Mending the pieces of a broken family

I grew up in Portugal and came from a very poor and violent family. My mum had 10 children, and gave many of us away to be looked after by others.

I was afraid of my mum. She would beat us up in ways that you wouldn’t even beat an animal! It was really bad. At nine years old I couldn’t take it any more and started to fight back.

When we would reach the age of 11, she would use us like slaves because we were old enough to work on the fields. But she would not give us anything, we went back to the people who looked after us for food and clothes.I hated my mum so much

At 16, I left home. I believed that by getting away from the problem and from my country, everything would be better. So I moved to the UK.

At first things didn’t seem so bad. I even met someone but three months into the relationship I was already expecting our first son. I was really angry because I didn’t want to do the same thing my mum did - have so many children at a young age and not manage to look after them.

My relationship with my first husband was really bad, we were fighting. I would use my past on him. I would attack him with knives, I would break bottles of wine on his head; He was a quiet person, he would listen to me but his silence was the worst thing he could do. He would try and calm me down but I would fight back. There was a lot of anger inside me and somehow I had to get it out.

When my son was nine months old I left my husband. At 20, I was already divorced. Eventually I met Bruno, someone who I felt had everything I was looking for, and we moved in together.

The first year was okay. I had a son with him. I could see this man was different, but memories of the past would come to my head and I’d get violent and aggressive.

During one of my sleepless nights something caught my attention as I flicked through the TV channels.

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