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Even as I begin this text I feel a huge lump in my throat. I think of everything that I have been through with my children and I know that the abusive relationship I suffered with my ex-husband put great pressure on their lives and affected them on a deep and physiological level.

Although I attempted to shield them from seeing the worst effects of domestic abuse by developing coping strategies, the children could see the effect it had on me as a person. My daughter was old enough to understand that I was hurting and that I needed her support.

She never questioned me about the things I could do nothing about; instead she made sure that the things that I could control went off as smoothly as possible. Real friends are like that. Offering support and encouragement when it is needed and not interfering in the things that can't be changed in life.

Thankfully my children seem to have come through the whole unhappy time with little scars to bear.

But what of myself?

I think back to those horrendous days and realize now that I could not have endured them, save for the abiding love and help that I had from my eldest child. She is my only daughter and my dearest friend.

From an early age my daughter showed great spirit and a love of life. She was a kind and thoughtful child and I took great pains to bring her up in an "enlightened" way. I was a very strict and controlling mother in those days, and took great pains to eliminate the harmful effects of "modern living" by keeping an eye on her television viewing and encouraging the assimilation of the more traditional subjects of music and the arts.

In many ways she had a fairly old fashioned type of upbringing - especially compared to her brothers who clamored much more loudly for the commercialized and mass produced contemporary lifestyle. She would take the trouble to make a card for me on my birthday and put a lot of thought and effort into it, whereas the boys preferred to go and buy me one from the local store. Both types of card were given to me from the heart, just produced in a different kind of way.

She trusted me explicitly and I cherished the trust she held in me. She believed in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and was enthralled and enchanted with the illusion that I spun for her that there were fairies at the bottom of the garden and that the really cold water coming from the faucet if you run it long enough, came from the fairy dell at the bottom of a magical mountain.

As my life of abuse developed with my ex- husband,

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