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Written by Stephanie King

Stephanie King From ages four to sixteen the constants in my life were rejection, neglect, poverty, physical, emotional and sexual abuse, inconsistency and insecurity. My mother taught me with deliberate precision, how to truly hate myself.

With occasional exception, the only person I could trust was me. I was a lonely child. If I may be so bold, I was also a beautiful child, blessed with a magnificent soul that was bursting with love, warmth and an amazingly kind nature that has never left me. No thanks to the adults around me. I just gratefully call it a blessing.

The first two years of my life were spent living in a nunnery in Harare, Zimbabwe after which time, a foster home was arranged for me. I lived there like a princess until I was four. I was cared for, nurtured, loved beyond words and slightly spoilt.

Then, my natural mother stole me away and with police in hot pursuit, we left for South Africa. Life was a minefield from then on. I remember idolising her and not appreciating my life with my foster parents sufficiently to know that what seemed exciting would later devastate and scar me for life.

My mother had re-married after a disastrous first attempt to a viciously, violent man who took her sons from that marriage away. They were my two older half brothers. I met the eldest for the first time when I was twenty six and I have never met the other.

I was an illegitimate pawn that didn’t work. (My father disappeared upon my birth, terrified of my mother. Irrespective of the truth or falsehood of it, my heart was broken for the millionth time when it was unwittingly revealed to me in my twenties that mum tried to abort me, unsuccessfully).

It seems my mother wanted me back because she was now married and had a home in Cyrildene, South Africa. The idea was fraught with misjudgement. My stepfather despised me immediately, making no secret of it. His plans were different. He was from Australia and intended returning there and did.

My mother had another baby, my beautiful sister, Helen. Then she left me with her aunt and uncle in South Africa while she travelled to Australia with Helen. She was always leaving me with people to watch me. It used to terrify me. I felt so abandoned, like the ultimate burden. The trip away was to prepare a ‘home’ for us in Australia.

Situation worsening, my mother discovered that her new partner was a powerfully connected, dangerous and wanted criminal, later imprisoned for armed robbery. He was released for a time when I arrived in Australia continuing to express his loathing for me. Years later, my mother explained to me that he was jailed again as a result of her testimony which led her to run away with Helen and I.

Before that, he and his family insisted my mother send me away. She agreed on the proviso that Helen would be institutionalised with me. So both Helen and I at ages three and nine respectively, were admitted into Roslyn Hall Children’s Home in Rockdale, Sydney.

Here I found myself torn from a family that adored me, a lifestyle that was consistent, secure and fundamentally sound, in a foreign country, with a South African accent, a Greek stepfather and now living in an institution for children from broken and dysfunctional homes. I totally blamed myself for all of it.

There seemed to be reason for people to hate me everywhere. There was no place in the world where I was tolerable. Not at home with my mother because she and her husband’s family rejected me. Not at school because I was a ‘wog’. Not in the home because even though I was one of the ‘home kids’, I was not Australian. No one, anywhere had reason to like me even though none of these people actually knew the first thing about me.

On a positive note however, it is largely thanks to the three years I spent on and off in Roslyn Hall that I was able to develop some life skills and self discipline. Church every Sunday helped with developing a very strong moral fibre to which I remain true until this day. They didn’t brain wash me, just provided guidance.

It was from this home that my mother snatched Helen and I on the run from her now estranged husband. We lived as borders in people’s homes which was when I was most vulnerable. Two of the men from these families saw fit to explore my innocent body indecently in my mother’s absence. I am still sick to the stomach when I remember it. There was also a teenage girl who would ‘practice’ on me and another girl not much older than me who would want to ‘play’ every night. Unfortunately we slept in the same bed and I was too scared to tell anyone anything about it.

The time I did try to tell mum only exacerbated my situation. “Liar”, she called me and asked me how I could do this to her. I should be ashamed of myself.
Helen’s father caught up with my mother, pistol in hand, I ended up back in the home and Helen went to her father. When I was twelve the home closed and I spent a couple of years living with my mother but at fourteen, because I had left school and was now working, she decided it was time for me to get out there on my own. “I won’t have you using me.” She organised a flat for me and visited me once after that.

I don’t know how I survived this time. My wages didn’t stretch beyond my rent and train fare to and from work. I ate Tom Pipers for dinner, had no fridge and experienced a loneliness that had begun to make death look like a better option. I remember sitting in my lounge room one night experiencing an excruciating agony in my heart. I could literally feel my chest contracting with the pain. Breathing was difficult.

