Review: Lovebroken, by Finley de Witt

Have you ever struggled with your mental health, your terrible relatives or a dysfunctional relationship? Or simply wondered what the hell is wrong with you? This story is for you.

Finley recounts their chaotic life with deadpan humour and honesty, wryly embracing their colourful lovers and a series of futile attempts to fix them. When a catastrophic encounter in France sends them into meltdown, they
wind up receiving daily psychoanalysis on the NHS with a cast of unsettling characters – mainly the therapists.

On leaving hospital, Finley stitches their life back together, living for a short time with a Bristol theologian before finding domestic bliss with a transgender civil servant. A cutting-edge approach to mental illness eventually leads them to a key revelation about their past, and they finally understands themself through the lens of their history. Aware at last of what they had survived, they face an agonising decision about their future.

Trauma has never been so funny or so shocking.

My Review

Thanks to Anne of Random Things Tours for organising this tour, and to the author for sending me a copy of this book. The postcard is on my fridge.

A memoir of childhood abuse, adult mental illness, and building and rebuilding a life. Deeply moving, a condemnation of the poor mental health care available on the NHS in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, and ultimately a hopeful search for treatment.

Finley’s parents were needy, negligent, controlling and chaotic, during their childhood, with Finley the particular target of their mother’s psychological abuse. Outwardly, a ‘normal’ northern working class family desperately trying to be middle class, both parents seem to have been abused and in turn abused their children. In the process Finley is made to feel at fault, always the wrong one, the broken child, not deserving of love, by their mother, and as a captive audience to her needy, artistic father and his antics. Both clinging to each other and pushing each other away, they ignored their family dysfunction. Finley has a brother, who, neglected by his parents, forces down any anxiety he has to become a rather snobbish plutocrat, who refuses to believe his parents have abused his sister, or himself. He’s a rather sad figure.

Finley, you’re better off without the lot of them.

Despite the abuse, Finley goes to Oxford and gets a first. Then, despite internal distress and confusion, she builds a career in administration in social care. All the while she is enjoying the lesbian scene in London. She has quite a few long and short term relationships, including at least a couple of abusive relationships. A major psychosis brings this to a wobbly halt, and a stint as an out-patient at a mental health unit. It was the 1990s and psychoanalysis was still a thing.

The staff made things worse. This is a problem that so many of us who have experienced NHS mental health care, or who work in mental health and social care can recognise. There’s a lot of terrible treatments out there. Reading about Finley’s experiences, I recognise her experiences, from listening to people I know. Psychoanalysis was out of date in the 1960s, why it was still hanging around in the 1990s is beyond me. The concept of trauma-informed care was still far off. It’s only just making headway in the NHS. Talking therapy is only useful in some circumstances; you can’t talk your way out of severe trauma, you need to work through it, physically and mentally.

Anyway, I hope the tits who damaged so many mad people with their poor care know what harm they’ve done.

After finishing the course of treatment, which didn’t help much, Finley goes on to build a career in mental health training, bodywork treatments, and self-development. They have another couple of long-term relationships. All through this their parents are the ghosts haunting their life and Finley continues to struggle with their mental health, although they make progress when they meet their love, Dahl and they move to Hastings. In the last few years they have managed to find a decent therapist and confronted early childhood sexual abuse, distanced herself from their family, while making friends with elderly gentlemen sea swimmers, and a Geordie lass who goes sea swimming even in the middle of winter.

The memoir moves between Finley’s life as an adult, from their days at Oxford to the present, and chapters about childhood and school days. We discover that behind the façade of respectability, their parents were a mess, and abusive. It’s only as the chapters pass that the reader discovers just how abusive they are and continue to be during Finley’s adulthood.

Now in their 50s, Finley brings the insight they have developed over the last few years to their experiences. They’ve found something like stability with Dahl, in Hastings, and a career that they enjoy. Their writing is witty and incisive. And harrowing. I was scared to read this book because I knew it would be a difficult read, but I managed it. I probably wouldn’t suggest it to some of my friends who have had similar experiences. I’ve never had psychosis, nor had long-term outpatient care. I’ve never been sectioned or voluntarily committed.

I enjoyed this memoir and I think you should give it a read.

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Finley de Witt is a writer, bodyworker and trauma specialist.

Finley de Witt is a writer and trauma specialist with over thirty years’ experience of working with minds and bodies. After graduating from Oxbridge, they studied bodywork and mental health. They are a psychiatric
system survivor, and use their transformative journey of recovery to offer a message of hope to others.

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Note:

On 11th February, I received a donation of £10 from Finley via my Ko-Fi.

I forgot I had a Ko-Fi. I’ve used it once to donate to Fierce Fatty Podcast. It was a surprise to get a donation, I thought the emails were scam emails originally.

I wrote this review 21st January. Other than to correct the pronouns I used for the author and to make this note, I haven’t changed it since. I have not been influenced in any way by the donation. I feel, however, that I need to be up-front about the donation.