Mornington Peninsula Magazine

Finding voice, community and hope through Left Write Hook

Four years ago, when the war in Ukraine began, something shifted inside me. I watched the news every day. But for me, it was more than the place I grew up in. It was old hurt coming up in the ways I hadn’t expected. I found it harder to be with my family. I found it so hard to focus, to enjoy simple moments.

Around that time, I met Dr Donna Lyon, a senior academic at the University of Melbourne, and found Left Write Hook. It changed something for me. For the first time I could name it: it was abuse, and I was only a child. And something Donna told me stirred something in me: “You are a survivor.”