But in among this is the milestone year I have reached as this March I will be 70 years of age. I have put a photo image of a Cessna to depict that I have not always navigated and flown my life in a smooth way. There has most certainly been turbulence to steer through. Before I elaborate on how I am feeling as I reach this milestone I will tell you that I actually do have some PPL Private Pilot Licence flying hours. I often wished I could have gone on to have got my licence. I love flying. Yes my hours of actually flying lessons was in the early 1990s when I lived in Cookridge Leeds near Leeds/Bradford Airport. I had watched Cessnas fly over my garden and really wished to have a go. It was at a time when my first marriage of 25 years was going through a rocky ride with the recession of the time. I needed to fly above my problems and the trial lessons with the adventure gave me some release. As I flew up in the sky it was like the problems I was facing were shrinking down on the ground. It was the first time ever I had flown and I loved the freedom and the challenge. My instructor recognised this and wished I carried on to study for my licence.
But what of the 70 years milestone now scroll on and you will see my sharing of this blog post.
Born in 1954 and now in 2024 it is the start of my 7th decade time of life on this Earth. But this is the sting I am not the woman of substance I should have been or could have been. Rather than reaching my elder years financially comfortable with investments, property, savings and pension plans other than state pension and end of life plans... I am vulnerable through my failure to pilot my life better round relationships and career opportunities.
I have allowed myself to head & land into toxic relationships not one but two. My first husband was not toxic we had 25 years of marriage. I married at 16 and had a good head on me for our first mortgage negotiated a good deal on our first property. We had our two daughters. I continued my education at night school and attained 7 O levels and 2 A levels then studied to be a nurse. I built up from State Enrolled Nurse to Registered Nurse got a BSc in Nursing and then studied to be a Midwife. My first husband had a good job and we property climbed. Then the recession hit and we lost everything. I was the money manager and I felt I had and still feel I mismanaged our finances and did not react to the word of recession on the news and what it would mean to us. I needed to have steered us better through the turbulence.
i was easily distracted by affairs with doctors and lost my bearings. We divorced so he could find a new life and I find a new course heading which took me on the Ashram trail in India to find the spiritual meaning of life!
Then husband #2 Shaji Vincent came in my life but though I had felt love with him he turned out to be a troubled soul and a violent controller. The relationship was both toxic and turbulent. There would be periods of normality fun loving and periods of controlling, manipulative put me down criticism. The abuse was violent beatings and attempted strangulations. As I look back I was also a money making machine for his goals. Though he found work as soon as he arrived in the UK being a fluent English speaker and IT skilled he did also see my earning ability as an agency midwife. We bought a house ..well mortgaged on Ashford Ave Hayes and started to refurbish. I was going through the menopause and there were times i was ill to go on duty. I remember him literally tipping me out of the bed lifting up the mattress and telling me to go to work you lazy bag of sh@@... I was most certainly not lazy I would work 12 hours busy shifts on a busy birthing unit.. often without breaks .. My scrubbing skills would often have to respond to emergency C sections alongside my own case work.
I would drive home and have to read him like a set of traffic lights as to what mood he was in on my return home.
Green light he was normal loving and we could make a meal together sit and watch TV and had chat no aggro,
Amber light he was in a mood and I would have to be careful and modify my approach to ensure I did not antagonise him.
Red light he was aggressive and controlling. It was at these times I failed to modify and went through the red light to get more bruising and foulness.
I stuck this cycle of mood changes and his controlling for 15 years how stupid this. PLEASE ANY WOMEN READING THIS ON THE FIRST SIGN OF CONTROL AND VIOLENCE STOP BY GETTING OUT OF THE TOXIC RELATIONSHIP. it is will not be easy as you will be as you think in love but you are in love with the persona he attracts you to him. He gets into your heart and pants and can make amazing love with you, then you find you have another side to his nature the controller, the aggressor, the violence. The police had been involved numerous times and I had fallen short of prosecuting somehow in my head feeling I was putting him in jail. The police saying no he will be the one putting himself in jail with his behaviour.
He had problems I had had wanted to heal him. Even got him on the DVIP programme. But the beatings continued and the controlling continued. I began to feel like the police had warned me women snap.. I got out of the relationship as I had had enough. I could not take anymore and felt I could murder him .. yes me put on earth to care and nurse and love .. I was manipulated by him to sign over the property and I FOOLISHLY DID.. to get out.....
It turns out he was seeing another woman a younger woman that he could have children with. He married her and moved her into our house where I had been beaten up many times. A house I had helped to pay for with my busy shifts. They have two children and I have met his wife called round one time to tell her to be careful and that if he starts his violence upon her to call the police immediately as there are numerous file call out on him from myself and neighbours that heard his attacks on me. But she says he is lovely man. Perpetrators are brilliant actors to cover their inner toxicity by being able to project a persona of the good person, the highly respected society citizen. They gaslight and try to make their victim look as the bad one. When talking with his new wife I could tell she had the impression I was the problem not him. So he had woven his tale to suit his needs.
So I lost my assets to husband #2 he controlled the divorce out of court filing papers so no intrusion into the DV history or challenge to split assests by a judge!
My career ruined I felt unable to give of myself and I felt ashamed of the situation I had allowed myself to fall into.
