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Well a very big thank you is in order.....!
I was dubious about writing this blog, a public space to be so candid.... taboo?
I always found personal blogs to be somewhat self indulgent and perhaps mine is, because as I said in my first post on here, it's easier to type than it is to talk, a blank canvas where you can air your demons and release them into the wild. Therapy!
Given the responses I got to yesterdays post, I'm so happy I did this. It is one thing for me to share with you the darkness, it is my priveledge to share the light, because that is this blogs true intention, to highlight how strong we are and that no matter what life throws at us, it all has to be taken as experience... good or bad, it makes us who we are... It's a sad story to read the facts of how I came to be, Francesca Barker, TheBarkerBaker, but I am not ashamed of who I am anymore. How could I be? I've only just figured it out.

When you loose yourself at such an early age, it's almost impossible to get a sense of who you are. It is hard to identify the good qualities you have and to move forward and forge a personality that people will love and adore and take to their hearts and so your left with the NEED to create such a personality, out of desperation, lonliness, fear of abadonment, whatever it may be.
I know all too well, I have created a hundred different versions of myself throughout my life, each adapted to different situations in oder to create the best impression at the time, its a sad sense of shallow that we feel the need to project such illusions for the sake of other people. But I have, I always always have, in the video my parents saw of my brother and I at our foster parents house, I put on a show, I was a little cockney runt, dancing around, showing the social workers my latest piece of artwork - which I have to say, as far as cotton wool sheep go, it was bloody good!
I sang, I read from a book, I showed off my cotton wool sheep, it was an audition and I've been doing it ever since. A new friendship - audition. A new relationship - audition. A new job - audition. What does this person want from me, what sort of character are they looking for? The funny one? The caring one? The rich one?
Oh I could do it all. Just like the little cockney child from south london could, the 20 something Fran did not learn her lesson.
Of course having realised this, and understood why I have behaved in such a way, it opened the door to NOT acting, not auditioning, its truly liberating.
Do many of us get to the point in our lives where we realise how OK it is to just be ourselves?
Hello Blogger, I am Francesca Barker, I am a 26 year old baker... and I'm on my way to happiness and I more than fine than that.

When I was a child, up until about the age of 10, I used to steal food out of the fridge and hide it under my bed and in my knicker drawer - not because I'm a greedy monkey, but because I had the constant underlying fear that my parents would go to work one day and not come back. That they would leave me and Jay in that house and we would have to fight for ourselves like we did in the beginning. I always wanted the safety net of knowing I had pinched a packet of hob knobs and a tin of tuna, just incase the worst happened and we were alone again, just me and him. I would always look after us. Its ironic that the way I acted years later broke both our hearts, but still, I'd put him first any day of the week, even now.

My mum used to shout at me and thought I was some sort of feral wild child for stashing food, either that or I was just a chubby little bigger who couldn't get enough biscuits in me! (I do love biscuits, ask Sarah)
Strange things like this crept into my every day life, hiding food in secret places, stealing my dads change out of his pockets and keeping it in my rocking horse ornament to make sure I always had a back up plan.
What a strange way to live. My parents gave me everything, private school, great holidays, beautiful things, but I always thought I would do something that would make them leave, make them give me back. We would argue, even our last argument, the same weapons came out, my mum would shout and tell me I was a disappointment and I would scream that she shouldn't feel so disappointed as I wasn't hers, and she would shout back that she was glad of the fact and that it was buy one get one free, my parents wanted a baby, but social servies wouldnt seperate me and Jay, so they got me for good measure.
To be fair, I am a disappointment to them, I was way too damaged for them to bear and to their massive massive mistake, they never thought to fix me, to talk to me. I had a dream when I was 8 years old about my birth father, not so much a dream more of a memory as I know now. I woke up, scared, confused, I told my mum about it; she stood in my bedroom doorway and looked at me with such emptiness and said quite plainly "if you want to talk about things like that, then you'll have to see someone about it, you know we don't discuss that in this house" - to which I said "but I want to talk about it with you"
She closed the bedroom door. Now, I'm sure I'm painting a picture of a bitch. I don't mean to, I have blamed my paretns for so many things and I do, still, harbour a resentment that if they had cared more about understanding me and talking to me than throwing money at me, things would be a lot better.
My brother was baggage free, no demons, no memories and more to the point, no horrors to recall. I on the other hand was burdened, greatly and I never let it go.
Until now.

The past can haunt you forever, if you let it. We all have to live and learn and understand that some demons just have to be released, to be freed, we don't have to take them to pieces, analyse and speculate.
We take them for what they are, and know that they paved the way to today.

Thats why the mantra for the business and for my life is so important, putting positives over negatives always helps you start the day with the right mind set. You can do anything you put your mind to.
It helps if you have love in your life, support from friends, its a great aid on the road to recovery, but in all reality, the only person who can bring about real change in your life is you.

If it hurts, learn from it, move on from it, and build something great in the space it once was.
Think twin towers, awful, painful, and will always be remembered with a tear in our eye, but build something great, filled with hope, and it becomes a new landmark, one that shows the world just how strong you are <3