppies directly witnessed the most recent incident

• 64,807 incidents were recorded by Police Scotland in 2021-22 (remember, only 1 in

• 6 incidents are reported)

• 7% increase on the 2020-21 numbers

• 5% increase from 2019-20 numbers

Not only is this happening, but it’s also getting worse. This is a growing phenomenon. If all of these numbers and statistics are shocking, let me scare you just a tad more. Every incident was committed by a man. Every single number represents a man abusing or killing a dog. Why on earth would a man kill his dog? What is happening? These aren’t isolated incidents, they represent a pattern of behaviour, something predictable, something you can rely upon happening. It’s an epidemic of shocking male violence. Why are men killing dogs in these numbers? Why does it go largely unreported? How can we all just sleep at night knowing that these vulnerable creatures are just one angry man away from being stabbed, bludgeoned, strangled, suffocated or beaten to death in the UK at a rate of 1 every 3 days and globally, 1 every 10 minutes?

I’m going to try and be objective now and I apologise in advance for how inauthentic that’s going to feel (because I really can’t fathom any justification or normalisation of this shit).

Some of you might blame the dogs. Yes, dogs can be a lot. They cost a lot, they put a lot of pressure on men. Men have a lot to deal with and sometimes dogs just...I don’t know, ask for it? Deserve it? Bark the wrong way? I know there will be a lot of people who think that there’s always two sides to the story, right? The dog played their part in all of this, we’re not seeing the whole picture, men don’t just kill dogs for no reason, the dog had to have caused this in some way.

Before you tidy this up in your head by trying to place a portion of the blame on the dog, or to sweep it under the carpet as something that ‘other’ men do or ‘other’ dogs experience because it’s just too vile and unbelievable, I want you to visualise all those dogs. The murdered dogs. How scared they must have been at the end. How their little hearts would have been pounding as the violence escalated in the hours leading up to their murder. I want you to think of the terror they felt in a percentage of those killings where their terrified, traumatised puppies were in the room, cowering, trembling, yelping and squealing, perhaps trying to save their mother, vulnerable to the same attacker. I want you to think then about the dog taking its last breath, how betrayed it was, how broken and discarded it was. What then? Think of that creature’s, broken, bloodied body lying on the floor in the house it thought was safe, killed by the man it trusted to protect and love it. Think about how pointless that life and death was if no one talks about it, if nobody cares and if the same thing just keeps on happening and that dog becomes nothing more than a statistic, a number in a census or on a crime and justice survey.

What if their killing means nothing to anyone and makes no difference because...well, it’s just a dog. Will their death be fully investigated? Does that depend solely on whether the investigating body has the funds or motivation to see a conviction through and does the crime justify the cost and the time?

• What if it keeps happening?

• What if our society decides not to pose the big question? Why are men killing dogs and what can we do to stop it?

• What if the numbers keep rising?

• What if people become so numb to it, so bored hearing about it that each report is met with an apathetic shrug, disbelief, nothingness?

• What if people keep saying, ‘not all men’, instead of acknowledging, ‘always a man’, and find out why?

What if you only cared about these numbers when you thought it was about dogs?

I’m hoping some of you reading this are familiar enough with the numbers in this article to realise that they are real, it is real data except I did a little switcharoo on the victim. If you go back through the article and place the word woman every time you see dog and you replace puppy/puppies with child/children and you take that image of a scared dog being murdered and lying dead and see a woman, will you still feel the same tempest of protective fury? Assuming, of course, that’s what you felt.

How does that revelation make you feel? I tricked you into thinking men were abusing and killing dogs in unprecedented numbers. Now you know I was actually talking about how men are abusing and killing women in unprecedented numbers. Do you feel annoyed at having been tricked into panicking that something terrible was happening to dogs? Do you feel relieved to know that it’s not happening to dogs? Do you feel like telling me, “Well, actually, there is terrible abuse happening to dogs, why aren’t you talking about that?” Were you needlessly triggered? Are you annoyed that I triggered you because you have a real soft spot or sensitivity regarding cruelty to animals? Maybe you breathed a sigh of relief when you realised that I’m actually just banging on about the same old thing i.e. the growing epidemic of men’s violence against women and girls that is rooted in the patriarchy and the misogyny that is systemic and entrenched in our society. Are you perhaps willing to recognise that you were more alarmed and panicked, albeit momentarily, by the thought that dogs were being harmed than you are about women being harmed?

I don’t know how many dogs are abused or killed by their owners globally or in the UK but I do know how many women and girls are killed globally each day and how many were killed in the UK between 2009-2018. Those are the numbers you’ve been presented with here. Hopefully it’s not the first time you’ve been made aware of these numbers. The numbers are shocking, depressing, they require action, urgency and a complete rethink and deliberate reshaping of our society and the messaging, conditioning and influences we are all vulnerable to, especially our sons and daughters.

Not to disrespect dogs but surely this is all way worse because it’s happening to women. To girls. To mothers.

Right?

Femicide Census: 10-year report released in 2020 on women killed by men between

2009-2018 in the UK femicidecensus.org

UN Women & the United nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) joint report released November 2024

https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/press/releases/2024/November/one-woman-is-

killed-every-10-minutes-by-their-intimate-partners-or-other-family-members.html

Scottish Crime & Justice Survey 2018/20

UN Department of Public Information, 2008, report

Image 1: Peyton Clough

Image 2: Laura Roberts

Image 3: Jack Plant

My new hobby? Tuning out the manosphere. Guess what? When you ignore them, they 100% disappear, they no longer exist. It’s really magical. Those little men, those damaged, fake-grown boys are so friable that when you turn your gaze from them, they wither.

