Ribbonwood Barn

Someone Stole My Mother
Kate Winters

Set in England’s scenic West Country, 1950s-70s, this true story tells of a family living with a woman suffering from manic depression; their roller coaster ride of her ups and downs and the challenges they all faced.
Mental illness is a vile beast waiting to rear its ugly head whenever it chooses, when the time is right; to hurt loved ones, to ruin lives, to destroy relationships. It can lie hidden and silent, almost forgotten, for months or even years.
All it needs is a trigger, to turn an attractive and carefree young woman into someone completely different, to change a loving new mother into some sort of monster.
And, in the summer of 1955, the trigger was imminent; the worry of coping with a brand-new baby and post-natal depression.
Marie was admitted to the Tone Vale Mental Asylum, leaving her baby daughter in the care of a friend for the first six months of her life.

Later cared for by her grandmother, Kate discovered that her mother was different to other mothers and she learned to accept Marie’s delusions and episodes of bizarre behaviour.
As a child, her escape from the harsh realities of life took Kate into an imaginary world of fantasy and adventure. By the age of ten, she was writing stories of incredible adventures, encounters with ghosts and gremlins and imaginings of witches and wizardry. The collection of stories in the dog-eared exercise book was eventually thrown out by her mother, along with all the trash and treasures that accumulate through a child’s life. Other valuables fell victim to Marie’s house clearing too. Dispatched to a second-hand dealer were the antiques collected over the years by her ex-husband, keepsakes and tapestries handed down by some unknown ancestor, and the ancient family bible, all sold without sentiment to pay the bills and put food on the table.

This was a woman who, at times, could hardly remember who she was. Trapped inside her was someone she couldn’t control; a stranger who behaved differently, who upset her friends and family. There were times when Marie felt utterly helpless and desperate to escape from this hell on earth. This heartless woman who had stolen her mind, maybe even her soul, had destroyed her relationship with her mother, her husband, even her own children.

And years later, her daughters would wonder why. Had their mother been born mentally unstable or had something occurred to trigger the madness? They also wondered if her condition had been exacerbated by recurring bouts of mental illness, or perhaps by the treatment intended to cure her of it.

They would never ever know, but this is their story.