Onion Therapy

A Very Bad Start in Life

Given the choice my Mum wouldn’t have had children at all, but she was from a devout Roman Catholic family and it was her solemn duty. She was thirty-three when I was born in the Leicester Royal Infirmary sixty-one years ago and I was her firstborn. She’d had a very difficult pregnancy and to top that she developed what we now know as severe post-natal depression and all but rejected me. Every opportunity she had she would palm me off onto anyone and everyone for as long as she could. Not the best start in life. I don’t know whether it was because she never really recovered from her depression, but she always made it clear that having me had ruined her life and often told me in frustration and anger that she could not tolerate me at any price. As a result, my early years were very difficult. I tried in every way possible to get her attention, but no matter what I did, it never worked.

When I was nine months old my Mum became pregnant again and my sister Carole was born. Carole was a very sickly and weak baby as she had been born with a ruptured diaphragm and couldn’t keep her feed down. She had to have an operation to correct it and then was in a plaster cast chair for many months. Ironically, Mum took to Carole even though she was much more demanding than I had ever been; this meant I was side-lined still further creating ever more emotional distance between me and my Mum. I’ve learned all this from family and friends as I grew older.

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