Sleeping with one eye open

<p><strong><em>A child doesn't ask to be born; they are brought into the world by their parents</em></strong>. If they're lucky that child is nurtured fed loved and guided by their mother and father. They are given a home and shelter an education something to occupy them and they are protected from the worst the world has to offer.  </p><p>This wasn't the case for Helen. </p><p>Told even from an early age that she was a mistake and forced to feel that she should apologise simply for existing Helen was born to a mother who did not seem to want her. Her early life was a series of abuses mental and physical and a daily struggle to become something better than the model presented to her at home.  </p><p>What do you do when the one person who is supposed to be your loving guardian is instead your greatest persecutor? What can a child do? For Helen there was only one option: endure. She survived years of her mother's abuse and her father's neglect and tried as well as she could to look after herself and her younger brother Matthew.  </p><p>This is an affecting memoir about Helen's tumultuous childhood a story about the rotten core that can lie behind an unsuspicious facade. For every picture-perfect family there may be a child next-door barely surviving. </p>