It’s a sentence you cannot begin to imagine saying. My child is missing. It’s actually a sentence that I have said many times. The first time I had to force myself to say those words, thereafter it didn’t really get any easier. There is a kind of hopelessness about it, a pleading desperation. You know you’ve hit the bottom and there is nowhere to go, and it feels as you utter it like you are delivering judgement on your own parenting.
In one way or another, most parents will have a child that goes missing at some point or another. Thankfully for most the panic is real but fleeting, kids having an uncanny ability from a very early age to move faster and more quietly than you will have hitherto given them credit for. There one minute and gone the next. Most parents will be able to give at least one anecdote of a time when they aged inexorably over the course of maybe no more than ten minutes, when their child had disappeared. They become fond anecdotes, woven into the fabric of a family history, along with first steps, first words and first loves.
One of my earliest memories is of getting lost. I was in a shopping precinct ( such a 1970s word!). I don’t know how old I was, but my sister was still in a pushchair, so I’m guessing I was perhaps 5 or 6. It was a rare occurrence for us – we didn’t normally venture that far (around 15 miles) – we never had any money to spend and my dad would consider it the worst possible kind of way to spend an afternoon. Nevertheless, for whatever reason, we were at the shops and one minute my parents were there – and the next, somehow, they were gone. Which is exactly how they describe it themselves, over 40 years later. I remember watching a seeming army of shoes moving along at a pace, an array of shopping bags, woolly tights and smelly trousers. The bottoms of overcoats busying past me. Person after person after person, moving purposefully, briskly, past me, or at least that is my recollection. I can remember blinking and blinking, as if the blinking would make them come back, but it didn’t. Confused, I started to run, a trot at first, then faster, my chubby legs generating static electricity in my nylon petticoat top with pleated skirt, underneath by hand-me-down quilted anorak. I clutched my favourite faux leather red handbag with two yellow ducks on the front. It was always with me, I was never attached to a particular teddy or doll, always this little handbag. A comfort blanket of sorts, perhaps, and no doubt found at the village hall jumble, where most of our things came from. A pity it was empty as always, I had no snacks for this unexpected adventure. I remember sitting down at a plastic circular seat in the middle of the precinct, my legs swinging underneath me as they were too short to reach the ground. A man was sitting in the next seat, minding his own business. I don’t recall feeling particularly frightened, more a sense of confusion, then eventually, forlorn. Not knowing what to do, I must have started with whimpering, which descended into sobbing. I do remember feeling very worried in case my family went home without me and I would be left there, in the precinct, with nothing but a handbag for company. The man turned, I suspect rather reluctantly, towards me. He asked me some questions, I sobbed some more. Eventually, “are you lost?” and I nodded, huge fat tears streaming down my cheeks, intermingled with a streaming nose. He looked pained, as if he knew he needed to do something but really rather wishing it wasn’t down to him. He looked at me doubtfully, “Come on” he said, and took my hand. And off I went with him, glad to have his grown up hand in mine. These were the days before stranger danger. Luckily for me, he was kind, if reluctant, and took me to an information point, where I was promptly placed on the counter, like a prize exhibit. My new friend said goodbye and good luck and left me there, and I wailed as I saw him disappear off into the crowd. The woman who I had been deposited with was neither kind nor friendly, in fact my memory is one of feeling like a huge inconvenience. She asked my name, and then the precinct tannoy system was coaxed into action ” Would the parents of Lisa Whordley please collect her from the information centre, thankyou”. People milled past, looking up at me on the desk, one sock up, one sock down, still howling, fidgeting like mad with the lining of my pockets and clutching my little red bag protectively in front of me. I did that a lot as a child, it drove my mum mad. It seemed like forever. In truth to this day I don’t know how long I was gone, but it felt like a very long time. Then I heard them, dad pushing his way down an escalator and more or less crowd surfing over people to get to me, his eyes moist with tears. He scooped me up off the desk and held me to him and I breathed in the familiar stale smell of Hamlet cigars and cried even more into the suede shoulder patches on his cardigan, which never quite recovered from the incident, a bit like it’s owner. My mother caused a commotion trying to get down the escalator with my sister still ensconced in her pushchair, clutching her ted and looking somewhere between nonplussed and frankly, pissed off. When mum got to me she reacted in a way very typical of my mum back in those days, she tore me off a strip before turning tail and stomping off imperiously with my sister still looking nonplussed. I so needed comfort in that moment, but she was furious. I realise now, of course, that she was both relieved and angry with herself.
