THE TRAUMA OF CHILDHOOD: Does It Still Hold You Back?

Me sat in the pub kitchen, looking delighted before a Halloween party.
I was shy then, believe it or not!!

It’s funny how the strangest things can take you straight back to your childhood.

This morning it was a random post I saw on Facebook, and I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it since.

Just so you know what I’m talking about, here’s the post in question:

 

This post really resonated with me, because I was immediately transported back to the new September terms at junior school, and that dreaded task in our English session where we all had to write about what we did over the summer.

Now I loved English and I loved writing… but hated this particular task for a very good reason.

Although my mum and I weren’t entirely poverty-stricken and destitute (mostly!), I was still one of those poor last-year's-uniform kids who never got to go away on holiday.

Whilst the other kids in the class came back into our small well-to-do village school with their suntanned skin, souvenir neon wristbands and tales of waterparks, it was humiliating to have to admit that the furthest I went in my summer holiday was my Nanna’s pub in Leeds City Centre.

 

If you've ever visited this pub - I'm sorry!
But it wasn't that bad when we had it...

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not asking for a sad violin ensemble or a woe-is-me pity party, nor I am saying that my childhood was horrendous.

Especially as I loved being at my Nanna’s pub: bottling up in the morning, playing in the cellar, helping her run the kitchen, and us going to Leeds Market for food supplies.

 

Awww, little tomboy me and my Nanna.
Incidentally, I set out those classy tablecloths and all the paraphernalia every day - obviously deserved that Happy Meal! 

But when you’re the only kid in the class who hasn’t been lavished with nice trips away in the summer, you feel very much like an outcast - and it was embarrassing that other people knew your family couldn’t afford things.
 

Even now, thirty years later, that humiliation still stings.

 


Looking the wrong way, wearing the wrong colour... I just wasn't the same as the others.
But why do we try so hard to fit in, when, each in our own way, we were born to stand out?



What’s the point of me telling you all this?

 

Reminiscence, pricked back to life from a random social media musing.

Part therapy, I suppose, helping me work through some old issues.

Acceptance.

 

If you can’t change things, you should change the way you think about them.

 

So let’s reframe things:

 - In those summers, I got to spend lots of my time with my dearly departed Nanna. 

 - I learnt some work skills, and an independent attitude that has benefitted me for the rest of my life.

- The pub showed me the perils for people who partake in too much alcoholism and fruit machine gambling. Which is why I rarely partake in either.

- My humiliation - and if I’m really honest, jealousy – these feelings made me develop an inherent desire to have and do nice things as well… “just like other people…”. So it’s no coincidence that one of my highest values is travelling – I've been to many countries worldwide as an adult, and so far this year, Venice, Amsterdam and very soon Iceland.

This burning desire ensures I force myself make money to enable me to do nice things… “just like other people”.

- On reflection, it is quite likely that nobody else except me was bothered about my issues – although at the time it felt like everybody knew all about my home life.

Now I’ve grown to realise that it does not matter what others think of you - it’s how you think of yourself that’s important.

And it was a revelation to discover true freedom: how much more enjoyable life is, when you truly do not give a shit what other people think of you.

 

 - My own experiences have made me extremely empathetic to those families who are struggling financially. There’s a very good reason why the majority of my tenants are exactly that sort of family unit – they are just like I used to be.

 And as I type this, although my face still burns with the shame of how poor we used to be, I am proof that it doesn’t mean your life is a write-off.

 

 

I am glad and grateful that property has enabled me to help these families.

 

And it is things like today’s post that evoke vivid memories, which remind me why I have chosen to help this particular tenant market – not the most glamorous, and certainly not the most profitable, but the most worthy?
 

In my eyes, definitely.

 

 

 

PS - ironically, my property career started in that pub, where I ‘refurbished’ one of the catacombs in the cellar and decked it out with a carpet and furniture. Only one tenant ever occupied it though; me – but the rent was so very cheap…

 

 

If you’d like to see further details of how my work helps local families, please visit my  website at www.kellyannmartin.co.uk  

...or follow my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/KellyannMartinProperty/