You failed to see that my child would suffer for the rest of their life from being beaten as a baby. You failed to see that my child would carry invisible wounds from being neglected, from being abused, from being hurt at an age before memories could even be put into words.
You failed to see that my child would suffer for the rest of their life from being beaten as a baby. You failed to see that my child would carry invisible wounds from being neglected, from being abused, from being hurt at an age before memories could even be put into words.
You failed to see that my children carried those injuries from their very earliest experiences—from being carried in a womb surrounded by toxicity, surrounded by pain, surrounded by abuse, surrounded by stress.
You failed to see that they were not just individual children with individual stories. They were siblings. They lived alongside one another. They saw, they heard, they felt. They shared fear, uncertainty and loss. Even when the harm happened to one, it happened around the others. They each carried the same journey in different ways.
You failed to see my children. You failed to see what they carried. You failed to see what they needed. You failed to see that every moment of terror left a mark. Every moment of overwhelm left a mark. Every moment they were left frightened and alone left a mark.
You failed to understand that children who have no words to tell us what happened still carry what happened. You failed to see that there is a lasting legacy. The things that happen to children become part of them. They shape their brains, their bodies, their minds, their relationships, their sense of safety—the very way they experience the world.
You failed to support them. You failed to plan for their needs. And then…
You failed to recognise that a baby who ended up in hospital with injuries would need far more than just a ‘forever love,’ a ‘forever mum,’ or a ‘forever dad.’ They would need people who understood what those injuries meant. They would need support that matched the depth of what they had lived through.
You failed to realise that while some injuries are seen as scars on the outside, others are carried deep inside for a lifetime.
You failed to acknowledge what we already know. You ignored the science. You ignored the evidence. You ignored the research. You ignored the people who have spent their lives trying to understand what happens to children whose earliest experiences are filled with fear instead of safety.
When adults come back from war, we are getting better at recognising the invisible wounds they carry. Yet somehow we still fail to recognise those same invisible wounds in our children.
We fail to see it in the youngest ones, who are hurt before they can speak, before they can reason, before they can understand what is happening to them. They cannot explain it. They cannot make sense of it. But it is still there, living inside them.
It comes out in feelings they cannot name. In fear. In anger. In panic. In shutdown. In heartbreak. It is held in their decisions, in their breath, in their pain, in their silence, and in their communication. It shows up in family life, in development, in learning, in listening, in sitting still, in playing, in eye contact, in trust, in relationships. It is there in every part of their lives.
But instead of asking, “What’s wrong with this child?” too often we fail to ask, “What happened to this child?”
And because we keep ignoring what they carry, we keep failing them.
My heartbreak will never end because the systems failed to see my children’s pain. But their heartbreak should never have happened. They carried the consequences of what adults did to them long before they could understand it. And by continuing to ignore those invisible injuries, we have only caused them more.