About 30 years later, I lost AJ in that very same precinct, now smartly rebranded as “Castle Quay Shopping Centre”. It will always be the precinct to me. He would have been less than 2, as I was pregnant with The Middle One. I had just started my maternity leave so would have been about 38 weeks pregnant, huge, slow and hormonal. History repeated. One minute he was there next to me, and the next, he had vanished into thin air. A heartbeat. I turned, I called his name, I left the buggy and broke into an ungainly waddle, calling him in vain. He had gone. I started to hyperventilate, trying to scream, and a customer appeared quickly with a security guard. I told him what had happened and in a moment he had sent a message to the office – the centre went into lockdown. Thankfully in the 30 years that had passed since I had gone missing, stranger danger was a real thing, and they had procedures in place. That should have been a comfort but the shop we had been in was right to next to one of the exits, he would have been out in a flash. A chair was fetched, water. Description taken down, a photo from my phone. A crowd gathered, listening and gawping. The police arrived, and a search began. I kept trying to get up to find him, but each time I was made to sit back down again.
Finally, a message over the security guards radio. A group of goths, in the shop at the time he went missing, had decided to go and look for him as nobody was getting out of the centre anyway. They had found him in a shop on the other side of the precinct, on the first floor, sitting on a display of mens summer clothing in Marks and Spencer. He was completely nonplussed, neither happy nor sad, and certainly not showing any signs of distress. They had led him to a security guard, who brought him to me. I don’t think I have ever been so grateful in my entire life. The relief, the fear and emotion was utterly overwhelming. And at some stage, just like my mum did to me, I told him off. He burst into tears, not, I think because he had been lost, but because I had shouted at him. And there I was, transported back in time to the mid 1970s, clutching my red plastic handbag with two ducks and wishing my mum would hug me.
A while later, I lost him again. This time in the park by the river in Stratford upon Avon. He turned out to have a great sense of adventure and absolutely no sense whatsoever of danger, and he is still like this today. It was high summer and I was strolling in the park with my grandma, AJ and The Middle One, who was a small baby. AJ as usual was everywhere and nowhere, running up to strangers and chatting away, feeding ducks and hugging trees. He stopped to talk to a lady in a wheelchair to ask about her “poorly legs”. Before I could intervene he had kissed each knee carefully, before asking her for a chip. He could literally charm the birds out of the trees. We stopped for a picnic in the park and whilst I was changing The Middle One – AJ vanished. Literally into thin air. The panic flooded through me again. Not only were we in a very crowded public park, but a canal ran right through the middle of it. To cut a long story short, I eventually found him posing for photographs in front of a crowd of cooing Japanese tourists. He turned this way and that, smiling and laughing. Absolutely lapping it up. They actually clapped when I scooped him up and the show was over. As I carted him off he as still waving at them over my shoulder, always glad of an audience.
Several years later, we lost him again. My husband and I arrived home at almost exactly the same time, each with one child. There was a split second before we realised we had one missing. “Shit” he said, “I’ve forgotten to pick up AJ” and he jumped back into the car and set off to Youth Theatre. I tutted, rolled my eyes and thought I must remember to add that to the constant balance of parenting misdemeanors – things you forgot, things I forgot, we’ve all been there I’m sure. When you have three kids in three schools in two different counties, life’s a bit like that. Although this incident was the straw that broke the camel’s back and there was a re-assessment of logistics. Arriving at Youth Theatre, the lights were out, the building was locked up, and AJ was nowhere to be seen. Cue some frantic phone calls, deciding that I should stay put at home in case AJ came back, my husband would go looking for him. I called some friends and they too, went out onto the streets. After what seemed like an eternity but was probably no longer than 20 minutes – still no sign of him. I reached for the phone and dialled the police. Not 999 but the non-emergency number. I explained what had happened, described what he was wearing, and asked if they would put a message out to PCSOs to look for him as they were on their rounds. The officer at the end of the line said “Mrs Hughes, are you saying that your son is missing?” to which I replied, “No officer, I just don’t know where he is.” He told me I was not taking the matter seriously enough and before I knew it several squad cars had been dispatched from the nearest large town, with officers at the door to question me before I could blink. I have a friend whose missing son once led to a finger-tip search of their loft and both parents being fingerprinted, whilst he slept soundly at a friends house, but I digress. To cut a long story short, AJ was delivered home safe and sound some time later, but not before I had aged about ten years with anxiety. The police search was stood down and another tale was added to the family archive.
