Our Story

WHERE I COME FROM: A CHILDHOOD SHAPED BY WAR

I was born in Liberia and raised in Sierra Leone. By the time I was seven years old, I had already experienced displacement and homelessness. By thirteen, I had survived family separation and the chaos of two civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone. These are not easy things to write — but they are the truth of who I am and where I come from.

In 1993, I made a decision that changed my life. With war closing in around me on the Sierra Leone and Liberia border, I climbed onto a UN peacekeeping truck heading from the Liberia and sierra leone border to Liberia and Hide.  Alone and afraid, but determined to try to find my birth parents. I had just been separated from my uncle, who had been caring for me, and I had nowhere else to turn.

In 1999, I was forced to flee again, this time from Liberia. I spent three years as a refugee in Ghana before finally arriving in the United Kingdom in 2003.

I arrived in this country with new hope. I thought the hardest part was behind me. but I was wrong.

LIFE IN THE UK — FIGHTING TO STAY STANDING 

The struggles I faced in the United Kingdom were different from war — but they were just as relentless.

In 2009, I reached one of the darkest points of my life. I experienced a near-fatal mental health crisis to end it all and was saved only because a neighbour called an ambulance on time. I share this not for sympathy, but because I know there are parents reading this right now who have stood in that same darkness and I want them to know that it is possible to come through it. There is always light at the end of the tunnel.

Between 2011 and 2012, I found myself homeless again in the UK as an immigrant, this time with my one-week-old daughter in my arms. I was a new single mother with no family support, no safety net, and nowhere to turn. During this period, I also survived a kidnapping ordeal in the UK. But I am still here today. And so is my daughter.

For over twenty years, I navigated the UK healthcare system whilst managing chronic health conditions and hidden disabilities. There were times when my daughter from just five years old became my carer. My little girl, who should have been playing and learning and simply being a child, was instead worrying about me. That broke my heart then, and it still does today. In hospital wards, I met other parents carrying the very same story, invisible, unsupported, and fighting alone.

I struggled to maintain employment and was unable to take on better positions that I deserved, because my health limited my ability to do so. My daughter missed weeks of school because I had no support to get her there.There were nights we slept in hospital together.

And then came the moment I feared most. I nearly lost custody of my daughter because of my health struggles. While I was on oxygen during an asthma attack, I was told that if I could not find support for my child, she would be removed from my care and that it would take time to get her back. There was no system designed to help us in that moment. There was no service that understood what we were going through. I had to fight with the help of close friends who advocated on my behalf just to keep my own child by my side.

It was in that moment, sitting in the middle of a system that had no space for people like me, that SPLAOCH was born.

 “No parent should ever have to fight alone for support, dignity, or the right to keep their family together because of illness or disability.”