“I was born near Wellington in New Zealand. I have an older sister and brother and I had a twin brother. We were just a conservative, ordinary family apart from the fact that I don’t think my parents liked each other very much and my father had a strong personality. He was strict and I was afraid of him.
He didn’t particularly like my twin brother Angus. It’s difficult when you’re a twin, very difficult because I wasn’t big enough or strong enough to protect him. I carried a lot of shame and guilt about that for years because I couldn’t protect him from my fathers beatings. My brother would wet the bed and every time he did my father used to beat him so he continued to wet the bed and my father continued to beat him. For an intelligent person it’s not actually a clever way to deal with it. He used to run to my mother screaming and be dragged out again. It was fraught, so difficult. In NZ during those years all that stuff was hidden as well. Whatever went on behind closed doors didn’t come out. Neighbours wouldn’t get involved if they heard shouting or crying and we would all go out acting like nothing was happening. It was awful.
The bullying seemed to follow my twin around. In those days you got the strap at school and because of the relentless bullying at home it followed him. He had no self-esteem. He was bullied by kids, teachers, other people and if I intervened it wasn’t good for him. He was humiliated because they would say, Oh your sister……….!
I think it has affected me all my life. In fact I’ve learnt something about myself. You see things as you get older, you see back down through the years because you are a safe distance from it. I think what happened to me is from a very early age I became confused because the person who was supposed to protect me didn’t. What I learnt from that at 2 years old was that I didn’t matter. If I had mattered I would have been protected. That feeling of not mattering was ingrained early and I can see it’s had an impact all my life.
I realise I have this habit, when I wake up I do a quick mental inventory to see if I have made a mistake because if I have I will get into trouble. I even did it this morning. I learn early if you make a mistake you will get caught. When you are raised with violence you have a very good violence protector and it’s a habit, even still. I have high trigger for violence, even someones tone or a raised eyebrow I’m on red alert. I’m what’s called, hyper vigilant. I was raised with violence and a lot of humiliation as well so I’m very sensitive to that.
My older brother is brilliant. He came top of all New Zealand in the equivalent of the HSC. He went straight into 2nd year of Uni, plucked out of that and straight to MYT, got his PHD and a full scholarship. He is the worlds leading Geothermal Engineer so he’s the golden boy. Another thing that happened in my family is, its kind of like you live with the crown prince and nobody can live up to that so once again you didn’t matter. He’s nice but he was a safe distance from all of that.
My father used to say to me and my twin brother…’You were a mistake and you were twins..I love my children but I love your brother less!’ in a big loud voice. What I now see is, what an unhappy man and what an unhappy marriage.
Sometimes in some families the second child takes an invisible place in the family. My older brother was the crown prince, my sister was navigating the shoals of the reefs of family dynamics as unobtrusively as she could, my twin was getting into trouble and I was dancing around that. It was tricky.
My father finally left the marriage which was again huge trauma because in those days there was public shame and also there was no financial support for women. My mother who had been a stay at home mother for 25 years was pretty much on the bones of her bum. She was outraged about that. Sometimes I would wake in the night and hear my mother crying. I would hop into her bed and rock her back to sleep, get up in the morning, make breakfast and lunches for me and my brother. I would get us dressed and go to school. Someone had to do it to keep us together.
……..then there was a car accident. My twin brother was driving my mother to see a play at the University called A Winters Tale. They had a car crash on the way and she died.”
He didn’t particularly like my twin brother Angus. It’s difficult when you’re a twin, very difficult because I wasn’t big enough or strong enough to protect him. I carried a lot of shame and guilt about that for years because I couldn’t protect him from my fathers beatings. My brother would wet the bed and every time he did my father used to beat him so he continued to wet the bed and my father continued to beat him. For an intelligent person it’s not actually a clever way to deal with it. He used to run to my mother screaming and be dragged out again. It was fraught, so difficult. In NZ during those years all that stuff was hidden as well. Whatever went on behind closed doors didn’t come out. Neighbours wouldn’t get involved if they heard shouting or crying and we would all go out acting like nothing was happening. It was awful.
The bullying seemed to follow my twin around. In those days you got the strap at school and because of the relentless bullying at home it followed him. He had no self-esteem. He was bullied by kids, teachers, other people and if I intervened it wasn’t good for him. He was humiliated because they would say, Oh your sister……….!
I think it has affected me all my life. In fact I’ve learnt something about myself. You see things as you get older, you see back down through the years because you are a safe distance from it. I think what happened to me is from a very early age I became confused because the person who was supposed to protect me didn’t. What I learnt from that at 2 years old was that I didn’t matter. If I had mattered I would have been protected. That feeling of not mattering was ingrained early and I can see it’s had an impact all my life.
I realise I have this habit, when I wake up I do a quick mental inventory to see if I have made a mistake because if I have I will get into trouble. I even did it this morning. I learn early if you make a mistake you will get caught. When you are raised with violence you have a very good violence protector and it’s a habit, even still. I have high trigger for violence, even someones tone or a raised eyebrow I’m on red alert. I’m what’s called, hyper vigilant. I was raised with violence and a lot of humiliation as well so I’m very sensitive to that.
My older brother is brilliant. He came top of all New Zealand in the equivalent of the HSC. He went straight into 2nd year of Uni, plucked out of that and straight to MYT, got his PHD and a full scholarship. He is the worlds leading Geothermal Engineer so he’s the golden boy. Another thing that happened in my family is, its kind of like you live with the crown prince and nobody can live up to that so once again you didn’t matter. He’s nice but he was a safe distance from all of that.
My father used to say to me and my twin brother…’You were a mistake and you were twins..I love my children but I love your brother less!’ in a big loud voice. What I now see is, what an unhappy man and what an unhappy marriage.
Sometimes in some families the second child takes an invisible place in the family. My older brother was the crown prince, my sister was navigating the shoals of the reefs of family dynamics as unobtrusively as she could, my twin was getting into trouble and I was dancing around that. It was tricky.
My father finally left the marriage which was again huge trauma because in those days there was public shame and also there was no financial support for women. My mother who had been a stay at home mother for 25 years was pretty much on the bones of her bum. She was outraged about that. Sometimes I would wake in the night and hear my mother crying. I would hop into her bed and rock her back to sleep, get up in the morning, make breakfast and lunches for me and my brother. I would get us dressed and go to school. Someone had to do it to keep us together.
……..then there was a car accident. My twin brother was driving my mother to see a play at the University called A Winters Tale. They had a car crash on the way and she died.”