It only took me 37 years, but I have spoken out!
My experience of being in care, multiple times between 1988 and 1994, is something I had never spoken of publicly. I had been a silent member of Who Cares? Scotland for a few years. When I got an email asking for care-experienced speakers to speak at this year’s Love Rally, something inside me went “YES!” It was time to tell my story.
My care-experienced story could fill a book. I had five minutes. So what should I leave out? There were important details of what, where, when, how and why which I didn’t think my story could be complete without. I was going to have to do without most of them. As I replayed events I hadn’t thought of in years, I realised that those details were important to me; not necessarily to anyone hearing my story for the first time. I could make the point I wanted to make without them.
But what was the point I wanted to make? The theme was “Belonging”, which fit my story very well. As a child, I belonged to a loving family. Humour and playfulness created a great sense of belonging. I was taken away from that, more than once, to places where I did not belong. Including a boarding school in England!
The day came. I felt as ready as I was going to get. As a storyteller, I felt better equipped to deliver my talk orally than read it out. I always get very flustered when I read something aloud in front of a crowd.
I was, however, extremely nervous. I forgot bits of what I had meant to say. I had to double back on my story to pick up important points I had missed.
I spoke lovingly of my dad, who became a single parent and found this hard to cope with. He died in 2020, and I was conscious of the need to approach his part of the story sensitively. Being elsewhere, he would have no chance to contradict me. He was a good man and a good dad, who was treated very badly by the system that ought to have supported him. I was taken away from him quite unnecessarily, and I will never stop being angry about that.
I spoke of the difference between fitting in and belonging. Fitting in is the way we are pressured to change ourselves to become “acceptable”, but belonging is something we all deserve and something we can offer each other – acceptance.
I spoke of my resistance to fitting in, of my self-diagnosed neurospices, and of a love of Star Trek which, in the darkest times of my youth, got me through. At that point, I got a number of spontaneous Vulcan salutes from the crowd, which put me at ease!
I felt held in a little bubble of acceptance and good will, and I met with people who had similar experiences. That afternoon, I definitely belonged!
