Coming Clean by Liz Fraser

[RhinoRhino]

A couple of threads that I had posted on relating to the Memoir ‘Coming Clean’ by Liz Fraser have been deleted from the MN site, apparently due to non-compliance of the MN guidelines from the posters. MN are obviously well within their rights to delete threads if they demonstrably fail to comply with their guidelines, nevertheless I feel strongly that MN posters are given a platform to critique this book, and also any other public ventures by this author. It would be neither fair nor right that posters are completely silenced in this particular matter.

As such, and in line with Mumsnet not seeing “anything wrong with honest feedback” I would like to make the comment that Coming Clean as a Memoir falls short due to the shaky and not entirely truthful narrative. There are certain facts contained within this memoir that are easily disprovable (for example, relating to the marital status of both author and her partner when they started their ill-fated affair), which leaves a massive question mark over the rest of the book. Is it entirely reasonable to make money from something that is promoted as truthful when it is, in fact, not entirely true?

I think there are people whose lives have been negatively impacted by the book and its subject matter, and I hope that MN will agree that these people should have a voice, as should anybody who wants to comment on a published piece of work.

As long as posters align their comments with the MN guidelines, this is a topic that people may wish to keep discussing, and also keep in the public domain. And if MN wants to provide a set of rules particular to this thread – certainly if they are arbitrary and differ from the general guidelines - I am sure it would be very helpful.

Mumsnet, please help us to help each other by keeping in the public domain something that us silenced mums feel should be out there.

Still no tattle code so back here until that changes. Waves

Anyway I have questions

1. if the city is so closely associated with her fleeing to safety and being ravaged with pain and trauma then surely for someone with ptsd/cptsd/the world’s worst whichever requiring more treatment than anyone ever would be hugely triggering. Not saying you might not go back to try to heal those scars but the latest social media is all about the me me me my best life I am happier than anyone ever so it doesn’t exactly seem to be the case
2. the knickers writing shot. Other than the why (WHY would anyone do this?) it does seem to prove that Scout was actually a tripod in a lot of past pics
3. the cycling videos. How? She seems to have both hands on the handlebars. I wondered whether it might be a helmet cam but there is no helmet and the shot changes while moving. A lot of logistics involved in a ‘casual’ shot whatever

👋👋👋👋👋👋😊

Similar thoughts to yours….

She writes today about her escape trip to Scandinavia, why didn’t she return to the UK to her friends and family and most of all, her three children?

She also says she was traumatised and exhausted and this was her first taste of freedom following a year of near constant turmoil, lies and tears, but she never even touches on the impact this had/has/might have on her then 22 month old. If their home and routine become unsettled or disrupted as a result of the trauma, are babies and toddlers also vulnerable to C-PTSD?

I have never heard of this person till this post came up on active. I'm not that interested in reading about this type of persons struggles and I dont really understand why she merits such attention or why threads were deleted. But not too traumatised or stressed to make probably a tidy sum out of writing about her troubles. I always find this a bit suspect. But maybe thats just me.

Oh you must read her book. It’ll drive you crackers

Oh God the Billy Jean King pics are back 😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆

Working offline not online? Help me out here! Online as in as in live on air? Is she working in a call centre or 🥶😂!!. Offline as in a bricks and mortar workplace with other people and accountability? Isn’t everything offline until it’s put online? No writers write live. 🤷‍♀️

Oh I’d forgotten about these pictures NOT!

@Viviennemary If you don’t have the inclination to read Coming Clean, here’s a brief(ish) synopsis:

Married woman meets married alcoholic, gets him drunk when his wife is away, gets herself pregnant, abandons her husband and teenage kids, alcoholic leaves his wife, author cons a ‘friend’ into taking unpaid leave from work to drive a van in order to move author and alcoholic to Venice, (friend not heard of again until return trip required), author buys a small flat in Venice (no space for older kids), alcoholic is not part-owner but non-paying lodger, there is an unspecified yet life-changing problem with a wall, she belatedly works out that alcoholic is an alcoholic in spite of evidence staring her in the face for the previous few years, pays off his drinking debts, pays for all his drinks, gives him pocket money, throws him out of bars, shouts at him, cries a lot, cries to psychologist and gets psychologist to say she is ‘definitely not a narcissist’, takes alcoholic to Dolomites for more arguments and chaos, randomly chases after him on a push-bike – more than once, cries to strangers at airports etc and asks them if it is fair for her boyf to be so horrid, calls the police after he is missing for an hour, banishes him to her Venice cellar with a banana, he finally leaves Venice for good, she runs off to sofa-surf in Sweden and Denmark staying with people she barely knows (including Caroline and Ant the aesthetically pleasing Danish/English ‘content providers’ – although not entirely sure Caroline was at home during the author’s stay), comes back to Venice, cons ‘friend’ into driving over to Venice to take all her stuff back to her new, mysteriously (for somebody with no obvious regular income) obtained flat in expensive Oxford, stops off at Ikea in France for half a portion of meatballs and over £2K worth of furniture, cries when mad shopping trip results in missed channel ferry crossings, blags replacement channel ferry crossing, moves into expensive rental property in Oxford, within 10 days invites alcoholic back on condition she can breathalyse him if he seems pissed and belligerent (which tbf he seemed to be throughout the book), writes Coming Clean whilst alcoholic comes clean, and is obviously jealous of any time he has away from her, including vital AA meetings. There is a young child in the midst of all this chaos, whose well-being seems not to be top priority for either parent.

