Although I am not a trauma specialist in a professional capacity, I have experience of working with clients in many different settings and hands on experience of my own healing from a traumatic childhood. I am able to talk about trauma from a personal perspective, facilitating group discussions or as a speaker. Including the impact of trans-generational trauma.
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From my personal experience of suicide bereavement and working with countless people in my role as a SOBS volunteer I am also able to speak about suicide bereavement and what sets it apart from other bereavments
Maike Mullenders was just twenty-one when police broke the devastating news her father had taken his own life. Not only that, but he also left behind a handwritten confession suggesting that he had been ‘physically inappropriate with my daughter’. Maike was painfully aware of her father’s troubled life, but this came as a complete shock – she loved him and had no conscious memory of any sexual abuse.
Thrown into personal turmoil, and questioning her identity and place in the world, she spent the next twenty years trying to uncover the truth. Had he broken her trust in the worst way imaginable?
Was it a symptom of his mental anguish? Or had he constructed a story to make her hate him so her loss might be more manageable? Through deeply personal counselling sessions, extensive research, yoga and meditation she explored the darkest reaches of her subconscious and unearthed ‘memories’ long buried, yet emerged with an ‘answer’ that enabled her to live again, free from the agonising burden of The Confession.
This is Maike’s remarkable journey to hope and peace after her father’s chilling final message pushed her to the brink of insanity.