CHILDHOOD ABUSE & TRAUMA

Rewriting Mothers’ Day

by Louise Allan | May 15, 2015 | CHILDHOOD ABUSE & TRAUMA, FAMILY AND PARENTING, MEMOIR

I wrote and published Monday’s Mothers’ Day post in record time—it was done and dusted in under thirty minutes. I wrote the thoughts as they came and published it with little editing. I knew it was raw, but I knew if I thought about it too long, I...

(Un)Happy Mothers’ Day

by Louise Allan | May 11, 2015 | CHILDHOOD ABUSE & TRAUMA, FAMILY AND PARENTING, MEMOIR, WRITING

What do you do when you dread ‘Mothers’ Day’ coming around each year? When those words cause your insides to shrivel because all they do is remind you of the Mothers’ Days of your childhood, when you hid in your bedroom, while your mother stood...

Why I Chose to Be Motherless—Part 6

by Louise Allan | Sep 15, 2014 | CHILDHOOD ABUSE & TRAUMA, MEMOIR, WRITING

This is the final instalment in this series. The first post, which is about my childhood, can be found here. You can click the links at the end of each post to follow the series to here. It seems that September is my month for writing about the...

Why I Chose to be Motherless – Part 5

by Louise Allan | Sep 8, 2014 | CHILDHOOD ABUSE & TRAUMA, MEMOIR, WRITING

If you’ve landed here, you might want to read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 first. In Western Australia My mother packed up their house in Tasmania, and in February 2011, my husband flew over and brought both of my parents back with...

Why I Chose to be Motherless – Part 4

by Louise Allan | Sep 8, 2014 | CHILDHOOD ABUSE & TRAUMA, MEMOIR, WRITING

Here’s the rest of the story. Because it’s long, I’ve split it into two parts, both of which I’ll post today. I apologise, once again, for the length of these posts, but I’m nearly there, nearly through telling this story. If...

Why I Chose to be Motherless – Part 3

by Louise Allan | Sep 1, 2014 | CHILDHOOD ABUSE & TRAUMA, MEMOIR, WRITING

This is the third post in this series. (Click here for Part 1 or Part 2.) Thank You Thank you, once again, to everyone who has written to me—your words made me cry, but in a good way. Writing down my story has felt like letting the...

Why I Chose to be Motherless – Part 1

by Louise Allan | Aug 20, 2014 | CHILDHOOD ABUSE & TRAUMA, FAVOURITE, MEMOIR, WRITING

I recently read an essay, Motherless By Choice by Katie Naum, and felt awed by its honesty, its sincerity and its wisdom. It struck a chord with me and spurred me to tell my own story. As always happens when I write stories from my childhood,...

Letting Go

by Louise Allan | Feb 12, 2014 | CHILDHOOD ABUSE & TRAUMA, FAMILY AND PARENTING, MEMOIR, WRITING

Our daughter is leaving home in just over a week. She’s moving interstate to go to university. There’s a good uni ten minutes down the road, but she wants to experience a different city, live in a different part of Australia, and who knows where she’ll go...

Christmas Memories

by Louise Allan | Dec 26, 2013 | CHILDHOOD ABUSE & TRAUMA, MEMOIR, WRITING

So, Christmas is over and the night has now claimed Boxing Day, too. Ah, Boxing Day, my favourite day of the year. I feel as if I can now exhale: the rush and stress of Christmas is behind me and the holidays can truly begin. I love the day so much, I could...

On Smacking Kids

by Louise Allan | Jul 28, 2013 | CHILDHOOD ABUSE & TRAUMA, FAMILY AND PARENTING, FAVOURITE, MEMOIR, WRITING

This post is about something personal and very important to me: the physical punishment of children. On Friday, the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) issued a Media Release with their Position Statement and brochure on the use of Physical Punishment...

Family Secrets

by Louise Allan | Apr 28, 2013 | CHILDHOOD ABUSE & TRAUMA, MEMOIR

Between August and October 2010, I had a couple of long telephone conversations with my grandmother in Tasmania. She was 88-years-old at the time and I wanted to learn as much about her life as I could before she inevitably left us. And I did … My grandmother,...

A Letter To My Daughter’s Teacher

by Louise Allan | Apr 11, 2013 | CHILDHOOD ABUSE & TRAUMA, FAMILY AND PARENTING

Dear Miss, You see me and run your fingers through your hair, trying to look nonchalant. I can see that you’re uncomfortable, possibly intimidated: I’m a good 20 years older than you, and my body is rigid, my mouth set. You know that I’ve complained about you and that...