Following publication of Coming Clean former alcoholic finally leaves her for good, stays clean and finds new relationship, author veers from posting crying videos filmed in front of Oxford’s Radcliffe Camera to maliciously posting pictures of sizzling sausages to goad newly vegan newly sober ex claiming she can now “eat meat”, then goes off on some inexplicable domestic violence tangent without really ever making clear to what she is referring, rambles on about ‘solo’ parenting, repeatedly claims that being a parent is ‘brutal’ etc etc, yadda yadda yadda. Reading between the social media lines it appears she was making a very determined attempt to stop their young daughter from having a relationship with her father, which seemed successful for a couple of years. Recently it appears the former alcoholic partner has been granted some form of custody through the courts, which seems to put question marks over all the DV stuff. Regular references to unspecified DV do seem to have stopped, too.

The new narrative is ‘freedom’ etc, and ‘this girl’ is now going to start her life again. For the thousandth time. She regularly starts again. And is now HAPPEEE after years of abuse, trauma, stuff and things. Oh, yes, and a few months back she set up a publishing company to unsilenced women, but other than incorporation, and the choosing of the paper (white, in case you’re interested) and a boozy launch party, precisely nothing has happened. It’s all ‘coming soon’. Those eagle eyed mumsnetters who witnessed the lack of progress on previous ventures (eg Headcase) will hazard a guess that nothing will ever come of publishing company, other than Liz Fraser posting about it on SM. No books will ever be published. This much was proven through mathematical probability calculations.

(Maybe the publishing company should have been called ‘Coming Soon’…..)

Oh, and in the midst of all this are thousands and thousands of selfies, with preposterous comments (eg “I rarely post selfies”, or “I rarely eat out” etc) and lots and lots of coded/subliminal messages which I imagine she wants former alcoholic to read and cry over. Yet, somehow I just don’t think he bothers to look.

Anyway, hope I’ve saved you some time …….. I read the book twice, so you don't have to!😂

Excellent synopsis. One detail left out: the sudden claims out of the blue until fairly recently that the end of her life was approaching, she didn't have much time left. These comments suddenly stopped when she decided to set up her (now dropped by the look of it) publishing company. She's suddenly in rude health. She's basically nuts.

Ah, yes, @Raffington55 I had forgotten about the impending demise of Ms Fraser. We were never given an indication as to how long she had left, but there were definite not-so-subtle hints that she was not long for this world. Never quite worked out what it was all about, but likely some misguided attempt to exert influence. Over what, I'm not sure. Ex? Courts? Family? SM followers?

Who knows?

A few missing facts, there are so many!:

• When started “dating” alcoholic, who she didn’t know was an alcoholic despite counselling his wife, her friend about his drinking, she was having an affair with another family friend.

• If there was any doubt that the alcoholic was married to her friend, she’d been to their wedding a few months earlier with her own husband and teenage children.

• Teenage children she left with their father when she moved in with the alcoholic she didn’t know was an alcoholic despite….

• She quickly fell pregnant so the alcoholic could be a father (despite being newly married to a woman his age and who we assume was planning to have children with him. L said she wasn’t so keen to have another child.

• Despite allegedly having no help with baby while still in the UK, she made the decision to move with the alcoholic and baby to a country where neither had lived, knew anyone or had work.

• Somehow buts flat having not lived together positively to date.

• All hell quite literally broke out. Poor baby spends first year plus of her life in a toxic battlefield. How do we know this? Her mother has kept a running commentary in the public domain.

• She has intermittently claimed to be homeless, dying, too ill to work, destroyed by the police, the courts, the patriarchy, women who support the patriarchy, women who question any inconsistencies.

• She has/has had more diagnosis than anyone and always the worst ever seen. Her PTSD was cured by touching a stone roof in Venice.

• Despite her trauma from DV bring so great, ironically it is the sights, sounds, smells or thoughts that would trigger flashbacks in most PTSD sufferers that soothe her. The flat, city, country where the abuse happened or where she glad to seem to be great comforts to her 🤷‍♀️

• Despite her multimillionaire parents living minutes up the road from her and rather than being homeless, she actually has two mortgage free homes including “a rabbit hutch” 3 bed in an affluent suburb of Oxford, she claimed to not have the means to heat her house or feed her privately educated children - three of which are by now at uni or on luxury gap years - and so sets up an online begging bowl, promising in return blogs to help survivors of domestic violence. She then flirted with travel writing, publishing, etc.

• Her current pour favour is to accuse people of stalking her social media and trolling her. She posts all and everything on unsecured social media channels, which of course pushes content to all and anyone. I don’t follow her, but today I was presented on my instagram grid with a photo of her lounging in water wearing a red bikini. The last I knew, she had a rather old and faded multicoloured one and then one that seemed to have lost its top!