The manosphere is the cancer caused by the patriarchy. They are a direct result of a rogue system that has resisted its own inevitable demise for too long. The patriarchy is a decomposing carcass and the manosphere is the maggots the last fat flies shat out.

The patriarchy is a 5000-year-old bad idea that took root and ran away with itself but is incompetent, underqualified, unskilled and unworthy. The manosphere is the cornered rat of a patriarchy that senses its own demise. That demise isn’t just coming, it’s here, it’s upon us and it is way overdue. That 5000 years was a shitty blip where the lunatics were running the asylum.

So, shit-for-brains defenders of the patriarchal systems we live in... how’s it going? How has it served you? Look around you. What was achieved? How’s the world doing? How are humans doing? Women, girls, boys, men? How you all feeling? Thriving? Feeling safe? Feeling protected? Feeling empowered and free?

Tune them out. Turn away. Take the power that was only ever an illusion. De-centre the men that have been enjoying this creepy enchantment that was only ever about individual wealth, ownership and control. Give them an energetic middle finger and start creating elsewhere.

Notice that some women react to a story about abuse survival by jumping to the defense of men? Even faced with proof, numbers, statistics that should trigger their sense of sisterhood, they dismiss and DARVO* the shit out of your story on behalf of men.

• ‘Not all men are bad’

• ‘We’ve all got stories like that’

• The ‘I don’t believe you’, ‘You’re exaggerating’, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah…’, eye roll.

• The tight-lips that say, “Oh, you’re one of them”, or “It’s your own fault”, “Slag”, “It happened because you’re stupid”.

While these interactions make me sad, re-traumatise me and infuriate me, I never argue with those women. They are the most profound collateral damage, the biggest tragedy of the patriarchy’s war. They are far gone, they’re Stockholmed to fuck. Ultimately, I suspect, they are abuse victims themselves who have survived by embracing and internalising the misogyny. They have assimilated and somewhere honest within the fake safety of the patriarchal fortress, they shudder with that knowing. They are shielded by this cloak they wear because by donning the characteristics of their ‘protector’ (the sexist society within which they understand they live) that protector will allow them to continue to feed off the scraps they’ve convinced themselves is a feast.

Whatever wave of feminism we’re in (some argue 5th, I suspect we’re yet to emerge from the rubble of the 2nd) the next wave will have to start by rescuing our POWs, those women who are unsuspecting turncoats. The women who duck beneath the parapet, hoping not to be noticed, who feel a swell of knee-jerk contempt when a survivor speaks. They’re tired of the relentless stories, they’re tired of the news being filled with scandal, the serial rapists and killers, the rich and powerful men being taken down by the whistle-blowers. They’re tired for the right reasons but their conditioning twists their perception and adjusts the crosshairs accordingly.

When faced with a woman like this, I feel tired too. It’s like my higher self, my soul, understands the mammoth undertaking it would be to set about recalibrating her system, de-briefing her and removing her comfortable blinkers. My soul understands how terrifying that would be for her, how brave she’d have to be to participate in her own enlightenment and how dangerous that would be. If successful, if I somehow managed to reach her in her dungeon of denial, it would inevitably lead to a tower moment for her - the tower card in the tarot depicts a crumbling of all that is, all that is accepted as truth - and she herself would crumble and be left in rubble from which she’d have to pick herself free and rebuild under the ominous sky of accurate truth, the truth that she is not safe, that she is a woman in a society that hates and disrespects her, in a country (mine is the UK) that is complicit in the oppression, abuse and murder of its women and girls.

So, as my soul knows all of this in the face of her Stockholm-Syndromed, eye-rolling, DARVOed defence of men, her soul was one step ahead, it played a trailer of her forked path. Understandable then that she so vehemently remains in a prison of her own making for there at least she knows she’s getting away with something. She thinks she’s safe, she need not heal, she has nothing to fix, she’s been picked and doesn’t want to be un-picked. These sisters of ours are the ultimate pick-me girls and that is an ongoing torture only the blinkered could abide.

Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I wonder if these women will complete their life cycle, reaching 70 or 80 or 90, whatever age at which they die, having led an unexamined life. Will they ever understand that they propped up their own oppressors, that they were the patriarchy’s rebar? Will they ever understand how little of their life was theirs?

*D.A.R.V.O - Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. A manipulative tactic commonly used by abusers to evade accountability.

Photo: Vincent Nicolas

Every day living with a narcissist is, let’s face it, just like that but Christmas turns up the volume. Why? Because Christmas is the narc’s ultimate trigger. What is Christmas? What have we been conditioned to understand it to be? Happiness, joy, family, togetherness, love, warmth, cheer, celebration, appreciation, gratitude. Regardless of how a narcissist presents themselves to the world, they are emotionless beings with a fractured ego. They lack self-esteem, they’re stuck at whatever emotional age they were when they were damaged as children. They are empty. They are emotionless beings. Everything we are supposed to feel at Christmas is alien and unattainable for the narcissist and it’s thrown in their faces continuously for weeks. They are faced with constant reminders of what they cannot be.

Christmas is one big spiral that brings out the worst in the narcissist and so they up their game. Their typical behaviours escalate and, as a result, they set out to ruin Christmas for everyone else. You feel it coming too. I speak from decades of experience, you can sense it, that shit’s tangible. From the moment you buy the first tin of Roses, you get the tree up and you start to overcompensate in anticipation of the enemy that lurks within your home, there comes a growing sense of unease, not dissimilar to the repeating off-key doorbell of doom in the Christmas Vacation movie.

