Hi! I’m Zowie,
I was not born into your typical family of middle class, my mother was a heroin addict and my father wasn’t around, I have one sister who is ten years older than me. I was born in a very small town called Moe in Gippsland Victoria. We moved when I was a toddler to Fitzroy in Melbourne and from then on we lived in a sky-rise commission block living to survive and that was it. For those who are from the USA you would refer to these buildings as the projects and this is what I called home for what felt like an eternity.
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My community was immersed in poverty, crime, domestic violence, prostitution, addiction and grief. A place where at least one or more family members had done a substantial amount of prison time for crimes that were only convicted in order to keep the family fed. Home invasions, raids and police attendance was considered the norm. Growing up we saw things that no child should ever see. Before I had even reached my fifth birthday I had already experienced sexual assault, neglect, the daily visit from our beautiful neighbour with her face black and blue from her so called loving husband, a murder convicted in our playground over a family court dispute if you could ever imagine hell on earth this is unit was it.
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I had a lot of awareness around addiction and mental health from a very young age, I understood the wreckage it created as my mother’s disease and mental health progressed I could see her struggling more and more each day, as she got worse so did our lives. My sister now became the carer to my mum and I, bear in mind she wasn’t even old enough to hold a license yet she was now responsible for our overall home and safety. After years of living this way when my sister was fourteen she walked out, I still to this day remember the rejection I felt. At four years old everything is black and white and I couldn’t see that I wasn’t the reason she was leaving but instead she had come to despise the very woman who had given her life “I could understand why” now I look back on it. Life had been a struggle from as long as I could remember but I always found peace in the fact that we had each other. As long as my sister was around I was feed at least one meal a day, I was bathed and she would wrap her little pinkie around mine and whisper ”sisters forever” which gave me hope that we would grow up protecting one another and escape this life.
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The day she left was the day my mother left too although physically she was there emotionally she was gone, my sister was the only thread that was holding us all together. I was only four and I needed to grow up quickly because now nobody else was going to feed me. Nobody was going to bath me and nobody was going to protect me other than myself and I did my best for the following year until I started primary school. Immediately the school contacted child protection and I was removed from my mother and placed into the system I was thrown back and forth between foster carers and my mother, until my sister was eighteen and took me full time. My mother got herself into rehab shortly after this and within time I went to live with here again it was like overnight she had transformed into a completely different person. She had become spiritual and had her life together. For my mother’s journey of addiction of using everyday had come to an end and unfortunately this where mine began.
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At this point I was a young teenager I felt different to everyone else, I was already being diagnosed with mental health in which I was told I had ADHD, PDSD but I knew deep down it was more than this because really all I wanted was to die. I had my first drink when I was twelve years old and instantly I fell in love it was almost as though all the pain, all the memories had melted away and suddenly I was free and safe for the first time in my life. I drank for the following two years chasing the first experience which must I add was never accomplished and by fourteen I was chasing much bigger thing like drugs to fill this void.
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As the years progressed I quickly became more addicted more mentally unstable and before I knew it I was celebrating my nineteenth birthday in a strip club where I worked, full of thousands of people and I had never felt so alone, so broken and would have given anything for the pain to end. I lived in addiction for seventeen years and in the end, I had fourteen recovery attempts. I had lost three of my five children, my marriage ended, my family were left disappointed and disconnected, I had five car accidents, to many counts of overdose and alcohol poising. I was a frequent flyer of psychiatric wards it all happened and some.
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On the 22/09/2018 I woke up and decided enough was enough and I haven’t had a drink or drug or any mind altering substance since this date I’m not gonna lie the journey has been one of the hardest things I have ever done but as each day goes by it gets easier. Today as I sit here writing my story I think “What a life I’ve lived” and “What a life I am living.” I would have never believed if someone had of told me when I was that little girl, that I would survive and go on to become an advocator for change, a recovery coach and a motivational speaker. That I would one day share my story of hope to thousands of people around the world.
If my story gives you anything let it be the proof that you can change the cards you have been dealt. Whilst I will never have the power over my addictions and mental health, I do have the power over my actions and when I look back on my journey I was not prepared to just settle and give up. I took the action of change and I continue to a day at a time. In creating Change to Surrender I was simply taking an action. Little did I understand how powerful this action would go on to be.
You are the creator of your destiny what will your story be?