A safe, just and equal world for women

My childhood wasn’t great. I grew up with my dad and my big brothers in a very dysfunctional home life. Unsurprisingly, I quickly got caught up in trouble.

I got arrested for drug dealing when I was still in my teens and a keyworker from Advance came to speak to me at the police station.

She was lovely, the first person to ask me about MY life. She said she could help me. And she did, I walked away from the police station with a conditional discharge and was on probation for a year. My keyworker also helped refer me for mental health support. I am so, so grateful to her.

My dad and brothers were drug addicts. My dad hadn’t always been like that. When we were young, he was fit and healthy and worked as a builder. But when I was 10 years old, he was stabbed in the head, chest and ribs by a man who turned up at our house. My dad was on life support, it’s amazing he survived. But he never worked again and starting smoking drugs.

That was just one experience of knife crime that has touched my life – one of my twin brothers was also stabbed – and it’s really traumatising. I’m still totally paranoid about answering the door.

Following in my dad and brother’s footsteps, I was smoking cannabis when I was just 14. I’d got into the wrong crowd at school which hadn’t helped.

I was lucky in that I didn’t get kicked out of school and actually got some GCSEs. I wanted to do a childcare course but wasn’t accepted. So, I got a job in a pub. The money I earned went towards paying the rent arrears on our home, so that we wouldn’t be evicted.

It was me, just a young girl, who was going to social services and begging for help with our housing situation.
I was having to be the mum figure in the house, keeping a roof over our head. Selling drugs to pay the bills. But hard as I tried, I couldn’t keep that up.

By the time I was 18, we’d lost the house, and I was living in a hostel. My 19-year-old twin brothers had nowhere to go, it was a really awful time. My dad ended up living on the streets for a year before he got a place in a hostel.
Advance supported me for a year. The sad thing is that I had to get myself in some real trouble, to get the support and help I needed.

Now, my life is so much better. The best thing about it is my son Max, who is 3 and a half years old.
As soon as I knew I was pregnant, I stopped smoking and have lived a healthy life since. We have a nice house, but I’m battling to get something done about the mould in it which is making my little boy ill.

I’m so happy that my brothers have sorted their lives out a bit too. Got off the drugs, become dads and survived cancer. Things are on the up for me, and Advance played a part in getting me where I am today.