I was housed by the council and then I met with my Moroccan husband #3 stupidly now as I look back from a relationship on facebook. I had one night been feeling so depressed with PTSD that I could have lost myself completely in the mess I was in. This young man started to chat with me.. and the relationship blossomed... I managed to return to some work as a nurse & some part time teaching on a pre nursing course and I met him and it felt that he was truly caring for me and adored me. We married in Casablanca, it felt secure with the their government scrutinising the relationship as per procedure when a foreign national marries. The Moroccan gov ensuring that the bride is not being scammed into marriage for migration.
But I was scammed in my vulnerability! When Amine Bahhaj came to the UK he started to change, time out of the house home late and drunk! The violence began to lead to me on one morning being brutally kicked and sustained the fracture to my left ulna. See my past posts on this to read how I protected him from arrest and then him leaving me two years after to move in with Sylvia, a Portuguese national ....and self confessed prostitute living in a multiple occupancy house in Hounslow. This then led to me revealing the truth of my fracture and his arrest but the CPS failing to prosecute him.
So my journey, my flight path became one of turning my pain into campaign.
Campaign on a key point that perpetrators will financially cripple their victims.
Careers ruined
Business ruined
Investments taken
Property taken
the victim or we must say survivor of this abuse left at the mercy of DWP weak support. The system battering women survivors with drops in support! A dangerous failing of a State Duty of Care as per UN directives!
You will see in this blog how I have tried to campaign for a better financial support to help women heal through the PTSD and detox from the toxicity of violence upon her whole being.
Survival is a very important point to stress as each beating could have resulted in loss of my life.
you will read from this blog and my other blogs that I have tried so hard in my survivorship journey.
I have taken my campaign to other areas of pain in the world. Become and activist on Domestic and International issues so have:-
Joined the WASPI campaign as my birth in 1950s led me to fall into the loss of 6 years State Pension another failing by government. This would have given me some financial dignity and although I now get State Pension, the £46,000 lost to the rise in retirement age we are all fighting for would be very very useful now in my life.
I have Helped refugees and set up my own personal project Family Link Up that took me even to time in Eleonas Camp Athens.
I have mentored a Palestinian Nurse through his BSc Nursing he went on to gain a MSc in Pubic Health, got a paper published in the European Journal of Oncology Nursing and now works for Medicin Sans Frontiere. I am in pain with him and his pregnant wife being in the horrors of Gaza now, But has a write this blog just had a message come in he and his wife alive! Each day I worry for their safety & survival.
I have campaigned to help Richard when he needed to turn his pain into campaign to free his wife Nazanin from Iran.
I have boldly gone in to parliament to attend All Party Parliamentary Groups to get my voice heard for other DV survivors in the APPG Poverty and for my refugees. Joined the APPG Friends of Syria that the late Jo Cox MP created and learnt much about war zones uncensored material on weapons and injuries.
But I have not yet achieved the goal of improved financial support for survivors of DV and in fact a need for reparation! You will see how I have interacted with the Victim's Commissioner and also a Whitehall Enquiry on DV.
I have attended UN & EU zoom conferences on international issues and got my voice heard and valued in question times. So I know I do have a value as Marjorie, the person I am from all my experiences.
I have studied short university online courses on international law and human rights to enhance my portfolio with a view to find some paid post,
I have concern over the health impact of climate change and campaigned for this too.
Tried to enhance my languages skills in Arabic, Dutch, German and French..
I do have a value as me but I am in pain a not being the woman of substance I could have been and should have been to be able to navigate my way through my most vulnerable years as I move further into old age. No major financial assets, property and investments to not only help me if needed in old age but to leave my family when I depart this world,
But being the pilot of my life you will see from my other blog that I am proactive at Brunel University helping with Ageing Studies So I have a personal value as indeed other local OAPs in their Older Person Reference Group.
Yesterday I needed some counselling support as I was depressed and I went along to the Women's centre in Hillingdon. They have not got the drop in service like I have experienced before. I did however have some time to try and reach out to the way I was feeling and the need to collectively campaign for a better support... and that here I am in my older years still feeling the effects of being a DV survivor. The team were to go into a meeting but did hear what I was saying. One of the team accessed this blog on my request to use my blog, my case to see the support that is needed.
We need government to listen and act in response to the not only immediate needs of DV but the long term consequences.
The team offered me a possible placement on their short course of healing on the journey to acceptance of the situation. I feel this will not be appropriate as i NEED to continue turning my pain into campaign for all women to be able to heal and detox from the ugliness of violence and abuse upon them. This needs the practicality of better platform of financial support on the journey of life rebuild.
I went across the road to the Centre of Hope that Councillor Becky Haggar had set up for those diagnosed with Brain Tumour. I have worked alongside Becky when we were both volunteers at the Community Cancer Centre in Yiewsley. I needed to speak with her to tell her of my pain now at this milestone of 70 year age. She was in a meeting so left her a card from the centre shop and found also this bracelet (see pic) in the centre shop. The colours of Chakras in this bracelet has been as if Becky holding my hand while I am wearing it.. I hope we have time together to share my pain expressed now in this post. She is a kind caring person with deep understanding. I hope she will help be a voice for women survivors too. We all need a Centre of Hope within our being. Amal is the Arabic for Hope. With hope comes a need for peace... inner... and outer around the world. 
