Carol Naylor's REVIEW it...

                                           More Lost Causes? It was probably around about July 1981. I can't call it life-changing as an experience but it did cause havoc and shaped my life as I know it now. Pear-shaped perhaps? Something definitely went seriously wrong. I kept thinking that someone out there didn't like me very much and it was pay back time. It's still painful thinking about it more than fifty years later. A teenager, home in Leeds. I arrived at York University a bit reluctant to sleeping in student accommodation and having to tolerate self-catering and mixing with lots of odds and sods. It wasn't my idea of heaven. I had to apply for leave of absence and it was so close to the end of term when my timetable was light and I didn't feel so under pressure. I had been studying with the O.U. since my ex thought it unwise to pursue my M,Ed at this time. I ...

Anne, Harry and David. In happier days.   Imagine your worst nightmare coming true, having to confront terrifying phobias that will eventually destroy your soul, your very being. Impossible? No! I am still enmeshed in that nightmare of a world, trapped inside it, body and soul, struggling out of desperation. From another perspective: there are beginnings and inevitably, endings, simply referred to as closures. If the pattern of life is cyclical then we can lay to rest experiences that come to an end naturally. Yes? But sadly for some of us life is not as kind and as clear-cut as this and there are no endings to our miseries. We are unfortunate and miserable victims of an unfair world, a world that no longer cares.   Events mingle, time might cloud over our memories but one thing remains-suffering endures beyond Time. Memories become indistinct and distant. Time, usually a healer, becomes a constant reminder of failure and loss, reinforcing our pain and s...

                                                         courtesy of photobucket.com   There have been two extremely difficult and traumatic periods in life when everything has been bleak and I have felt utter despair: 1981 and 2006 are those two BLACK years.I didn't deal with either of them; I repressed the hurt and anger which psychologists advise is wrong. I was too badly hurt to face not just one, but TWO losses head-on and ran and hid from the hurt and pain that would have destroyed me. The consequences? Years and years later the pain is still there and I know that it will eventually destroy me. They say that love conquers evil but what about pain and suffering like mine? It destroys the human p...