To ask about the end of innocence for you?

[SundayGirl1]

When did you realise the world’s not all rainbows and unicorns? Watching DD play and feeling sad that one day something will happen to corrupt her little mind. For me it was hearing about poor Jamie Bulger on the news when I was about 10. Although I didn’t know the full details, I remember understanding enough to know there’s evil in the world that I hadn’t understood until that moment. Was there one pivotal moment that stands out for you or was it a more gradual thing?

I don’t remember a defining moment; it was more like a creeping sense of the world being a frightening and unpredictable place, both at home and beyond. That said, I’m a similar age to you and seeing images of the famine in Ethiopia as a kid was my first memory of something truly terrible on a scale I couldn’t comprehend.

When the twin towers fell...it changed the world and ok I was in the UK but my friend who I went out with that nigh, just local town to do country dancing, spent the night trying to phone her childhood friend who was pregnant but worked in one of twin towers...luckily she survived but her baby died in her womb that night due to what she went through ..I was 21 and I never forgotten the relief but pain for her friend my friend had....every time it's mentioned I think there is another in the number...I'm sure others had similar and probably date me

A bit late for me

I think that i always had faith in people, despite the shit id been through

But since having my dd and being a single mum, and seeing the way id been treated, I think ive finally grown up and seen the world for what it is - forever cruel

I'd definitely been naive through my life 🙃

I don't remember a time when I wasn't aware that both good and bad things happen. I'm a pretty optimistic person though, and I don't buy into the idea that the world is all going to shit and that human beings are mostly horrible.

I never thought the world was rainbows and unicorns.

The murder of Susan Maxwell in 1982. I was 8 and I saw it on the news. Susan was 11, so only a bit older and I remember being utterly horrified about what had happened to her

I was in Primary 7 in Scotland when Dunblane happened. That's a defining moment.

Mine was being 4 and my mum was pregnant. All the excitement of a new baby.She had a still birth and the baby was never mentioned again in my childhood. This was 1972. I fully accept it was a different time and she would have been traumatized. I always wondered about the baby and 2 years ago my mum read about women who'd tracked down the graves of stillborn babies. She asked me to do this for her as she was 87. I did it and found the grave the baby had been buried with a woman who'd died at the same time. This was common practice at the time. It was devastating to me. I took my mum to show her the grave.She has never spoken to me about it again.

That’s so sad.

This has really touched me. Sorry for you all. But I bet shes grateful to have a daughter like you to lean on if need be xx

I was 19. I had lived the most blissful sheltered lovely life. My early years were all climbing trees and riding ponies. My teen years were playing in an orchestra, skiing and spending time with friends.

A driver who had had a couple of drinks swerved and killed my first boyfriend. (Almost instantly , but he was in terrible pain for a few hours first). We had remained good friends. The night I got the news I was in bed in shock and my then boyfriend was jealous I was grieving so he raped me.

Everyone still thinks he is "such a lovely person" .

And that was 6 months before the twin towers which I agree, I think it was a horrible shock to our generation.

This is heartbreaking. I recall seeing a news programme about this very subject and found it all so incredibly sad. I hope your Mum found some peace in finding out where her baby was 🫶.

Learning about the Moors murderers was what made me realise that there was real evil in the world. That was in 1974 from a school library book.
Prior to that , my brother first went into residential psychiatric care when he was I and I was 6, and his violent aggression was all directed at me, so I knew that life was hard from 6.

Facebook. Gave me full access to the sort of people I'd spent my life avoiding and made me realise just how many shitty people really are amongst us

I was off ill with chicken pox aged around seven, under a blanket on the sofa and a documentary about Bergen-Belsen came on the TV. I remember seeing the piles of corpses and feeling as if ice was running through my veins. Terrible.

This. And I saw some terrifying things as a young child.

My mum had cancer from when I was 2, so I’d always known she was poorly. But whenever I’d ask if she’d be ok, the answer was always yes. When I was 7 we went on a family holiday, I spent most of the time with my older siblings but didn’t think much of it, just thought we were having our own adventures. I didn’t know mum had taken a turn for the worse and it would be our last. The journey home everyone was quiet and looked stressed. As we pulled up to our house there was an ambulance waiting outside. Mum and dad went straight into it. I asked my brother if mum would be ok and he just looked at me. That was when I realised the reality.

I grew up with evil. Now I feel protected and safe.

Me too.

In fact, when I managed to leave home at 17 I realised that actually there is so much good in the world. More so than all the bad stuff to be honest

Being raped by my maternal uncle when I was ten years old and no one believing me. He and his nasty wife did leave the village very soon afterwards and never being seen or heard of again.
My father dying from a sudden heart attack later that year and being sent home from school on the bus which took an hour. When I got there, I was told to go for a long ride on my pony. When I returned home, I was told to sit in the kitchen and wait for my tea. Whilst I was there, I heard his coffin being bumped down the stairs from my parents bedroom. His death was never mentioned again in my hearing by anyone. I was sent to school the next day.

My parents’ divorce, grandfather’s death and mother’s depression all in the same year. I was six and gripped by uncertainty and everything felt laden with sadness.

Same. My parents never tried to shelter us from the real world.
I grew up in the 80s, in France, so the news were quite grim, lot of wars, USSR ussring, strikes, aftermath of Chernobyl, 200thanniversary of French Revolution so guillotine imagery everywhere...

Even the kids' programs we had were quite bleak. There was a anime about a kid who's been sold by his parents.

I remember however a sense of elation when the wall fell down, the day after we only talked about that in school, my dad brought a piece of the wall after one on his travels to GDR, it was crazy.

When one of the girls in my year died quite suddenly from an illness, I was 9 or 10. It had never really occurred to me before that kids like me could just suddenly be gone.

I never had that kind of innocence. Some of my earliest memories are of my dad hitting my mum, threatening her, smashing up the house and of her self harming.