• Nothing is EVER her fault. She is faultless and blame free. It is not her fault that she’s had at least three affairs, ripped up three families, four if you count hers with the alcoholic. That she posts her private life across the internet and has done so for years. That she can’t hold down employment or friendships. A quick google will pull up articles going back more than a decade talking about her struggles with all and everything, but a normal life.

I think her shorted life because of Things, suddenly was not shortened despite Things, possibly because it was pointed out that if her death is imminent, perhaps a care programme needed to be put in place for the child who, despite having a higher that well above average IQ and photographic abilities to rival Rankin, for another 13+ years she’s not legally old enough to live alone. For a brief moment, the never available to help grandparents were ever present and her ‘Village’ was often mentioned.

Let’s face it, we’ve all said we felt like we were going to die, but usually this is a self inflicted hangover or a desperately boring work meeting.

Also, strange how it didn't occur to her that she was shooting herself in the foot with the 'my days are numbered' narrative given that Scout's father was clearly going for shared custody at the time. Perhaps it was a manipulation to try and get him back. That went well.

@RhinoRhino and @Mortonswood 👏👏👏for excellent Liz 101 guide ! Quick screen grab it in case we get silenced again. Are you guys on TL yet?

The life limiting illness thing was also hinted at during her Another Life blog period, that time it was her heart. She was also very close to death during a breakdown after her husband threw her out- I think she was also doing media work during that period and would only revert to near death when at home.

Oh and also she is rather foul/ trollish/abusive to anyone who challenges her in the slightest way on SM- from not agreeing with her about Halloween, writing a BLT comment on her newspaper articles or asking about very effective/ special PTSD medication that she has promised to name etc. If you do this expect to be blocked; blocked and then challenged so you can't reply, but her twitter flying monkeys can comment or have your named changed,so you don't know she is calling you a c*nt.

She has also repeatedly asked followers to DM her personal stories about the system and DV etc. What for we don't know.

She also has photographs of her with Billie Jean King and Stephen Fry that she is not afraid to use, so beware as those images will be seared into visual cortex in no time.

Pleeeease send me a TL code someone

Meanwhile I’m just quietly leaving this cartoon from the New Yorker here

I’m not familiar with EMDR, but it sounds interesting and could possibly explain why she requires longer treatment compared to others, even those who have experienced death and severe, life-changing experiences in war. I’m assuming (without any intent to troll) that her issues might have deep roots and possibly the affairs, M situation and child abandonment is a result of these long-standing problems. Her writings about suicidal thoughts and mental health issues date back to when she was 15.

What can EMDR help with?EMDR was developed – and is best known – as a therapy for treating trauma or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It’s recognised by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a treatment for PTSD.
But it can be used to help with a range of mental health difficulties including anxiety, depression, addictions, behavioural difficulties, relationship issues and more serious mental illnesses such as psychosis and personality disorders.
Justin says: “Many of these problems may actually be rooted in some kind of trauma, whether that’s someone being bullied, criticised or abused in some way, either during childhood or as an adult, and it isn’t always obvious that this is the case.”

https://www.bacp.co.uk/about-therapy/types-of-therapy/eye-movement-desensitisation-and-reprocessing-emdr/

😂😂😂

I’ll try. I think I’m too new. Will post on there to see if anyone else can x

So for her first weekend alone without her daughter she has gone to Denmark and left her daughter alone with someone who scarred her forehead by biting her, (that might not be true) but I wouldn’t be jetting off to Europe if that was the case I would remain at home in case of any problems

And if the weekend has been so healing, why start rooting through old photos and bringing up just acts done to her and not by her to her? She’s previously talked about cutting herself. What about these scars? Do these still need to be covered?

If this is for educational purposes, what action did the police take? Did she press charges? Is this ABH? Did this contribute to him not being able to see his daughter, even accompanied?

As a senior midwife, I strive to educate individuals and families. To find solutions. To highlight to families the potential long term impact of fleeting actions. It would be more useful if she explained the circumstances and lessons learned.

Now that he is sober, it would be great if she could share the steps they’ve taken to positively Co-parent. Mediation, family counselling, parenting skills, etc. How to remediate alienated parent-child relationships. Finger pointing is easy to do, especially when we hear just one side of any story.

Someone pointed out yesterday that there are niches she could own if she becomes able to be honest and open about her own shortcomings and what she’s done to overcome these. Let’s face it, no one in the history of time has hits as much bad luck without any fault as she has!

Having worked in her NHS authority, I can say she is very lucky to have been offered unlimited EDMR treatment. These therapies don’t work for all and have always otherwise been on a review basis. With NHS funding so tight, I’m amazed that she’s been offered this. I also wonder, but it’s entirely possible of course, how she fitted in a treatment yesterday. Clinic hours are clinic hours. Like others, I’m not trolling, I’m just intrigued.

Once rid of him, why did she chase him down and get him back to live with her after he’d actually bodily harmed her? I don’t get it. I’ve been abused and have many now friends who have been and them giving up and leaving is the dream situation.