After everything that I had lived through. After all the rejection, abuse, those horrible men and women whose disgusting hands and bodies still rape me to this day. I can still feel their advances on my body like this happened last night. My mother repeatedly abandoning me, leaving me with ill meaning strangers, this was it.

After all of that, this tiny flat with nothing in every sense of that word, in it was my stopping place. The worst part of it was, I had no idea how to do anything about it. Back to endurance. I hated myself.

Now I understand why whenever I was anywhere near alcohol, I drank.

At fifteen, I met a prince whom I married at seventeen. He and his family provided me with a home, food and hope. We made dreams reality including the birth of our two magnificent children. In my life, they are the cherubs God sent to help me stay in touch with that beautiful child that was still inside of me and to keep my grounded.

Sadly that marriage was not ideal either. While we achieved a lot in a material sense and had periods when we were incredibly close, I endured a great deal of pain within the marriage because of the extreme emotional dysfunction that seethed beneath a “Leave it to Beaver” family surface. We were very young when we were married and the pressure of having only single friends and some cultural influence led my partner to countless infidelities.

I was aware of these but was too conditioned and frightened for many years to act or even speak against it. I was taught that ‘you look the other way, it is only hit and run’ besides, this family was all the security I had ever known. Although the affairs tormented and mortified me at every occurrence, for a long time this was better than the wretched loneliness I suffered in childhood. Rejection perpetuated within this marriage with every unfaithful act. The marriage broke down when I was twenty nine.

The breakdown was not amicable and I found myself literally fighting to survive on a part-time wage and Social Security. Child maintenance was not forthcoming and the negative emotional dial was ramped up to extreme. Every attempt was made to undermine me either emotionally or financially so that I would run back.

That wasn’t going to happen. I had given the relationship fifteen years and stood by this man who repeatedly hurt me. I had found some very good friends who helped support me and I now realised I the nature of the relationship would never change. I did not want my daughter to grow up believing that was an acceptable example of a marriage nor for my son to presume treating a partner that way was admissible. It was a frightening move, going back to being alone and now with two children to raise.

Would I become the mother that had so neglected me? By leaving, was I condemning my children to suffer the life I had led? Thing is, I am not my mother. I am a very different person. In this story, staying was actually a more pathological choice. It made no sense for me to go on living in a pain that very nearly drove me to suicide. I had come so close. I went to visit a doctor telling him I had not been able to sleep for months and needed something to help me. I went to a chemist in a shopping centre, filled the prescription and buying a milkshake with the intention of using it to help me swallow the tablets. I sat there looking at the unopened container, reading the label.

Suddenly that inner voice screamed at me. “You cannot abandon the children now.” I moved my head from this pathetic and destructive place, common sense beginning to overcome this ridicule.

After that experience, I moved on. My job was now to raise these children with the very best that I had to offer them and nothing less would suffice. I had made a decision to separate from the marriage for them as much as for myself. This was where my head needed to be.

My mother reappeared on the scene after being absent from my life for many years. All of her stuff came reeling back to me and I decided then, that her presence in my life and those of my children had to be erased. Instead of supporting me in one of the most difficult times in my life, she only brought destruction as she always did.

All of the childhood stuff caught up with me and I began to drink excessively. I had so much to do. I knew I now needed to move my focus to how I was going to raise these children alone. Very literally alone. I realised that remaining as a receptionist in a gymnasium was not necessarily going to lead me to a career that would provide sufficient income for the three of us. I came across an advertisement in the paper seeking bank tellers. I dialled that number at least three hundred times. I wasn’t giving up until I got through. Rather, I was not giving up until I got that job.

I still have the successful applicant letter I received not long after. Wow, little, silly, uneducated, unlovable me was actually able to achieve something constructive entirely on her own.

I am pleased to say that I was a good worker and must have had some other qualities because I was promoted approximately every eighteen months. I am still unable to express how happy that made me. I was just a little nothing, no-one person who had no real education and it was amazing to feel achievement at this level. A very new experience for me. One for which I am very grateful.

Still, things were very difficult on the home front. We had moved house three times in two years until I finally settled. While things were going well at work, I found managing the four jobs I had and one time very difficult with also caring for the children. Leaving them at childcare was absolutely traumatic for me the first few weeks. There were all kinds of visions of abuse running through my head. I saw awful things happening to my children because of my I experiences in childhood. It took a lot of courage to leave them in the childcare centre but I am thrilled to say, they were very good to my children. This was not the same as the insecure places my mother had left me.