December becomes a daily battle of stemming his rage, deflecting the lectures on money and why fairy lights need to be on. New rules are suddenly imposed, new things he hates doing now, places he refuses to go and people he refuses to buy for - who, FYI, didn’t get the memo so they still buy for you, leaving you looking like a humbug twat.

“Let’s not do Christmas dinner, maybe a buffet instead, it’s easier for you.” - This allows the narcissist to destroy a central aspect of a traditional Christmas while also making sure you must prepare thirty different dishes rather than turkey and some sides. All under the guise of ‘making it easier for you’.

“Let’s not go round to (insert name). Let’s just make it about us this year, batten down the hatches, get cosy.” - Classic narc abuser behaviour: isolation.

“Don’t go mad with presents. They get too much.” - Fuck that, I’ve fallen for this many times only to set out the presents on Christmas Eve and be told that I didn’t get them enough and, since everyone knows you do all the Christmas shopping, you (not he of the new rules) look like a humbug twat yet again.

“Christmas is overrated. It’s one day.” - Classic piss-on-everyone’s-chips mode that repeats throughout the season.

“Calm down, you’re going way over the top. They’re not kids anymore.” - Translation: “You’re not giving me enough attention. You love the kids more than you love me.”

“Let’s not buy presents for each other. Christmas is about the kids, not us.” -Another classic. Yep, they do this all the time (anniversaries too) because they don’t want to think about you, about buying a present for you, you’re not worth it because they hate you almost as much as they hate themselves.

“I’m vegan.” - The fuck you are, I saw you eating a bacon sandwich last week and you called it “food of the gods”! This is just a ploy to sabotage the day, so you go to extra effort for them and them alone.

“It’s Christmas.” - Sudden Christmas cheer and passion for the event comes when justification is needed upon the opening of yet another bottle, allowing them to drink their sad little souls into oblivion.

Then there’s the rage; the arguments; the hurtful comments; the gifts they insult; passive aggressive advice; the horrible toasts; the manufactured attempts at family fun and love; the drink; the drink; the drink; the naps on the couch so everyone has to be quiet and tiptoe around; the killing of every actual moment of joy and connection; the weaponised incompetence; withdrawal; moodiness; depressingly fake sentimentality; acknowledgement of their carefully devised isolation (where are your family/friends?); the constant reminder to relax and have fun; playing the ‘heart in the right place’ victim when something they do makes someone cry.

But the very worst part? The narcissist needs constant thanks, constant credit for the Christmas they delivered. They check in with the kids to see if they liked their presents, if they’re having a good day. They need praise. They need approval. They take centre stage at the dinner (buffet) table to acknowledge ‘a great Christmas’ and how ‘nothing’s too much for you, you deserve it.” They take happy pictures/videos that they post to whomever it is at work or in their new social circle (their social circles are always new and temporary) they’re trying to work their magic on and benefit from.

What the actual fuck!

So, how do you handle it? What can you do to make Christmas with the narcissist, bearable? Nothing. Get the fuck out. Make this your last Christmas with them. Take it from me, life (especially Christmas) is gloriously stress-free and joyous without them.

Image: Tai’s Captures

My life, my actual 3D reality, is a blank page, an untouched canvas. I’m starting again from my ground zero. I’m in my fifties, I escaped an abusive situation and I’m well on my way to healing and finding myself again. One of the many residual symptoms of long-term trauma is the impact it has/had on your sense of self so my page isn’t just blank... it’s blank.

Is that scary? Maybe. Sometimes. However, as a creative, it’s full of potential. Since my sense of self is fluid in nature at this particular time in my life, I realize I’m free to reinvent myself and my new self can be anything...right? Well, the reality is that we have inbuilt blockages and self-limiting beliefs. Getting past them is no small feat. In fact, it’s a pain in the arse because those limiting beliefs manifest as butterflies, not the tickly, exciting ones, but rather, meaty, hairy-headed moths that slap themselves against my stomach lining, warning me of danger, filling me with fear every time I embark upon a new, brave project that resonates with the new me.

The old definitions of me keep rising up and demanding to be heard. In the past I defined myself as a wife, mother, actress, writer, teacher. Thankfully, I’m no longer a wife. My children are grown so although I worry and protect them as viciously as ever, they don’t actually need me anymore. Acting is in my bones, I started working in British TV at the age of eleven but I stepped away from the toxicity of that industry twenty-four years ago. Yes, I’m still a writer but I feel no desire to be published again, I’m happy writing and I no longer need to prove it to anybody. I’ve been teaching since 2006 and, once I left Canada (where I was a pre-school teacher) I made a solemn vow to step away from that work - it’s hard fucking graft, it’s rough on the back and the joints and the fortnightly cold/flu virus drove me bonkers.

Who am I now? Well, I inspire women to leave abusive relationships. I’m busy building something, developing a scheme that gives those women a safe place to land where they can develop skills - real, marketable skills that will lead to their financial stability. Although this new me has a purposeful goal that I’m loving and motivated by, each time I take a leap on that road, those nasty moths start banging around my gut. I take to the journal, I analyse the shit out of those reactions and I always, without fail, discern their link to the previous definitions of me.

It helps to be mindful of that. I can soldier on and stay on my new path. I choose to turn from those negative pulls although they are persistent. But fuck it, what do I have to lose? I can be whomever I choose to be. I can invent myself, or reinvent myself, just like I invent characters in my writing. The central character of all of my fictional work ends up being a brilliant woman, a strong, funny, intelligent woman. Even on projects where I intend to write a fatally flawed woman, those flaws become delicious layers of a woman who is overarchingly good and admirable. I wonder what would happen if I set about a work of fiction where I am the central character. Maybe that would be a good exercise. It would certainly highlight the holes in my sense of self. I might try that because I’d like to meet that woman, I’m very interested in her and isn’t that exciting in itself, to be interested in yourself again, to have questions and a desire to know more?