Fast forward to maybe a couple of years into this tale of mental ill health and self-soothing through recreational drugs, refusal to attend school and a constant, gnawing anxiety about minor (or maybe major) criminality, you start to walk a tightrope of how to access help without giving your hand away. Our three focal points for the first couple of years were getting him well (we truly didn’t understand at this point that we couldn’t), keeping him in school (which I realise now with the benefit of hindsight, those efforts were not only wasted but possibly the least of our concerns) and keeping him away from any chance of a criminal record. It is partly for this reason that for a very long time we were so cautious about engaging with the authorities. I had been told by a number of people that the one thing you can’t possibly do in our situation was to alert the police ourselves – in any way, shape or form. I was told that to do so would instantly dissolve any shred of remaining trust that we had been ourselves and AJ and that if we did, it would drive him even further underground and that we would never, ever regain that trust. I’m not here to give advice and I cannot say how things would have been different had we taken a different path, but for a very very long time we chose to follow this advice. Instinctively now, it doesn’t feel like that was the right choice, but every step of this journey is filled with hideous “would you rather?” crossroads, when you are wildly ill equipped to make anything nearing an informed decision. Eventually, for reasons I won’t go into, we hit breaking point one day, and deciding we needed to follow through on the consequences we had outlined of his actions, we walked him into our local police station. What felt like the most terrible of eventualities turned out to be a complete anti-climax, as the officer on the desk explained that you cannot simply walk into a police station these days, and told us to return the 15 miles home and then ring them up. Kind of took the wind out of our sails. The police did came out, they talked gravely to him, they explained what would happen if things continued, then got into their squad car and drove off, leaving a row of twitching curtains behind them. AJ looked at us disparagingly, and continued to do exactly what he had been doing. Kids are incredibly good at normalising their behaviour, and shockingly dismissive of the potential consequences. Or perhaps it’s just me, never knowingly not toeing the line as an adolescent.
He was missing on and off for days in the lead up to The Terrible Awful. He was so disorientated and distressed, so incoherent and afraid, that I set aside any caution about calling the police and rang them a number of times. They persistently refused to help, telling us to look for him ourselves. When it was too late, ironically, they came even though we hadn’t called them. In making the 999 call to the ambulance service, somehow, someone had decided to dispatch police too. I don’t remember letting them in, I had a sudden realisation of them standing at the foot of the stairs, radios periodically breaking into chatter, tasers at hand. A surreal moment. We had become the family from hell that I had spent most of the last ten years warning my kids about. I recognised one of the officers from way back when. He was kind, his face arranged somewhere between sympathetic and seen-it-all-before. It was from behind one of the officers that I first spied little M’s terrified face, eyes wide with alarm.
In the MASH ( multi agency safeguarding hub) investigation that followed The Terrible Awful, I learned something. To be honest, it was about the only useful, practical thing I did learn, and I want to share it with you, with anyone that ever finds themselves in this utterly desperate place. The words to use when you dial 999 are this, “My child is missing”. Not – my child won’t come home, nor, I don’t know where my child is, nor, I’m worried about my child. Nor indeed, my child is suicidal, my child is at risk of self-harm, my child is ill. Apparently, they don’t illicit a response. My child is missing. You need to use those exact words. The police have to respond, even if your child is a hulking great half adult. The enormity of that sentence will choke you, but you have to get past that. It is possibly the most raw, most devastating, most horrible summation of all of your fears that you will ever say.
I cannot advise you on the difficult choice between involving the authorities or not, and at what point to do that. What I can say is that if you reach the crossroads of having to risk losing their trust or losing your child, then that choice is surely mercifully taken from you. Which is why I’m telling you the words that you need to use in that moment.
My child is still missing. He is hiding in plain sight. He no longer looks or sounds the same. He doesn’t smell the same. To all intents and purposes, he is a stranger.
My child is missing, and there is a stranger in his place.
It is a terrible, strange kind of grief. A daily manifestation of all my parenting failures. It is hard to not think of what might have been, but that way madness lies. Better to come to an uneasy acceptance of what is. Can you teach yourself to be sanguine? I have tried.
Of course, all of our children go missing, both literally and metaphorically. They reach an age where they go missing, then most people tell me they come back. Little M, at the tender age of 9, once turned to me and said “But mummy, it’s your job to let me go”. And so it is. We raise them, and we aim to give them the skills to live independently of us. Developmentally, teenagers push us away in order to find out who they are. I have met many grown adults who haven’t found out who they are, and I imagine most of us are some kind of a work in progress. It would be a sad day when we stop learning and discovering something new.
I know enough now to know that some children never do come back. Through the course of writing this blog, I have been contacted by more people than you might expect to tell me so. It’s a club you don’t want to belong to, and whose members might surprise you. I know people have been surprised to learn our story, “But you seem so together” they say, and I in turn, have made assumptions about other people’s lives and been astonished at the secrets they have told. For it is a very particular and peculiar anguish, to have a child hiding in plain sight. A grief for the living, which feels like such a careless, man-made void you cannot fathom that someone else could comprehend it, far less admit to it. But there are others, you have to watch for the signs, and what they say, or more likely, what they don’t say. It’s the parents who withdraw, stop participating, don’t join group celebrations and remove themselves from Whatsapp groups. They can’t find the energy to celebrate the daily triumphs and can’t find the empathy to deal with the daily tribulations of “normal” families – that is not to denigrate or make other peoples difficulties into a competitive sport – simply that they have to use all of their energy to deal with keeping a lid on their family every single day. On a bad day, they will tell themselves that to lose a child who is still living is the single most careless, neglectful act they have ever managed. It is a heavy burden to carry.
My child is missing. I am still waiting for him to come back. Until then, I shall search for him all of my life.
Grieving for the living is the hardest grief of all. Once again, thank you for sharing.
