My story took place over several years. I decided to write about one person (my father) in as much as I could about emotional, physical and sexual abuse. It took me to look at how my father and my mother were abusive in some ways together. I wrote about that as much as possible. Then, I ended up writing about my mother.

For me, I did not have one particular story. That is the approach that I took. I ended up reading this to my therapist. I must say that it has provided a lot of enlightenment to me. I found myself needing to journal more after this.

I don't know if this is helpful. I have concluded that I wrote it. I need to go back and do more detail and explore the feelings.

I also found that writing about you remember may help in piecing together stuff that you don't remember or provide a context for what you don't remember. I don't know if that makes sense.

Hi butterfly9,

Thank you for sharing how you went about doing the writing.

I may just work on the fragments as I remember them and how I felt about them and see where that goes.

I find it difficult to go from start to finish too so I tend to work from what I remember and go from there. When I first started writing my story I wrote like I always had; focussing a lot I the physicality of what happened. I've slowly been able to focus more on the emotions and have realised that, for me, that is more important and means I don't need to necessarily remember everything. My shame points and triggers reveal themselves through the process but the emotions are the commonest thread. Since I started working from an emotional point of view I have stopped getting so many memory streams where my mind will show different abuses one after the other -- I think this was my minds way of showing the common base emotion for instance: showing me rapes where I really felt the powerlessness or where a belief started to change.

This change has taken me a long time to develop to. I didn't have the vocabulary to express my emotions well enough and I was afraid to attempt it. But in doing so my speed of healing is a much more natural pace. Instead of trying to force forward I am able to have rest breaks between because this is something I do naturally now. I tend to have a few weeks of pain and searching and then when I manage to confront whatever it is (or my brain realises I don't understand what it's saying yet) my urge to journal slows and my mood improves...I am given the space to take in what I have been discovering. This could just e something that happens anyway but I think it has a lot to do with how my way of working has changed.

Also, don't be afraid to extend your commentary through other abuses. Often expanding into others whilst working on one particular part allows us to see connections we have formed or stronger negative beliefs.

i think that all of our stories are different - because they can never be the same. There will never be another person exactly like you, with your experiences.

So each of us takes a slightly different approach with our stories. And I think too that we write them at different times of our lives. I say them, because although there may be one big 'epic' that you write, my guess is that we all come back and write more at other times.

Maybe something reminds us of something else, or we receive new information that helps us understand part of our past better.

So, for this writing, what is most important to you?

What areas do you want to cover?