Photo: Colin Davis

I miss your feet on the linoleum,

Your chirp, and horses on your forearm.

A bookie pen in your pinny pocket,

A skein o’ weans, ever maukit.

You mastered streets that had menace,

Smooth and softly, head in penance

For no sin other than poor folk had

With a brood of bairns in the Raptap.

Never money but always plenty

Tatties, nanas, biscuits twenty.

Simple pleasures were maybe gained?

You smiled and patted, your patience reigned.

And then one day you were frail and silent

About biting pain and grief so violent.

And a wee woman who some called Murly,

Left the imprint of one more burly.

Photo by Nikoloz Gachechiladze

This idyllic symbol of womanhood and the love they received as a result, wormed itself into my psyche in the form of a promise. Yep, I was a sucker for that shit. Over and over again, I had utter faith and complete trust in potential princes and I was always fully in straight away. I suppose one could argue it’s a sweet trait to have, to retain that positivity regardless of experiential evidence to the contrary. But isn’t that alarmingly close to the definition of insanity?

My romantic insanity took root early in life. Every Disney film was a fresh sprinkling of seeds into my spongy grey matter but once I was five, my tastes had developed to take what I now see as a dark turn. It wasn’t just Disney love that appealed to me anymore. The first film I ever saw in the pictures was Annie and I fell hook-line-and-sinker in love with Daddy Warbucks. However, I didn’t want to be adopted by Warbucks, I wanted to marry him. Admittedly, Albert Finney was a potent hottie but that didn’t justify my very real infatuation with him in that role. I also fell madly in love with King Kong: mean and scary initially but then, faced with Jessica Lange’s beauty, vulnerability and patience, he softened, loved her, protected her, his rage was calmed by her bewitching presence. Then there was Baron von Trapp. Baron von fucking Trapp. That nasty, rude, disrespectful (I refer only to the fictional version, obvs), totalitarian, ego maniacal asswipe just melted my heart one Christmas as I watched his cold, grieving, overwhelmed heart thaw and then ignite with love for this clumsy, energetically addled nun.

I’m catholic and so all sorts of stirrings besides ones of love tickled at me the day I first watched The Sound of Music but, Catholicism aside, that nun, I could relate to. Maria didn’t fit in, she just couldn’t seem to get things right despite her enthusiasm and kindness. She lacked the flowing hair of the princesses of old, she wore plain clothes and she never seemed entirely sure of what her purpose was, what her place in the world was. She ticked all of my boxes, she was very much like me, okay she could play guitar and she had far more patience than me but, unlike Aurora or Cinderella, she struck me as an attainable goal.

It was the men, though, Daddy Warbucks, King Kong and Baron von Trapp that really lit me up, they were the true goal. I felt their love, my scalp tingled watching the shots that captured the moment they really saw her and fell in love. Damn, I didn’t stand a chance and all that early conditioning played out in my life. Those films were my training, my educational seminars. My emotional adolescence was borne of it which resulted in a few deep-rooted fatal flaws driving my romantic interactions:

1. Love was shared i.e. my love/affection/care would be mirrored back to me;

2. I believed in destined love, ‘the one for me’, ‘my other half’, ‘meant to be’, fated etc

3. True love is instantaneous, it’s only real if it’s fast.

4. A mean man = waiting to be charmed.

Take my word for it, you can draw a clean, straight line from every relationship I’ve had to early exposure to the messages in those films. I’m a grandmother now and, despite my daughter going to great lengths to raise her child in a gender-neutral way in terms of stimuli, that little beauty is a sucker for a princess and, like young me, she just lights up when a prince rides in - we are yet to determine which excites her more, the horse or the man. She’s started pairing her princess figures with a scratchy jockey (adding to the horse vs man debate) that came with the stables she got for her birthday. She takes her princess of choice, clasps her tight against scratchy jockey and dances around with them in an astonishingly good waltz that belies her age.

This is something of a quandary for me. There’s no way I’m stopping that little bean from doing the things that spark her joy but I’m mindful of the seeds being sprinkled in her unstained brain. My daughter is a teacher so, unlike me, the child will benefit from a parent that thinks carefully about her emotional growth, about the subliminal messaging in the media she is exposed to. My granddaughter is certainly being raised in a furiously feminist household and I hope that the conversations and teachings she will absorb as a result will counteract the vomitous slop fed to girls through these portrayals of mean/superior/wealthy men coming down from on high long enough to encounter a woman and give her permission to love him.

These days I can’t abide a romance, neither fictional nor real life. I’m busy licking some wounds. I’m now a woman who ripples with discomfort at the mere mention of a future love. One aunt recently said to me, “Oh well, you’re not that old, you’ve still got your figure.” While she didn’t finish the thought (it runs in the family) I took it to mean that I was still a viable option in terms of dating despite the fact that I’m not ‘that’ old. I responded with my practiced: “Fuck that. I. Am. Done,” but sometimes even I, as defensive and bruised as I am, catch myself wondering if, out there somewhere, waiting for me, there’s my... na.... fuck that, I am most definitely done.

photo: Kitera Dent

to enter and master, that mancer fey.

The scent of the broken, a chemical brew:

fight;

flight;

and freeze.

A pheromone stew

wafting its undulating, serpentine draft, enticing and daring, light through a shaft

transporting that narcissist into my arms with the offer of healing by his moreish alms.