And thankyou for taking the time to comment. I think you might be right.
All I can offer is the promise of a hug and possibly there’ll be tears and laughter when we eventually meet. I hope he searches you out. Where there is life there is hope
Lynn xxx
That offer counts for a very great deal, Lynn, thankyou.
I’m in tears here reading your words. The pain is indescribable. I know where my children are. Or roughly. I know people who could lead me to them. But I don’t know them. They don’t want me in their lives. They went missing years ago and all I have are my memories. Last night I woke up in the middle of the night. I’d had a dream that I went to find my youngest. She spat at me. I picked her up like a child (she is 28) and carried her home. But she ran away and caught a bus. The pain of waking up and the realisation that I will never see them is a living nightmare. I hide away with my dirty secret. I don’t discuss it openly because the shame is too much to bear. I have no vision for my future. I just bumble along from day to day filling my life with empty gestures. I’m invisible. I’ve lost my place in the human race. My heart is dead. I see things but don’t see them. I hear things but don’t hear them. I’m a shell with nothing of importance to say. When my children were small, I would worry about ‘losing’ them. But even I wasn’t prepared for this. It is eternal. It has no end.
You’re not invisible, I hear you, and I see you, and I have an idea of your pain. I’m so sorry, and also if this post has been too much for you. It’s hard to know where the line is, between sharing in the spirit of being able to stand in solidarity with others, and to hold back so as not to disturb a kind of quiet. But you’ll never know quiet and neither will I, and that is very hard. I hope you can take some comfort in knowing that you aren’t on your own. Go gently.
Oh no, I don’t want you to stop. You are the only person I know who is bringing the subject out into the open with any knowledge of what it is to go through a living nightmare. You are the only person I know experiencing something similar and it really helps to read your blog. To know I am not completely alone. What you are doing is helping a lot of people as well as helping yourself. Just voicing the situation helps to make some sense of the madness of it all. And your blogs always seem timed to coincide with days when I really need a helping hand. Thank you Lisa X
Thankyou. And you really aren’t on your own at all, if you are able to look through the comments thread you’ll see so many in similar positions. We are invisible because it’s too hard to describe, and too raw to share. Hopefully that will start to shift. Please look after yourself x
My thoughts are with you 🤗🙏🤗
I have no words. Just love for you Lisa writing this and to all of you that have replied with similar stories. Xxx
Thankyou Jayne, that is incredibly kind of you.
Sending hugs amounts of love and support. I wholeheartedly get what you’re saying and it’s a horrible and frightening place to be. I have no words of wisdom, I wish I did, but you’re not alone.
Thankyou Louise, and I know I’m not, and there has to be comfort in that. Take care. Lx
Lisa, thank you for sharing your story. My heart is torn by your grief,
and I wish I could offer you comfort.
You do, just by dropping by. Thankyou.
It is so important that you are writing this down, with such honesty, humour and with absolutely no concern about judgement. You are a brave, strong and resilient woman. Everyone … parents, children, police officers, social workers, politicians and policy makers… they all need to read this .You need an bigger loud hailer than Instagram. I am off to construct one .Meanwhile, know that you are heard. With love.
That really made me smile. Thankyou! Let me know when you’re done with construction, the mind boggles! Thankyou for taking the time to message me, I really appreciate it.
I’m not sure why I left it until now to read your blog. Maybe selfishly it’s hard to read something when you “know” someone and a little of their story.
Despite the difficult subject, you write with the same humour and eloquence that I know and love.
I don’t have any children, so I wouldn’t dream of saying “I know how you feel”. Unless you walk in someone’s shoes, that’s just not possible.
But what I will say is that your last paragraph made me cry and want to give me dear friend a big bear hug.
Well, big fella, I shall hold you to that when I eventually see you, and it would be very welcome indeed. Thankyou. I do know what you mean, I have been the most shy, I suppose, about the people who know me well, reading this. But you do know my story and I know that you understand, as best you can, and I thank you for that. It means a great deal.
A beautiful approach to a very tough subject.
I work in childrens service, and I am sometimes ashamed to admit to this.
I always read your posts with interest.
When I reflect upon how our work effects families, I cry. All logic steems to be out of the window. Parents often treat like criminals from the outset.
A service that is of no use to child nor parent. Not fit for purpose at best.
I am also the mother of a child who went missing. Sadly for us, age 16, he took the decision to check out of the world for good.
Since then, life has been very monochrome. I have 2 daughters who I live on for, but the life we lead is not that of normal families.
We are shattered into tiny pieces.
Our milestones arent really celebrated more commiserated.
When my oldest daughter hit the same age that her brother was when he died, she spiralled, she didn’t want to overtake him. Tme can be cruel like that.
We have another daughter, and it’s another 18months before our youngest hits that age, and im hoping some big style healing may have occurred before then.
We can only hope.
Thank you for highlighting the struggle.
We stand together.
