Sadly I never had a relationship with my father. The circumstances that led to our separation were incredible and I know he was not entirely at fault for our estrangement. My mother is a schizophrenic and in the latter stages of her pregnancy with me she fell into a psychotic episode that led her to be hospitalized in a psychiatric institute five days after my birth.

My father had to take responsibility for my two older sisters aged nine and ten and wasn't equipped monetarily or emotionally to care for an infant. My mother's brother and his wife volunteered to care for me, thereby preventing any intervention from Child Services.

It is reasonable to expect that my father was experiencing a great deal of grief associated with my mother's malady. And as it turned out her illness was quite protracted and she remained institutionalized for four years. During this time I lived with my Uncle and Aunt and although they showed me great kindness I was only on loan to them. My biological father had very little contact with me and when he commenced a relationship with another woman I was almost totally forgotten.

My Uncle was a strict but fair man and naturally he became my first male role model. I loved him and feared him and when the day came that he handed me back to my mother I felt abandoned by him. He remained a central male figure until he died when I was thirty four years old but he was only on the peripheral and not actively involved with me during those impressionable teenage years.

Soon after my mother was released from hospital she started a relationship with a man who had never been married nor had children. He was to remain with my mother for the next thirty five years but unfortunately he was addicted to gambling and alcohol. His influence in my life was rather destructive and although he paid the bills and put food on the table he was by no stretch of the imagination, a father.

As a teenager I floundered, making terrible decisions in terms of relationships with the opposite sex. By the time I was twenty I was married to a violent, maladjusted man and had two children under the age of two. My husband suffered from bipolar disorder and was prone to drug addiction and adultery. I accepted his physical and emotional abuse of me because I was fearful that he would leave me. Eventually our dysfunctional marriage disintegrated but instead of learning my lesson I continued to become involved with men who would mistreat me. I lacked

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