"I'm Keeping My Baby"

“I’m keeping my Baby” is the first of three books, spanning four decades and three different continents. You’ll first meet Lena in 1980 as a fiercely independent 20-year-old entering the glitzy world of London’s most famous casinos. She’ll take you with her as she charges through life with her baby, changing continents twice, before she begins healing from decades of postnatal psychosis, multiple addictions, and finally finds her son's father. Lena didn’t know how to be vulnerable, she didn’t even know she was. Her life was black and white for decades, with tunnel vision and no space for anything but survival. She was cut off from herself, blocked from emotion and most bodily sensations, barely noticed her surroundings, and she certainly never heard the birds sing. Instead, she was shut down, frozen in trauma, and oblivious to what happened to her as a child. Any memories that surfaced were simply narrated dispassionately, like a story that wasn’t even hers, devoid of understanding and consequence. The memories were locked away so tightly in one box, inside another box, inside another and there was no way she was going to get anywhere near them for decades. Nothing made sense to her, and she didn’t have a clue that her behaviors were what others called feral or erratic. To Lena, it was all perfectly ‘normal’. It was who she was, well, so she thought. Through her addiction's recovery, Lena became aware that she’d been repeatedly sexually groomed and abused as a child and slowly began to grasp the lasting damage of that on her body, mental health and her precious life. Lena was cascading through life, numb and disassociated with no answers. This book is her invitation for you to join her as she slowly wakes up from the most horrendous dream and begins to thaw. Her intention is to bring you with her through the books, as she arrives back to where she always needed to be - London, where it all began, and where Lena no longer endlessly paces the streets of London looking for answers. She’s finally reclaimed the shards of her shattered life, at last healing her fractured mind and broken heart.