Reading For Pleasure : A Child Inside - Sharon Shaw #BlogTour #Extract

Today on my blog, I am the last stop for A Child Inside by Sharon Shaw and have an excerpt post for you today.

Blurb / Information about A Child Inside

A Child Inside: understanding, healing and freedom following childhood abuse and trauma

Sharon Shaw is a respected psychotherapist specialising in cases of childhood sexual, emotional and mental abuse. Few of Shaw’s clients would know that her brilliance as a therapist comes from profound personal experience. Her early life has inspired and informed her therapeutic techniques, now shared in this remarkable book, A Child Inside: understanding, healing and freedom following childhood abuse and trauma. Now an adult woman with the language and training to explain and analyse her experiences of abuse, Shaw revisits herself as that damaged child, with the support of her personal counsellor, her mother and other important safe connections. She reveals a frightened child, lost in a world that was not safe for her, trapped in a body and with a developing brain that wasn’t yet mature enough to understand and articulate the horrors she was experiencing, thinking and feeling, all of which conflicted with what she had been taught by family and society at large: she knew they were meant to protect her but why had they failed to do so? A Child Inside explores the complex issues of trust and responsibility between adults and children, charting the progression from acute distress through cognitive and intuitive understanding and ultimately towards forgiveness.

I am someone who finds true life books quite a hard but riveting read at the same time and therefore couldn’t wait to say yes to this blog tour when I saw it was happening. I just wished I had had the capacity to read the book but unfortunately my list of books to read is quite big at present. I therefore said yes (or rather jumped at the chance and said yes) to the excerpt post.

Excerpt

Introduction

These extracts show for me my journey of development in how I now am now more complete in understanding myself and how I move to gain personal understanding, allowing me to heal and giving myself control to be able to respond to people within love to defend myself or to try to teach others. They show my personal power, what I lost as a child and what I have re-gained as an adult but now with language, more wisdom and more love.

It was November and Adam was nowhere near completing the garage. Adam came at the end of November to say he was going to be moving in with his new partner at her Mum and Dad’s house just before Christmas. I was shocked and asked him if he had really thought about it and wondered whether he thought it was too fast. I also asked him if he had thought about our children, with it being Christmas, and how this would impact on them. Adam said that it wasn’t fair on his new partner that he was still living with his ex-partner, and that she had been OK about it but now both of them had fallen in love with each other. Adam said that he would come back on Christmas Day to be here when our children open their presents, but that he wanted to introduce them to her before then and for our children to spend time with them both over Christmas. I said that I thought it was quick, but it was up to him. Even though I was shocked, I wasn’t shocked that he was moving in with his new partner as my intuition told me that he would move that way. I was shocked at the speed and the lack of consideration for our children. I was aware that I felt anxious about our children meeting Adam’s new partner, but I was unsure where these feelings really sat and whether there more feelings that were underneath it all. I knew I needed time to reflect and work out where I was emotionally and cognitively about what was going to happen. We agreed that Adam would continue to support the house and bills till February to give me more time to get more work, then he would pay maintenance and half of the mortgage till our children were 18. My intuition was saying this wouldn’t happen, that Adam wouldn’t continue to commit to paying for the house till our children were 18, but I went along with what he was saying.

Afterwards I acknowledged that I felt nervous and anxious about our children meeting Lisa because of my experiences with Barry and Jane; I didn’t want my children to experience what I had. I also knew I had no control over what Adam chose to do, that he was their father as well as me being their mother and I wanted our children to have a great relationship with both of us. I had learned lots from my own life experiences and I admitted to myself that I also felt a bit jealous of my children building a relationship with Lisa and Adam without me, that they would have another life. I remembered being a child when my Mum and Dad separated, all I wanted to do was to love everyone and for everyone to love and get on together. I told myself that my children will love me no matter what, and I wanted to create that balance and for them to love whoever they want to love. I didn’t want to dictate to them who they should love. I wanted my children to be happy, I wanted Adam to be happy, and I wanted to be happy.

Our children met Lisa and they came back excited, explaining to me what she was like; our children liked her. I could see through what they were saying that she seemed really nice, and I relaxed more. Adam moved out. I promised myself I would always try to be aware of any of my emotions that would come up, and that I would always move to explore them and my thoughts and listen to my intuition so that I had more self-awareness. I had realised that this process gave me understanding, acceptance and self-control into how I reacted to situations and people, I also acknowledged that I was starting to feel happier and freer as I was starting to feel more complete…

Awaken
Oh my God! Where have I been!!
Have I been living in a dream?
I feel I am awakening from my daze,
Opening my eyes and now willing to embrace,
A wholeness within, but I am unsure where to begin.
What I know is that I must share my story as I unfold,
Which I feel connects me with a story untold.
A story that connects me with thee, and thee with We.
To which I feel is yet still to be disclosed.
Understanding I feel is the key, then comes acceptance of me and then of thee,
with empathy ‘I’ becomes a ‘We’.

Who was I? A 8-year-old girl that had love, peace and happiness that I wanted to share with others. I had privileges, not in that I had money or status, but in that I had attachments that showed me unconditional love – my mother and my family. I believe we all lost our way through painful experiences, becoming disappointed, angry, jealous and disillusioned. Who am I now? A woman who has privileges, again not in money or status, but in finding attachments (who were strangers to start with: friends, teachers, ex-partner, tutors and my counsellor). Through them giving me their time to listen to me, my story and accepting all of me, my thoughts, emotion and behaviour so that I could understand myself within my painful experiences past and present, developing my intuition, these people’s past and present interactions with me helped me to heal myself… I will never forget my guardians and I am eternally grateful but I will always remember that I am… my saviour.

Well what do you think? Bit different for me than my usual blog posts, but I enjoyed this extract.

If you did as well and want a copy of the book the link(s) to buy are below.

Purchase from - Amazon UK (click the link)

Purchase from - Amazon.com (click the link)

About the Author

About the author: Living in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, Sharon Shaw B.Sc. spent five years training as a psychotherapist at Leeds Beckett University and now has over 600 hours of clinical experience in therapeutic interventions specialising in play therapy including a year at a local primary school and working with private clients.