Our first film with Jenny, All Cats Are Black, resulted in an overwhelming response. You shared your own life experiences (often painful) and the positive effects of Jenny's story. You asked for more. Here it is. Why am I nervous? I don't know who might be watching. (And are you feeling more nervous or less nervous) (than last time we sat and chatted with you?) I'm feeling more nervous, but not in a bad way. It's like there's an effervescence inside me that's making me shiver a little bit. I'm very conscious now of how many people view these videos. I had no idea before. In a way, it didn't matter what I said except for the fact that there was a camera focusing on me. Well now... it seems to me that what you are doing is quite important and that what I say might have an importance for some people. So it's become a different kind of an experience. Families are so complicated, aren't they? And I know that everyone watching will have had issues. I absolutely know it. Well, that's what I tell myself. It's such an abstract thing... love... when looked at it from my perspective. When I was 1.5 years old, I was sent to boarding school. I lost my mother. And I went into an environment that was antagonistic and frightening. I had no stability. I had no home. I had no childhood. I had no love. I used to get one card a week from her. And every week it said the same... there were two words on it... 'Love, Mummy'. It just wasn't enough. I wanted news of her, I wanted her to talk to me. So I used to take these postcards to bed with me and put them under my pillow and cry. So it was a very hard childhood in that way. Emotionally it was very empty and for me tragic, for me tragic. She always promised, 'You can come home when the war is over.' And when I was 11, I went home for the holiday. And during that holiday the end of the war was declared. And I remember walking between my father and my mother, a hand in each, and we walked across London Bridge, under the lights. And I thought, now I can go home, I can be at home with my mother. And then shortly after that my mother got my suitcase out of the cupboard and started packing it. And I said, 'What are you doing?' 'What are you doing mummy?' And she said, 'I'm getting you ready for school.' And that was the biggest betrayal of all. She put me back on the train. When I was 20, I was desperate. I was grasping for any love I could find, from anybody, looking for what I hadn't had as a child. I didn't know who I was, I had no identity. And I always looked for my identity in these dreadful men. It's not a new thing to say there's a difference between being alone and being lonely. To be alone is essential for self-discovery and for the spirit. I think being alone is not a hardship. It's when you feel lonely, when you feel there is nobody there, which is a different thing. It's loneliness that is the painful part. This is the danger... is to look to other people to make you feel real. And that can only work for so long. And when you go to bed at night and you're alone... it's difficult to feel real when you're living off somebody else who isn't there. My son said to me that it's easy to keep living with some negative aspect that makes us feel alive. It's a very easy thing to do. And being a victim brings lots of advantages. It brings sympathy from other people. But it stops you from acting in the way you should be acting, which is to be strong, if possible, and to live your own life, not feed off other people. You can go on pretending, you can go on excusing, and you can go on looking for ways out of the situation. But if life has become so painful for you and your relationships have become so difficult or non-existent even then you need to start being honest with yourself. Because I needed love so much, so pathetically much, I sacrificed my children for my relationships with men. That was the worst thing I have ever done. And it's something I will never forgive myself for. I can understand why I did it, but I can't forgive myself. For this I ask my children forgiveness, as my mother asked me for mine. A few months before she died, aged 86, my mother said to me, 'Can you and your sister ever forgive me for what I did?' I was very taken aback and I said, 'We forgave you long ago' which in a way was true because we went on living and we went on caring for her and we went on loving her. So we must have forgiven her. I adored her. She was a wonderful woman, in her own way. And of course she had her baggage. She wasn't maternal, she didn't want to be a mother. There comes a time when you know you have to accept what happened as a child. But it doesn't stop it hurting. And I know that that's the truth. It goes on hurting forever however adult one likes to think one has become or however wise. It's this old thing of carrying baggage, isn't it? If you're carrying baggage? We can do something about it, but we can't make it 100% good I don't think. I don't think you can ever stitch up a wound that is that old and that deep. At some point in life you have to let it go. You have to say, what happened happened. And you have to know that what they did, they did with their own baggage, they had their own baggage. And you can't go on blaming your parents for the bad things that have happened to you. Hopefully I'm doing a little bit of what's right now. I would like to think it's never too late... there is always hope. They are wonderful children to me, as children... and I do believe they love me. Thanks to all of you who helped make this film possible. All of our films are totally crowd funded. So if you'd like to continue to support us on our journey, check out our Green Renaissance page on Patreon.com
