Thank you Warrior Women 🙏💖❤️💗

As one year ends and another begins, I want to acknowledge those who have helped me through this year.

My Husbands arrest in May 2020, completely blown our world apart. One by one my relationship with my relatives broke down due to their complete refusal to even ‘try’ to understand the reasons why my husband offended.

Following a long drawn out police investigation, my husband was sentenced in August 2021 and recieved a custodial sentence. His case also hit the media.

The back lash from my family and friends was a mix of: if we support you we will be accepting what he has done and we never can. To; how can you forgive or accept what he’s done?! To complete silence.

The fact that the children and I had essentially lost him for the foreseeable, pained into insignificance to them as they continued to treat me like a secondary ‘Perpetrator’ of my husbands offence.

I don’t think I could have gotten through 2021, especially since August, without the love and support of my AMAZING Warrior women friends.

Every day I chat to these women via 3 x WhatsApp groups and also one to one. Sharing voice notes of support, positive quotes and general chit chat of our daily challenges as we deal with the aftermath of our Husbands / Sons offences.

I have met just 5 of these women face to face, last October when we met halfway between where we all live, dotted accross the country. It was a very emotional union.

We have zoom meet ups and share quizzes and a glass of wine, when we can.

The physical relationships don’t matter. We are dotted around the UK. These relationships I have formed with my fellow Warrior Women, runs far deeper than the majority of friendships I’ve had come and go in my life.

The connection and mutual understanding of the shock, anger, anxiety and backlash of ‘the knock’ is invaluable.

One of the other women and I have often said how it usually takes several years to get to this level of ‘comfortable’ with friends. We have connected through a unique set of circumstances yet we are all very alike. From all walks of life and yet our common personality traits are that we are empathic, compassionate, genuine and kind.

I’ve been a support worker for many years. I’ve worked with ex- offenders, substance misuse, severe mental health, homelessness. Aside from mild mental health, I have no ‘lived’ experience. I have always felt that my empathy and client centred approach has served me well to build effective working relationships.

However, I’ve learnt that some things in life we actually have to go through ourselves to fully understand. Many of us women have had extremely judgemental and inappropriate comments from Social Workers, counsellors, police, safeguarding leads, Probation officers etc, judging us for supporting our Husbands.

Only a Non-offending partner / Warrior woman can fully understand the parallel emotions that come from finding out someone you love so much had comitted such an abhorrent offence. An offence we hate just as much as the rest of society but that doesn’t automatically result in us stopping loving or even respecting that person. As we know they are much more than their offence.

So I want to thank each and every one of you for your love and support over the past year, especially these last 4 months or so. Your love, support and understanding has gave me so much strength and confidence to keep on going and keep on fighting for my little family.

Whether you’re though to the other side, if there is one, going through imprisonment like us or still awaiting charges, you’ve all been amazing.

I sincerely hope that I help you, half as much as you help me.

Sending you all lots of love and hope that 2022 brings about more support and understanding for us, the forgotten victims.

💜💗♥️❤️💖🙏🙏🙏