I the gamey goal, the trad-wife-whore to be

and I stood no chance once he wanted me. Slick was the trapper that hunted me.

Ideals performed

in his listening eye,

attention adorned,

sympathy high.

Who could resist that, given the past,

the damage,

the violence,

the vile trespass?

And so, I was taken by this glorious hero who promised me magic and comfort for zero.

I hid in his arms finally safe from the glare,

a champion companion I’d managed to snare.

I was proud of my prize, I’d known he was coming, sensed that sunrise, that promise so bright

and I’d managed fine spirit with decades of spite

on the grasp of a dream that just had to be because surely my God wasn’t testing me.

And, oh, was I taken?

Played like His lute, my sinews transmuting, my sense made mute

and I did half the work to conjure perfection in a delicate mind lacking direction.

Then he was in

with his couch and his helmets,

his boots

and the curtains that matched mummy’s pelmets.

The home that I’d worked for and built on my own,

my child, little Anso - whom he said he’d adore -

were stretched and altered, adjusted to fit and,

though I was eager,

it didn’t quite hit.

The right spot it missed.

Within three months, intensity throttled

my life

felt much smaller.

Yet still freedom dangled on the thinnest of threads with the most fragile of holds.

Seeds had been planted in uterine folds

- badly placed as it happens, ‘high-risk’ was the phrase -

and a panic for Jambear became my new daze

and cost me my work and severed all ties

... or was that his doing?

I could only surmise

that a tempest was brewing and it threatened demise.

I was an island once bright, now shadowed by shame,

too far down the road, too dirty a name

to bounce back with pride.

So, I swallowed and suffered, hidden from eye,

from a world that once knew me within which I’d died.

He was the boss and I was his pet. No options remained but to dote with regret.

No courage persisted, afraid of the chatter:

(the stupid slut who fell for the patter)

and the worst thing of all is I’d tumbled before,

a couple of times,

maybe once more

for that book blurb by villains I thought so sincere yet later I’d realize, to him, nowhere near.

For an evil most foul lurked deep within and lodged in a home now tarnished with sin,

judgement,

order and rules,

fear and tensions

and tempers most cruel.

Abruption most horrid entered one day

a pain in my shoulder that would not go away

and spread its heat tight over

belly

bloated by

blood

with no right to leak,

no right to flood.

Rushed was the panic as it snatched out my air and claret burst forth.

Jambear’s lifeline started to fail, my baby was dying, growing pale.

How I couldn’t stop thinking then of that monster of mine,

that demon,

that swine

stealing my life

and taking no care

of my babies two who needed their mother more than most do.

As my throat was strangled, anesthesia given,

I looked out at the hero who’d taken my life and was keeping it hostage, killing his wife:

If I were to wake up, what would I do?

I’d scoop up my babies and we’d be through

10...

9...

I didn’t see 2.

Photo by Zoriana Stakhniv on Unsplash

From then on perimenopause became the go-to source of blame for everything from degenerative disk disease to major depressive disorder, both of which I’d suffered from and been diagnosed with prior to the doctor’s ‘perimenopause’ diagnosis. I should add, this latest diagnosis wasn’t given as a result of tests of any sort, no blood was taken, no questions asked, it was just assumed, I suppose, given my age and the audacity I demonstrated by bothering the doctor at all.

The Greek prefix ‘peri’ means around or surrounding. The doctor’s suggested diagnosis, therefore, was that I was around menopause which, as I came to realise, translated to: “this is where I tap out, you’re on your own.” Any visit to the doctor from then on was a reminder to me that investigation, information, intelligent discussion or care had become a thing of the past. Everything was menopause and it felt like being handed a custodial sentence.

Here I am now, a 51-year-old woman and ovulation has stopped (no more tampons for me, yay). There was one false summit, a mirage of sorts, when my periods stopped for six months a couple of years ago before resuming in anger just when I’d started to confidently wear white jeans. However, a few months later and I was back on the home stretch with menopause - actual, not peri or pre or transitory - within reach again. You see, I’m result oriented, I’m a solutions gal. Yep, spending 22 years in an abusive relationship will do that to you, so I saw perimenopause as something in the way of the inevitable destination, menopause was the goal, being done was the finish line.

I’d already decided I’d rawdog menopause. I’m highly sensitive to medications so my natural balance (brain chemicals) has to be maintained in other ways, I’ve become something of an expert on neuroplasticity. Pumping myself with a regimen of hormones like many of my perimenopausal friends were, wasn’t an option for me despite advice to the contrary from doctors who seemed unable to read my medical history once I reached a certain age. No hormones for me, I was going to do it like generations of women in my family before me, I was going to roll my sleeves up and soldier on.

What I didn’t anticipate was that my life would take a dramatic turn rendering concerns about things like menopause, irrelevant. Two years ago, my kids and I said enough was enough and called it a day on walking on eggshells and normalising outrageously violent behaviour in our home and we sent The Tumour packing (name it to tame it, right). What lay ahead was a two-year nightmare that journeyed from stalking and threats through to the stress of a hostile divorce. Two years of sleepless nights, panic, anxiety, fear, trembling, sweating, nervousness, cotton wool brain, sickness, a dramatic fainting episode and body aches and pains...etc. I barely noticed that I’d gone through menopause because, frankly, I didn’t have time to look. All of the natural and reasonable symptoms of a high-stress separation and divorce happened to be identical to the symptoms of menopause (so please shower any woman you know going through it with limitless love and compassion). The bright side is, once I was done with the divorce, I was also done with menopause and I’ll never know which one was responsible for the myriad symptoms.