Ax
We certainly do. And my goodness, I am so sorry for your loss. One mother to another, I am putting my arms metaphorically around you. And also, thankyou for the work you do in the day job. I am absolutely certain that it cannot be easy. You surely need a degree of detachment to be able to do the job and stay balanced. The degree of system change required is vast, and on my mind so much. We can only hope, and even on the most difficult days, it’s important to hang on if you can to that hope. I hear you. Much love, and go gently.
Thank you.
Hope is exactly what we need to drive us forward and make a better future.
Thank you for your blog and for taking the time to reply.
Ax
Your writing is so open and honest and must be so heartbreaking for you to write and yet hopefully it brings you some sense of hope both for a better future for your family, and for those reading it who find themselves being able to identify with your situation. I would not begin to say I know how you must feel because our minds would not take us to that place unless we were in a similar situation. I can’t help but think of the pressure going on for children to be back in school for a good education to lead to a good job and I feel that in this vision, children’s emotional well being and mental health will be forgotten in just a few short months and a child’s happiness is not even mentioned. For me, I have always felt that what my children grow up to do is worthless if they are unhappy or lost in themselves. People often judge who we are and the decisions we make based on what they know about us and it’s often what they don’t know which shapes our lives. Through the pain and suffering you endure, you remain dignified and honest and still carry on trying to make the world a better place. From the bottom of my heart I wish you better days, sunshine after rain and blue skies after grey and most of all hope that your boy will no longer be lost and that, for your family, many happy days lie ahead x
Tracy thankyou for such a lovely message. It really does make such a difference. I agree, things were bad before and I think will be much worse in coming years. I think it’s partly why I cannot sit back and say and do nothing,however small and inconsequential my offering. I have to make something positive of our experience, for me, for AJ, but also in trying to be heard in a system drowning in red tape and lacking the people who have the lived experience. You’ve got to have hope. Much love to you x
Wow , such a heartfelt and thought provoking read . I’ve been through similar not with a child but with my Mum and Nana grieving for my Uncle who is very much still alive but isn’t “him” due to a dementia type illness caused by his alcoholism .
Sending cwtches love and prayers
They are very gratefully received, thankyou. And my thoughts with your mum and nana. It’s a long hard road and I’m sure you give them much needed love and support.
This is a very powerful piece Lisa. I hope he comes back to you soon x
I hope so too. Thankyou.
Oh Lisa this has me in tears and it could have been my daughter that wrote these raw, honest and heartbreaking words. I empathize with every word and indeed “lost” my children a couple of times, both physically and metaphorically. Mercifully they all came back from where they had disappeared to, a couple of times it was minutes that felt like days, another time it was months but she came back eventually, Now I’m experiencing this loss on a daily basis with my grandson, drugs, gangs, police, worse, it’s never ending and even though my life is in the main a happy and contented one, there is forever inside me a deep feeling of grief and loss for this sweet boy that is always missing… even when he’s with me. Keep writing, maybe one day I will pickup my pen and follow suit. ❤️❤️❤️
Maybe you should Jill. If it never sees the light of day from my own experience I can say it’s been hugely helpful in trying to make some sense from the carnage. I’m so sorry. I know how close you are to this and how much support you give to your daughter and grandson. It’s a burden we carry all day every day. Take the sunshine where you can, my friend. Much love.
What a moving and difficult post to read and even more, for you to write. I had a “missing” daughter for a few years – very little contact, not allowed to phone, not allowed to follow on social media and if we did speak, very terse and hostile responses. It broke me – I would wake up in the night crying and wondering where I had gone wrong as a mother. She has come back to me now – I can call her without being ghosted or treated to a “what do you want” as the phone is answered. The joy of having a normal friendly conversation is wonderful. For some years I bought her up on my own, working like a dog to pay for a mortgage at 15% interest and doing car boot sales to make enough for the bills and food. Like most parents, I was prepared to do jobs I hated to keep us housed and fed. So the rejection felt like all my efforts were not valid. I hope your beloved son comes back to you – you’ve done all that you can so now it’s a waiting game. In the meantime, I send you my love and admiration – you are an amazing mother and friend. xxxx
Julia you are so kind, thankyou. It’s a funny kind of heartache isn’t it, kind of gnaws away at you even on a good day. I’m glad you found your way back to each other somehow. I hold on to that hope, I guess time will tell. Take care and I so hope to see you before too long x
Lisa you have been so refreshingly honest writing this piece…it’s very familiar to me..I was the youngest of 9 children ..our family was kinda split in half the older ones & the younger ones (me, my sister Sharon & brother Martin) …my mum and dad did everything for us all, money was tight but they never spoke of money everyone around us was the same….we were actually lucky in the sense that my parents always tried to bring us on a holiday each year ..a few days at the seaside …a trip to blackpool we lived in Ireland so this was a huge adventure.. we were there only 5 minutes, I remember we were looking up at the big amusement rides & Martin went missing …we spent the day looking for him going to the police station ..my poor parents were distraught I was only about 5 but my only memory from that holiday was that 1st day…you see Martin was a handful, he was wild, he used to run out of school & hide in our attic…he was like a wild horse, no taming him….it turns out he was on one of the rides and said he was looking down at us waving ..my poor ma& da probably never thought to look up to the sky to see him!