I ended up working full time with the bank but my son suffered with his health in the early years and continuing was no longer a viable option for me despite the promising career. Question was, how does one return to part time work and still develop skills sufficient to build a career. To me the answer lay in education.

With counselling and the company of very good and loyal friends, I began the journey of turning life around. After all, if Nelson Mandela can endure thirty years in jail where I have no doubt he was bitterly tortured, be released from prison to later preside over South Africa, surely with perseverance and determination I could make things different here as well. He held to himself. He remained true to his cause despite his being terrorised. I found that incredibly inspiring. The people who represented my family were conspiring to manipulate me. I had to hold to myself and to the needs of my children if leaving my partner was going to prove fruitful for all of us in the future.

To begin this journey, I applied to Melbourne’s RMIT to commence a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration. I was disappointingly not offered a place in the first round. Dead end? No! Not for me. I rang the university and spoke to a very encouraging woman told me I should write a letter and attach a resume outlining why an offer should be made to me in the second round. She told me that she would recommend me because the phone call showed I had perseverance, the very thing you need to succeed in education. I did as she asked and commenced my degree in February of 2000. I had my first euphoric experience the day I received my second round offer.

The battle had only just begun however. My tasks in life were to raise the children now eight and nine while working part time and undertaking my degree with a supplement from Social Security. Did we live on the poverty line? You bet. I struggled from week to week to make ends meet and every visit to the supermarket was tallied up before I even got in there. My car was an absolute bomb that embarrassingly smoked behind us but I didn’t have the money to fix it. I was beginning to wonder what we had in the house that I could sell so I could buy groceries because things had become that desperate.

It got worse of course because university is not cheap either. You need books and materials. I had to give up work for a period because Jonathan was simply too sick and it became an issue for my employers. My credit card debt was building and I was so worried about how I was going to get though all of this. I had to access my superannuation at one point just so we could go on living. I stopped just short of going to the Salvation Army at times. That raised too many old memories for me which would have caused me to question my conviction. I just kept going, finding new ways of saving money through choosing very affordable meals and cautioning against waste of any kind.

University introduced me to the internet which had a life changing impact on me. Not much mention of my father here so far but I had spent years and years searching for him to no avail. Then one day, while on the internet, a little voice said “I wonder what would happen if…” So, I did it.

Two men came up with my father’s name and ironically, one of them was a doctor of psychology at the University of Birmingham in England. I chose the one I thought he would most likely be and sent an email. No response. Tried calling and his secretary said she would pass on the message. No response. One evening I was at home with a girlfriend enjoying a glass of wine and I decided to try once more. This time it was a man’s voice on the phone and I assumed this was the elusive him.

“My name is Stephanie and I sent you an email recently. I was wondering whether you know anything about a man with the same name, I have been looking for him for twenty years.”

“Tell me more about yourself.”
“I was born in Gwelo, Zimbabwe in 1963. Oh, perhaps you are confused because I was christened Sharon. I have changed my name to Stephanie but my mother christened me Sharon.”

“Tell me a bit more about your mother.”
I can’t remember what I said about my mother but I got to a point and could speak no more.
“Do you have any idea who I am?”
“Yes, I think I do.”
“Does that mean I know who you are?”
“Yes, I think it does!”

I fell to my knees, the tears rolling down my cheeks. He didn’t reject me. He didn’t deny me. He didn’t pretend not to know who I was even though I gave him every opportunity to do so.

Someone had finally acknowledged me. My father.
The emotion that ensued was incomprehensible. I was dazed for days but I knew I had to meet him. It felt to me as though my very life depended on it.

Now I was in my second year at university, I had found my father after all this time and I felt invincible. Not for long though. After dad returned to England there was an emotional tide that gripped me which I could not articulate. Not even in my own mind. I had to disconnect with the emotional processing because despite this enormous occurrence, I still had all of the rest of my life to see to.

I got halfway through my degree and wondered whether I had done the right thing. Thoughts of giving up were rife in my head and I doubted I could go on living like this. Finances, the pressure of meeting university deadlines and my need to absolutely excel in every subject and of course, meeting with my Dad and holding down a job was a struggle.

I was on the verge of giving up but started seeing a counsellor from RMIT and I think I was blessed with a very sensible and thorough psychologist. I didn’t fight this hard to let this go halfway!!!!!!!!!! That would be sacrilege.

