Copyright metro
I wanted my son to feel the joy of travelling, something that had transformed my life after trauma (Picture: Winnie M Li) Staring at the unfathomable chasm of the Grand Canyon with my 22-month-old son, I experienced a moment I would have previously considered impossible in my life. It was the end of a 3,400-mile, three-week road trip across the US with my son and partner, and I felt a sense of wonder: both at the incredible beauty of the canyon, and at the chance to share this with my young family. We’d passed through the cornfields of Illinois, the ghost towns of Oklahoma, and the redrock deserts of the American Southwest. We marvelled at the towering elegance of the St Louis Arch and now here we were, at the Grand Canyon. It was a trip I had taken not just for me or my partner, but for my son. I wanted him to feel the joy of travelling, something that had transformed my life after trauma. At the age of 29, 13 years before this trip, I was violently assaulted and raped by a teenage stranger while I was walking in a park. It’s not the kind of trauma you still want to be writing about decades later, but that’s the thing about trauma: the shadow of it follows you around, and pops up when you least expect it. Even after recovery, the most unlikely details can remind me of the day of my assault – and the debilitating sense of helplessness that came with it. Immediately after my rape, I would get panic attacks simply by stepping into a park on my own. Yet gradually, through a programme of graded exposure and the support of friends, I grew comfortable being outdoors. Slowly, I felt like I was beginning to reclaim my lifelong love of travel – and in the process, start to become myself again. I was reintroduced to the joy of travel (Picture: Winnie M Li) A year and a half after my assault, I decided to embark on a solo three-month backpacking trip through Southeast Asia. It was a dare to myself: where I could fly into Bangkok on my own form London, braving trains and overnight buses, on this journey into the unknown. For all my worries, nothing bad happened. Instead, I was reintroduced to the joy of travel: I trekked to temples in the heart of the jungle, climbed volcanoes, snorkelled at tropical beaches, and made new friends. Despite this victory, I realised that even long after we think we’ve recovered from the immediate violence, trauma can have a long-lasting impact on many aspects of our lives – on our self-esteem, our relationships, our confidence as we move through the world and enter new stages of our lives. I experienced this when I became a mother five years ago, 12 years after my rape. Once I gave birth to my baby boy, I found myself tasked with a new responsibility: raising him in a world where misogyny – and prejudice against women and girls – exists. After all, my own perpetrator had been a boy, at just 15 years old, and in his brief life, had somehow learned to inflict violence and damage the lives of others. Recent UK statistics indicate a 47% increase in proven sexual offences committed by children over the past five years, with teenage boys being the vast majority of perpetrators. Yet just because one boy became a violent perpetrator, it doesn’t mean all boys will. Journeys like this are possible, and are always worth going on if you can overcome the initial fear and anxiety (Picture: Winnie M Li) I make sure to teach my son to be considerate of others, sensitive towards their feelings, and to ask for permission. I hope he can bring out the good in people, and will always see the joy and wonder in the world. Nor do I want to raise a child riddled with anxiety or fear – something I could easily have passed on to him, after my assault. That’s why I took my 22-month-old son on a US road trip across eight states. While it was a challenge to make sure our toddler settled down for bedtime in a different motel every night, he ended up loving the sights we saw along the way. More from Winnie M Li Winnie M Li’s latest novel, What We Left Unsaid, tells the story of three estranged adult siblings, who undertake a journey down Route 66 – available now. He delighted in the quirky roadside attractions of Route 66, in the dinosaur fossils in Arizona’s Petrified Forest, and in counting pumpkins in the artisan district of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Every new stop offered something new for him to discover. Even my partner and I came away with the sense that journeys like this are possible, and are always worth going on, if you can overcome the initial fear and anxiety. My son is now five, and embraces the world with a kind of curious wonder, which I wish adults still had. I’d like to think he gets some of this from me – I’ve worked hard to reclaim my love of travel after my rape, and to impart this same love onto my boy. I hope my son can see the world as a wonderful place worth exploring, not one full of danger. But it hasn’t been easy. The knowledge of potential violence always haunts my choices, questioning if I am reckless in roaming so far from the safe and familiar. Trauma leaves us with an invisible shell of anxiety, which can harden around us, restricting our world and our ability to venture out into it. I want my own child to be as free of that anxiety as possible. And that means modelling a life where we can stride out into the world, unencumbered by fear or by our past, aware of the good things yet to be discovered. That joy of travel is something that I hope readers can take away from my new book – and one day, my own son too. Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. Share your views in the comments below.