As Martin got older things got worse he was easily led by others would get into trouble with the police there were no services back then to help… looking back he had a learning difficulty but had slipped through the net, the only help my parents were offered by the GP was a Physciatric admission …like little M I remember being woken up hearing shouting & sitting on the stairs leaning my head through the bannister crying not knowing what was going on…my parents had to choose how to protect the rest of the family from Martin’s distructive behaviour especially my sister & I , they agreed for Martin to go to the physch hospital..but it was here he that he was sexually abused he told my da when they visited…my parents took him home & they tried to manage but he was more damaged then before…it was heartbreaking and a lifelong struggle for my poor parents ….Martin was in & out of facilities suffering with depression..he was knocked down by a car when he was 21 & left with brain injury and physical injuries…my parents continued to care for him… stress took a huge toll on my poor da & he passed away from a massive heartattack at 66…it was then we tried to get help from services again as my mum could not manage him alone.. when my mum passed away my sister Sharon & I continued advocating and fighting for Martin …he passed away in 2018 …his life was mostly misunderstood, he didn’t fit in, my parents tried everything but services were just not available back then when they needed them …things are a bit better now we seen the difference in the last few years caring for Martin but it is still a fight still a struggle for families…I wanted to just say how brave you are …you are highlighting Mental health, how not every family is the same, how things aren’t always perfect…I remember dating my 1st boyfriend and not wanting him to come into our house in case Martin was shouting or having a fit ..I was embarrassed by him, by his behaviour.. I thought we were the only ones who had to deal with all of this ..I just wanted a normal family now I know “normal” doesn’t exist …my mum used to say M would make you laugh one minute and make you cry the next …sending you all love and strength ❤️
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Suzie what an absolutely beautiful tribute to your family. I think we all want a “normal” family when we are kids – I know I did – and yes, it’s only with the benefit of many years that you realise that we are all just muddling along, trying to find a way through. It sounds like you all made a herculean effort to support Martin and he sounds much loved. We are all only human, it’s impossible not to feel frustrated, angry and embarrassed sometimes. Services have moved on a long way and yet still fall far too short, and that’s why I think it’s important to keep it on the table and discussable. Things need to change. Take care, look after yourself.
Thank you so much Lisa…you are going through so much but have so much time and empathy for others you are a wonderful inspiring woman…I do hope & pray your son finds his way back to you! Sending you much love ❤️ x
Thankyou Suzie, I hope so too! As you will see in my next post, I think I’m just walking in the shoes that I have to. So many other people also in this terrible situation. Thanks so much for stopping by.
This piece is so beautifully written. I lost my teenage, eldest son to mental health issues and he disappeared from my life for 3 years. Hearing his voice when he finally got in touch last April was wonderful and heart breaking at the same time. I didn’t get to spend anytime with him until December and only for 50 minutes. Our relationship is slowly growing but I have lost him. We can never go back to be where we were and that breaks my heart. Thank you for giving words to the deep loss I feel. ‘My son is missing’ is comforting in a strange way. I have two younger, teenage boys who have their own struggles but I now have more tools to help and have everything crossed they will not follow the same path.
Thank you 🙏
And I have everything crossed for you, and I guess time will tell. I’m sure like mine, your other two will have been affected to some degree by the journey you have been on as a family. I’m glad that it sounds as if you are in the process of finding that connection again. I understand entirely what you say about it never being the same again. I guess it’s about finding a different kind of normal. Take care of yourself x
This is so well written and so true
I’m sending useless virtual hugs
Not useless at all. Very gratefully received, thankyou.
You have a real talent.
I used to write a lot, when I was a teenager, I remember my mum asking me of I couldn’t just write something a bit happier, but people don’t realise that for the people swimming in rough seas with no end in sight, sometimes what is needed is a call over the waves and hope someone will call back. I hear you.
Maybe for her, her reaction of anger at my writing, was the same anger of losing your child at the mall. The realisation that something awful has happened to them and a growing uncertainty that maybe if you had been watching hard enough you could have prevented it. Her guilt ended up pushing us apart. I couldn’t survive towing the weight of that with me, I was barely swimming myself.
I didn’t need fixing, or silencing, it wasn’t really about her, and how she felt. It wasn’t about trying to hurt or punish her. It was about me trying to find as many ridiculous and unlikely ways to survive- anything that made me feel better. Survival is a selfish instinct in many ways. I hurt her, and I hurt myself because I didn’t know another way to move forwards. I literally lived minute by minute trying to find ways out of pain most of which, to the outside eye, looked like a myriad of slow deaths, or sometimes hopeful, fast ones.