Although I certainly wouldn’t recommend a life-destroying event just as you’re heading into the final battle of menopause, I’m retrospectively glad the two transitions happened concurrently. I’m happily sitting here now, having washed my hands of both blights.

For all I know, I didn’t have menopause symptoms. I’ve read about Konenki, the Japanese word for menopause which translates to ‘season of renewal’ and how many women around the world such as Mayan women in Guatemala and the Kaliai women of Papua New Guinea don’t experience the same traditional (negative) symptoms of menopause that we in the west do. It’s argued that this is largely due to diet and lifestyle - all natural, plant and herb-based foods and soy that is rich in isoflavones which mimic the action of estrogen in our system.

But there’s also another way in which those cultures and societies differ to ours: menopause, a woman ageing, is something to be respected there more than in the west where we value youth. Women in those societies look forward to the freedom and status that comes with age so menopause is not viewed as a decline or that just because a woman is no longer youthful or fertile, she has lost something but rather she has entered her peak season where she is wise, experienced and free.

I don’t know whether it was my attitude (I relished being menopausal, it was a destination for me), my diet and lifestyle (I rarely drink, don’t smoke and eat a balanced, healthy diet), or pure distraction that led me not to notice menopause as I rawdogged it. Whatever it was, whatever is to blame/thank for me not noticing it happening, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash

In the darkest depths of my abusive marriage when everything in my life was monitored and controlled - even how and when I slept - I discovered something magical... my imagination.

I had to sleep facing the door so that my body was available for spooning on demand, I wasn’t allowed to get up in the night even if I couldn’t sleep. If I dared to, I’d receive a text from upstairs before I’d even filled a glass with water: “where you? what doing?” It would spark the dreaded brain chemicals, the stress chemicals, the panic, the guilt and, if I answered, I’d receive another text: “come back to bed”.

I’d return like the well-behaved machine I’d become. I’d answer the obligatory questions and explain my behaviour, my insane choice to get out of bed. Then I’d lie there, in the dark, failing to settle those chemicals and failing, therefore, to sleep. My body was trapped because it had long since become nothing more than an object, an accessory and on nights like those, a body pillow. Robbed of the luxury of simply drifting off, I’d drift off in a different way.

Over the years I built five different houses in my mind. You should know, I’m a self-taught handy woman (being a carpenter/plumber/general contractor was the only solution since hiring outside trades was a waste of money for someone who also happened see household labour as beneath him) so I would design the houses and then revisit them over the years, perfecting finishes and features, adding rooms and luxury touches. I lived happy lives in those houses. My adult children loved those houses and would visit with their children - for whom I’d built incredible playrooms filled with toys and equipment - and each bedroom was tailored to the needs of my children and their future partners. In those houses, I had so many grandchildren that I had to add a Pinterest worthy bunkroom for them.

Every detail was considered and implemented with skill and grace. Except for one thing. Each time I’d visualise living in any of them, I’d encounter a barrier. No matter how hard I tried, I could not transplant my marriage into them. Nope, the bathrooms were mine, the couches were mine, the bed was mine. In the safety of my private mind, the truthful, authentic me rejected even the slightest hint of a partner. In those houses I was single. In those houses I was free. In those houses I could get up in the night for a drink of water.

My imagination wasn’t limited to building houses. I also spent sleepless nights plotting my novels and screenplays. Guess what? Everything I was inspired to write featured a female central character who was separating or divorcing or who had been single by choice for a long time. It didn’t take a genius to recognise a pattern, maybe a message from my subconscious mind. However, when you are in an abusive situation, the wrong part of your brain is running the show (I could get scientific, I’ve certainly done the research but just take my word for it) and if you’re in panic mode - fight, flight, freeze - for too long, for months, years, decades, you’re pretty much fucked in terms of cognitive function. You’re being driven purely by survival instincts and so the luxury of analysing things like dreams and fantasies and recognising the recurring themes therein is impossible.

I’m out now, two plus years out and I’m finally safe. The higher functioning part of my brain is beginning to reignite and every now and then it takes the wheel and I can see it all clearly. I can diagnose and analyse again. I still build imaginary houses but mostly because I had to give away all of my tools when I moved 5000 miles to get away so I’m in carpentry withdrawal. Nowadays I build houses that I want in my future because my future is mine. I don’t know what’s ahead but these days it’s less fantasy, more planning. There’s no partner because the thought of that scares the shit out of me (I’m in therapy so fingers crossed... or not) either way, I’m joyously single and happy to remain so. And that whole grandchild thing started. One down, a bunkroom of them to go!

When I was trapped and scared and existing on nerve fumes alone, imagination was my only escape. It was a lifesaver for me, it was hope, it was freedom. It was safe and private and necessary because it maintained my sanity and allowed the true me to thrive somewhere ethereal. Nowadays it’s relegated to its proper place in my life. Now it’s simply something I tap into for work or when I’m playing with that little cherub I mentioned earlier.

Crucially, I can’t help but think that my caged imagination played a big role in my journey to freedom, to safety. I credit it with leaving some pretty obvious breadcrumbs to follow in the dark days of a hostile divorce and so I’d highly recommend it. I advise anyone finding themselves drifting off into a detailed, imaginary life in which they exist as a more authentic, happier version of themselves to take a look, no matter how uncomfortable or dangerous that may feel. Analyse the fuck out of your imagination’s machinations and trust the clues planted in your dormant prefrontal cortex while your cavewoman amygdala was running shit - oops, I got a bit scientific after all, must be my PFC taking the wheel, finally.

Photo by Jordan Bauer on Unsplash

Going into the entertainment industry was a decision my 11-year-old self made and though I love her (yes, I’ve done my inner-child work) she knew fuck all about that business, about fame, about objectification and sexuality and she had no idea about the life-altering ramifications of vaulting from an impoverished childhood to new wealth.