This introduced a whole new wave of emotional stuff. We began working on the deeper layers so continuance of my degree seemed superficial but at the same time, the sense of security that came with knowing that I was dealing with the issues that could immobilise me laid the path for me to continue. And I did.

I have since graduated a Bachelors Degree in Business Administration with Distinction and was invited to undertake an Honours Year. I could not afford to continue with my studies, as much as I would have loved to undertake the Honours Year, and immediately sought work.

I have since also completed a Diploma in Financial Services (Financial Planning), have commenced the Advanced Diploma and have embarked upon a career with a successful and growing accounting and financial services business as a paraplanner on my journey to becoming a financial planner. I had worked with this firm when it was a relatively small suburban practice employing approximately 18 people in 2002/03.

I left to complete my degree and see to my son’s health and to my delight was welcomed back in 2007 after gaining two years of paraplanning experience with ANZ Financial Planning. I was welcomed back because of the experience I had gained in the meantime, because of my dedication to the industry. I also brought with me an enterprising demeanour with a mind for possibilities and a dogged drive to move things forward even when circumstances are difficult.

The work of a paraplanner is not commonly known unless you are in the financial planning industry.

My role (and that of most parplanners) at Matthew Steer Chartered Accountants is to support financial planners by gathering client information both through client meetings, research and correspondence and to collate and assess this information to identify appropriate financial planning strategies to maximise wealth, manage taxation, minimise risk and establish appropriate succession planning. That is a very simplistic summary of the work of paraplanners because there is a tremendous amount of research and analysis that goes into the recommendations and expected outcomes written into financial plans by paraplanners for presentation by financial planners. In some cases a completed plan can take days or weeks reliant upon the complexity of one’s financial situation.

The work I do also includes training two junior paraplanners not only on how to strategise and develop a sound financial plan but also to manage our clients needs from the first contact and onwards. Note I did not refer to the end because in good financial planning there is no end. It is imperative to keep monitoring your financial situation so that your financial and personal goals and needs are continuously met over the long term.

What that means is that in part, I am also responsible for managing financial reviews for our clientele.
I love life with my children Alexandra and Jonathan who are now ages seventeen and sixteen.

Alexandra has successfully completed her VCE and Jonathan will commence his in 2008.

They are beautiful people and I am honoured to have them as my children.

While I would not live it again, I am grateful for my childhood. It taught me so much about how not to be as an adult. It also built in me a dogged ability to persevere (endurance), which proved useful in my years after divorce and through university. Desperation brought about a determination to keep going despite the immense emotional agony not to mention fear. I remember nothing more in my life than I do fear. It has been a faithful companion all my life but I have also learned to use courage to achieve my dreams anyway which would not have been possible in the absence of fear.

The future is full of possibilities for me and my children. I am, as pleasantly branded by many of my primary school teachers, a dreamer. I believe that I will reach my dreams even though I have times when I feel discouraged.

In the near future, moving to the role of financial planner is my intention coupled with furthering my studies to include the Advanced Diploma in Financial Planning and Certified Financial Planner (an equivalent to the accountants’ CPA). I later intend to undertake a masters in Business Administration to get me to the doctorate I would have done earlier had circumstance allowed.

In continuing to raise my children, I realise the influence I have now will be to keep reinforcing the values we have lived with, striving to be courageous when terrified, remaining strong and persevering when life gets tough, seeing the world and the human beings in it with tremendous compassion, especially never to judge or hurt another and to give wherever possible, maintain integrity so that we can always hold our heads up high to the world and have no reason to feel shame and above all, never, ever, ever stop dreaming or give up on those dreams.

I realised the dream of finding my father and delightfully remain in contact with him.
I found the courage also to let go of my mother for the sake of myself and my children but without bitterness or hatred.

I love both my father and mother but I also have exactly the relationship with each of them that I wish for.

Eventually, I believe that my life will make room for a well built (in every sense of that word), charming if not cheeky, handsome, intelligent fella with very similar values who is looking for the brilliant, tenacious, attractive and very modest me.

It is not actually something I think about terribly often and I have had my share of men that didn’t match me or my children. That led me when I was about thirty seven to decide against partnering until I found a truly compatible person who sought something very similar to me (my soul mate) and had no malicious agenda which seems to have been a bit of a pattern for me in the past. He’s out there, I just know it. We have simply been waiting for the right time.

My values include:
•   Courage
•   Perseverance
•   Faith
•   Compassion
•   Integrity
•   Honesty
•   Knowledge/education
•   Gratitude
•   Dreaming
Choices by Stephanie King January 2008.

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