I needed to find a way to be whole and somehow include all the stuff I didn’t want to be a part of me into who I was. It took time, it took distance, it took the freedom of wanting to die so that i could find the courage to live.
You have a journey to become whole and somehow find a way forward with all the grief and uncertainty of a life you didn’t expect. He has a journey too to find a way out of what ever he is battling. Maybe one day you will find each other across the waves.
Maybe in that way you and your son are similar, maybe in that way me and my mum are similar.
Thank you for writing this. It has helped me to see things more from my mums perspective and re frame my own experiences from her perspective. I apologies for over writing my own story onto of yours. I know that I cannot begin to know what you are going through and none of us can know the reasons for your sons pain. I am sorry this has happened to your family. I know the fall out is huge.
I hope it helps you to know that some of us do come home. Some of us end up with jobs, partners and children who we don’t know how to explain our lives to. Rock bottom is an awful place to be but some people use the momentum to bounce. I owe everything I hold dear to having nothing left. Maybe he will be the same.
Much love to you, You are in my thoughts. Xx
Hello. Thankyou so much for taking the time to write to me. Every now and then someone does, who has a different perspective on things and as you say, it is so useful to stand in someone elses shoes for a while. You write beautifully, and I hope that it does bring you solace as it does me. I have read and re-read what you say several times and so much of it resonates with me – I think I am coming to some similar conclusions and finding some kind of uneasy resolution is helpful. You are also in my thoughts, thankyou.
Oh Lisa so heartbreaking and so beautifully written. If it offers any hope my mum would say she lost her middle child Scott for too many years! I can’t begin to explain the path his life took for many years, the anguish it caused my mum and particularly my dad, culminating in my gentle father taking a knife to his throat and threatening to kill him in front of my mother. My dad was in the throws of his first major breakdown, having suppressed his bi polar for so many years, Scott suffers from it too. You never really knows what goes on behind closed doors. But Scott is back, very damaged from losing his kids, soon to be 58, but living with a wonderful lady. I still think about him when he was young, tall, handsome, with the best brain out of the three of us and us and thought what if……. funnily enough my mum still says if we hadn’t moved from Brussels during the most important, apparently, years for a child!! And we laugh and say Mum that was 47 years ago, get over it!!! So Lisa thank you for sharing your story, you are a brave, beautiful woman. I have a little cry reading your posts, because buried inside are still some dark, dark moments. I hope with all my heart he won’t always be missing, changed maybe but still your beloved son. Love Lyn 💖
Hello Lyn, and thankyou. What a lovely tribute to Scott. I think there are so many perils in thinking about what if, better to stay grounded in what is, if we can. Thankyou for taking the time to comment, it is so appreciated. Take care x
Sending you so much love and care .. and so many thoughts xxxx
Thankyou, thats really kind.
Lisa, another fabulous piece of writing from the heart ❤️
A wonderful way to describe that feeling that we have in the club we don’t want to be part of!
I describe my missing one as an alien. Sometimes I have to believe it is true in order to get through the day. I know she is in there, somewhere? Sometimes she even pops out for a few days but never stays.
Sending strength and sincerity to all those that are missing or have a missing one x
Thankyou Chrissie, that is kind. Interesting to hear about your coping mechanism, I think we all need to find a way of trying to make some sense or order from the situation. Having a low expectation is one of mine, the lower the expectation, the less likely you are to be disappointed. In other words I guess, enjoy the good days when they come. Take care and thankyou.
Hello Lisa. Thank you for sharing your story. Wasn’t an easy read for me – can’t possibly have been easy for you to put down in words. I can only offer this … there’s a little bit in all of us that goes missing everyday … we lose something and/or we gain or learn something new. Let’s not always be afraid of the changes. I don’ need to send you strength – you have it in abundance. XXX
Thankyou Suzy that is kind. And yes, I think you are right. And no, not an easy one to write, but I think I got there in the end! Feel better for it! Take care.
Hi Lisa
Utterly heartbreaking to read, my youngest was very troubled in his early years, speaking to the authorities I always felt as if I was screaming at them to help, but it seemed they didn’t hear my words, or they were deaf😪
Sending you and the family my love, hugs and prayers (I hope they get answered for you)
❤Xx❤
Thankyou that’s really kind. Its a hugely frustrating place to be, feeling like you aren’t being heard. I hope you got there in the end, I think many people do, probably in spite of the system rather than because of it, which is a crying shame. Keep well and thankyou for taking the time to message me, I really appreciate it.
This is beautifully written.
It’s hits you in the real sense of the word. It builds up to a climax that nobody ever wants to experience, ever.
We love our children, always, regardless of anything and everything.
As mother’s, we don’t ever really let go.
I feel your pain and I want you to know that there is always, always hope.
Sometimes in the darkest moments, when you think it’s over, that the point of return is lost, you will find that hope will not allow you to give up and that God in the end, however long that may be will not allow anything more than you can endure.
