I’m currently writing a memoir about my marriage - a story in its own right, in which my two sons have shone through in a wondrous way, displaying their resilience in a world which frequently required something deeply special from each of them. I am constantly amazed at their ability to rise to the next day. This story - our story - is in honour of their achievements. 
 
Extract:
 
Never would the 40-year old Alicia have believed that her gloriously wonderful, privileged childhood could lead to this. Certainly her life contained nothing that was particularly unusual or alarming; it seems boringly ‘normal’ - and she was not happy with this! 
 
 
Why then, some 18 years into her marriage, did she find herself stuck in what seemed like a ‘drama’ of the worst kind - that which seemed to belong on the TV or the cinema screen? How did she arrive at this juncture? What was going on?
 
The drama seemed interminable; forever present. When would her life get back to ‘normal’?
 
———ooOoo———
 
Was there any connection between this strange experience and the ‘hidden world’ of her childhood - growing up as a child within a world of ‘oddity’ and ‘difference’ in an old asylum, a mental hospital …
 
As the daughter of a Consultant Psychiatrist this was a requirement of medical families in those days: this was the strange ‘hidden’ world of some unlucky adults in which 5 year old Alicia found herself. 
 
Mysterious sounds that fill the air; glimpses of human madness; shrieks and shouts that make no sense in the simple, trusting world of this small girl. Suddenly there had fallen an eerie silence; it was 1953 - and the silence heralds the advent of the use of tranquillising medications amongst a body of humankind who deserve more…