In addition to all that, it turned out that the grown version of me wasn’t half as confident as that kid. The grown version of me was shy, intensely private and positively allergic to being controlled. As a child, my way of dealing with conflict was to fight - literal, physical fighting, punches, kicks, I fought feral! Once I found myself in the public eye and conflict came in the form of producers treating me like shit and the press printing kiss-and-tell stories by any twat I made the mistake of having sex with, I was woefully underequipped to deal with it, it was a whole new playing field.

Now, I was strong, I withstood a lot, I weathered humiliation and betrayal and insults and sexual assaults. I’m confident that anyone I’ve worked with, whether they liked me or not, would agree that I always stood my ground and yes, that cost me my career but it wasn’t ever the right career for me anyway. I loved acting, I loved playing a character but I just wasn’t prepared to dilute myself, to compromise my morals and scruples and make myself small for it. Fuck that.

Brave words, huh? Well, I walked straight into a 22-year toxic, abusive situation that finished the work the entertainment industry had tried and failed to complete so I soon got knocked off my high horse. Perhaps it was my destiny, maybe there was no getting away from it, maybe that suppression and control had to find me at some point regardless of my resistance to it.

Or maybe this is just what the world tries to do to all women. When I think about those characters I played, they were so similar - and before you think it, no, not because my abilities as an actress are limited - these characters were a type. I suspect they are a male fantasy: the working-class, poor, uneducated, ‘slutty’ ‘bitch’ that has a penchant for old, rich men who manipulate her naiveté and are entertained by her crass communication style. Both of the male characters that I shared storylines with in these roles (Frank Tate in Emmerdale and Mike Baldwin in Coronation Street) had recently left age-appropriate partners who were strong, intelligent and didn’t fall for their bullshit.

I’m a writer and although I don’t write for soaps, I know that writers are deliberate and meticulous, I know that every word has been considered and part of a clear character study and overall arc. The key difference between writers like me and writers for a soap is that they are bound and restricted by the requirements of the studios, the producers, the powers that determine what will appeal to the audience. Therefore, I have no idea how much of what appeared in the script for my characters was the choice of the writers themselves. Regardless of who designed Tina and Linda, they both seemed to tick some sort of box and I worry that it was all designed to turn on older men, married men, misogynistic men, men that want to control and manipulate their young plaything, an escape from the ‘nagging’, ‘frigid’ wife of their reality, someone that reignites that long-lost spark of horniness and power they feel has disappeared from their life.

During my time playing those characters, I never once met a woman who admired Tina or Linda but I did meet plenty of men who loved them. I would receive all sorts of creepy letters from men (many from prisoners) who walked a fine line between loving the characters and wanting to kill them. Some of these men even crossed the terrifying line of believing I was those characters and it wasn’t unusual for me to get letters that threatened my life in detail (one ‘fan’ described my house and how he was going to hammer my brains out on my doorstep because I have ‘a cunt like a bucket’).

And the impact on my real-life personal relationships was undeniable. My history with men is nothing short of atrocious, a real horror story. I mean, how the fuck would it ever have been anything but that given my background and the dynamics I observed as a child (none of it positive) and the fact that I was navigating a strange world in which I did not belong where everyone spoke a different language. It was humiliation after humiliation existing in a world of privilege because I had such a limited frame of reference, I was poor as fuck with no support network, hell, I only discovered avocados when I was 18 on the set of Chasing The Deer and once had to beg a producer at SkyTV to pay me on a pay-as-you-go basis during a shoot otherwise I’d have to sleep rough.

Imagine the ego massage that it was for men attracted to this barely post-puberty, naive actress with enough fame to be a titillating talking point with their middle-class friends, making them interesting for the first time in their vapid lives. So, having being toyed with and then discarded by the odd toff, I would retreat to my world and then I’d get myself into a whole lot of bother by going out with ‘regular’ men who were so skint that by the time the inevitable split happened, they’d be approached by tabloids offering them the kind of money they’d otherwise only have access to through some criminal pursuit. Why take a sawed-off into a post office when you can just fuck Jackie from Yardley Wood?

Add to that the fake clues they’ve been fed about me through my work or articles in magazines and newspapers and there I was, seemingly on top of the world, living a life my school friends were envious of and yet I was vulnerable and completely out of my depth. I didn’t stand a chance and so, by the time I was 21 my mental health was in the toilet, I had already attempted suicide once (not the last time - more later).

I woke up in hospital and waited for my parents to drive to Leeds because I had to be released into their care. Why? Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? I wasn’t safe, I wasn’t capable of making good decisions, I’d suffered a significant breakdown and I needed to recover in a place of safety. My parents drove me home to Birmingham and then explained how it was bad timing because they’d just arranged for me to be the celebrity at the re-opening of a local pub and they didn’t want to let the new owner down because he was this notorious gangster, the sort of person you don’t want to disappoint.

That person was Chrissy Stone, a career criminal and archetypal conman who fathered my first child (the fabulous Alexandra Pirie!). The press had a field day, stories were almost sold and damage limitation stories had to be put out in the press to prevent them from making it to print. It was a terrifying time. I was thrilled to be pregnant but not thrilled by the circumstances. My bosses (who knew about the recent suicide attempt) quickly wrote me out of the show I’d been in for years. Of course, they promised me that the role would be open for me if I ever wanted to return and, less than a year later, when I was skint, living with my parents and unable to claim benefits because I refused to name the father of my child (remember, he was the sort of person you really don’t want to piss off) I did call that producer to arrange the return I’d been promised and was swiftly fobbed off. I’m no lawyer but I’m pretty sure a breach of something was committed there but hey-ho, it’s all in the past. Add insult to injury, a short time later, when Coronation Street were doing their due diligence, a director in the know told me that that same boss warned them that I was trouble with a capital T. He was almost right, I was in trouble with a capital T.