I’m sending all my love and hugs and strength to you xx
Thankyou for taking the time to get in touch. It’s good to be reminded to hang onto hope, in the main I’m quite good at that but every now and then can lose sight of it. Thankyou, I really appreciate it.
Holding the hope. That’s really all we can do when it gets to this point. Holding it for ourselves. Holding it for our missing children. Sometimes that fraying rope of hope gets worn so thin as to become invisible. It feels dangerous to keep hold of it. It can’t bear any more strain. Pull on it and it will break. Or tighten around us and end it. Which on bleak days even starts to look like an option. I’m not being flippant here. I’ve lost close family members to suicide by that method. But no wordy stone should be left unturned in telling our horribly messy and painful truth I think now. I’m cautious about sharing too much of my own story publicly as my child is online and mercifully returning from the mists of the missing..but I’m here to share empathy and understanding x
And thankyou for that. It is much appreciated! And I know exactly what you mean about walking the line of how much we share, and how much we don’t. Whilst I have agreed with my family that I can share our story, and also agreed what isn’t for sharing – I am also conscious that despite that at some stage one of the boys may read this, and so I am mindful of the possible impact of that at all times. It’s a fine line, I think. Thankyou for getting in touch. Keep well.
Dear Lisa,
I am struck by how brave and compassionate you are. I have read and reread all your blogposts in what is really a futile attempt to understand the depth of pain you must be carrying and how you not only carry it every day, but remain hopeful that life can still be lived in a meaningful way. That you are thinking of others and how you might be able to offer some insight and solace is deeply moving to me and a lesson for us all. Thank you for being a light in the darkness.
How incredibly kind, thankyou. It makes an enormous difference to get feedback, it encourages me to keep going even when it feels too hard. I have long felt that I need to use our experience to positive effect if I possibly can. Being entirely selfish, it is also cathartic to write about it, even if the process of doing so is quite painful. So thankyou. I really do appreciate it.
Beautifully written Lisa, my mother probably says the same about me but I can’t or won’t deal with her guilt as well as my own…different circumstances- hope you can find your missing child and thanks again for the read, very powerful words
As ever Jason, thankyou for taking the time to read my ramblings. It’s much appreciated my friend.
I will be a work in progress until the day I die.
I often wonder what it would be like to be a parent, I spent my youth ‘mothering’ but in reality it was not meant to be. I can not begin to imagine actually having children a little human that I am responsible for. All I can say for certain is I know you do the best you can!
Much love as always my friend x
I’ve just caught up with your blog Lisa and I empathise with the empty hole of nagging , chewing angst which fills our lives during the bad times . I lost two of mine post divorce to drugs ( for a while ) and wild random living , for which I blame myself , and my third ,the eldest , has taken over as anxiety ridden “ looker after “ of her two younger siblings , constantly checking them and driving herself to distraction in the process . I hardly dare to feel like there may be some signs of settlement and ease with the younger two now , both got decent jobs , my son a lovely girlfriend and my daughter a new flat . She ( at 25 ) is emerging like a butterfly from the chrysalis. With flashes of love from her at unexpected times I know without doubt that there’s a frightened little girl in there , especially when I get messages and photos from her childhood days – she yearns for that simplicity I think . I hope these signs of hope continue for us and for you I hope and pray that AJ comes back to you ! Sending love and hugs xxx
Thankyou that’s so kind – and so good to hear that you are emerging the other side. It’s a long heard road isn’t it, and I totally understand that sense of never quite feeling at ease, or that you can imagine that you are out of the woods. Take care and thankyou for taking the time to read and comment, I really appreciate it.
Dearest Lisa
Your words resonate so loudly in my head.
As you know, our sons have trod very similar paths.
It feels to me at times that the ‘missing-ness’ becomes a part of me, like I am also missing when he is in crisis.
There are times when I want to go missing – to leave on a train, to hide somewhere and not have to worry, or pace, or listen at his door in the wee small hours, or check his location on my phone, or run through the previous few days grunts and glares to decipher the most recent crisis.
But I don’t, I can’t – what if he decides that he needs me? Often I’m the only one he will seek, the only one who he needs to hold him. A fully grown man, now – but always my little lost boy, scared and looking for his mum to help him.
Last summer, when he walked onto the bridge, I thought I was going to lose him forever. Thankfully not the case.
He was gone for so long though, afterwards.
But lately, with weekly psychotherapy sessions with the most incredible therapist, he is coming back. He goes again some weeks, then slowly re-emerges.
I guess this is how it will always be…
I don’t know where your lad is at right now but I’m hoping for him and you and sending love and light for him finding his way back xxx
Hi Vicky. And I hope it’s not how it will always be, but you know and I know that it’s too difficult to predict. I know exactly what you mean about that urge sometimes to go missing yourself. To be invisible and without responsibility. It can only be a very natural response to such a prolongued period of holding it all together. I’m glad that it sounds as if you are both in a better place, however fragile. You can but hold your breath and hope. Take care of yourself, you are doing a fine job.