Maclean author heals through novel

Rodney Stevens

A Maclean author’s raw and intimate story of enduring physical abuse as a child, being unloved and the significant impact it had on his life, which led him to seek help after decades of trauma, is revealed in the recently released book Pain, Loss & Desire.

Graham Robinson was born in England and his innocence was shattered when he suffered physical child abuse from the age of five, so he left school and home at 13, and when his daughter found out he left home so young, he decided to write some stories about his life.

Through his research, Graham said he discovered due to his inner child being damaged by the abuse, and although he had what he thought was a normal life, getting married and having children, plus a successful career in radio, he would go from zero to 10 in anger due to the damage.

“As I started writing the book a lot of emotions started to come up and I started remembering some of the things that happened to me as a kid,” he said.

“I didn’t realise that when you’re hurt like that, that your whole body, ‘your inner child’ stops developing at that age, so at age five my emotions were stunted and when under pressure as I grew up, and even into my latter years I would act like a child and stamp my feet if something didn’t go my way.

“I found if you have some sort of trauma in your childhood, you tend to overreact, or react poorly in those situations like a child would.”

He said Pain, Loss & Desire is written as a story about him leaving home at 13, his experiences, how he ended up living in Sydney, broke and alone and how he survived.

“I realised when I looked back that I used to run away from everything, anything that didn’t come easy I would run away from, whether it be jobs, relationships, anything as I grew up,” he said.

While writing the book didn’t help his healing process, Graham said it did uncork traumatic emotions, which in turn opened the door to seek help.

“What I did find is that the book opened me up to understanding that I did have a problem, so as I wrote I started to feel bad inside, sometimes I would cry,” he said.

This was when he was motivated to seek help to overcome his trauma.

“I started going to a therapist who did EFT Emotional Freedom Technique tapping, and it really helped, but at first it was really painful, and I didn’t think it would work, but finally she got to a point where I could deal with the trauma,” he said.