My little girl was a year old, I was a single mother with no education and as poor as I’d ever been when I auditioned for the role of Linda and, despite efforts to derail me further, I got the job. I already knew (in my trusty, often-ignored gut) that it was a mistake. It was an industry I despised filled with predators and pitfalls but I had little choice, I had to do it, I had to provide for my child. I worked hard for years and finally saved enough money to buy a house. The nasty fan mail from men increased, the kiss-and-tells happened every time I dared to date anyone. I had one co-star advise me: “only fuck someone who has more to lose than you if the story gets out”. Holy shit, what would that limit me to? Married men/women, bosses and actors - no thank you!

Then a story hit the front pages: “Corrie’s Linda bags record-breaking deal”. I’d secured a new 3-year contract and it was record-breaking (for Corrie). You know what happens when a headline like that hits? You become simultaneously more popular with potential partners and hated by co-workers. It was a slippery slide from then on, wow, that green room changed for me. The established dynamics changed from the bottom to the top. It was brutal. One particular actress in the show took it upon herself to blatantly release stories about me until I finally sought legal action to stop her which made me all the more unpopular. A real low point for me was entering 2001. I felt like shit, my mental health was the worst it had been since those dark days of Emmerdale and I was slipping, my mind kept tempting me with the ultimate escape and each day brought new justifications for it.

But I needn’t have worried, love was just around the corner. True love. The sort of love that blows your mind, the sort of love that everyone dreams of. That sweep-you-off-your-feet, we are so similar, we’re soul-mates type of love. Yep. I fell for it. I bought into the crap, I didn’t just ignore red flags, I embraced them and they became the banners of our love. Three months in, I was married and pregnant (with my adorable son, Jamie Pirie!). Now, my placenta attached in the wrong place, it was a high-risk pregnancy and it was unlikely to ever reach full term. My doctor advised me of the steps I should take to ensure that I get as far into the pregnancy as possible before the inevitable early labour (or worse) happened. Those steps included reducing my stress levels and remaining off my feet as much as possible. Hahahahahah!!! Like either of those things were possible. Five months into my pregnancy the doctor put it another way: “It’s work or your baby.” This wasn’t just a suggestion, this was as serious as I’ve seen a doctor be. He provided me with a sick note and that was that. I couldn’t work.

Now, I haven’t worked in the industry for 24 years so hopefully it’s a little different now but back then, the pressure was on. I was called and called and called and had to endure mounting pressure as storylines ‘had to be wrapped up’, ‘the schedule had to be maintained’ etc. I went to my doctor and he refused to sign me fit for work, he reiterated his warnings. My bosses decided to ignore this, they persuaded me to return to wrap up a storyline, they promised that my scenes would be completed early in the days and that I could then go home to rest. On the first day of my return to set, I was worked like nothing had ever happened. Nothing they had promised materialized and it was very clear that there was no respect for me or the health of my unborn son in that workplace. I made a phone call (great story about that particular call that I’ll save for another day) and then I phoned my new husband to come and pick me up. And I never returned.

Oh, did that stir up some shit. If I thought things were hostile before, I had no idea what was ahead. I received a nasty call from one colleague who told me to “get back to fucking work, do your fucking job then fuck off and have your baby”. People in the cast who had been friends dropped me like a tonne of soggy shit. Obviously, I was threatened with being sued for breach of contract but that never came to anything once I reminded them that I’d been called back to set despite them having a current sick note signed by my doctor regarding my pregnancy. I started having contractions soon after and I was admitted to hospital for the remainder of my pregnancy where I was kept in bed and pumped full of meds to prevent labour and steroids to develop my son’s lungs. It was a race against the clock and my son was born six weeks early following a brutal and near-fatal abruption. A few weeks later, I was invited to return to work to wrap-up the Linda:Mike storyline. Via my agent at the time, they offered me the world - real name-your-price stuff. I said no. My agent warned me in a very matter-of-fact way that if I didn’t agree, I’d never work in the industry again. Career over. But the real nightmare was only just beginning because now I was isolated, (my family were no more - another blog, another time), I had no options or career prospects and by then, true love’s mask had already slipped. One ginormous tax bill later, I was poor again. Guess what’s worse than being famous? Being poor and famous.

How the fuck I got through all of that and what was to follow, I’ll never know. But here I am. I’m finally free and happy and independent. I’m up to something huge that will help women who are in their version of the shit I’ve experienced. I’m on it, I’m determined and, thankfully, I’ve evolved. I don’t let myself be objectified anymore. I don’t tolerate anyone trying to make me small. I’m back to that fighting, warrior youngster I was before shit got messy in a different way. I fucking dare anyone to take me on now. They wouldn’t stand a chance.

Interestingly, it was going through the hell of abuse after my original hell of the entertainment industry that triggered that evolution, that forced me to get to the bones of it all. Now, it’s all so clear and obvious, the ripples, the ramifications, the impact of being told what I am, who I am, what my place is and what I’m allowed to say or do. I had been shrunk and bracketed, objectified and used until there was no Jackie in there anymore. Well, I found her again. She was in there the whole time, just waiting, percolating and gathering strength, licking her wounds. That 11-year-old’s dreams may have been ruined but the 51-year-old version of her fights feral again.

Subscribe now