Book release: Exclusive extract from new memoir The Fate We Make – Book One: Heartbreak by Simone Warren
Growing up in Singapore, she had to deal with the emotional trauma caused by an unhappy childhood, and carry the guilt resulting from a teenage pregnancy and the heart-breaking choice between keeping her unplanned child or abortion.
Despite this, she rocketed through the ranks in her career, but deep inside was left a wreck by these personal issues, and an abusive marriage. Worse, she felt that she had no option but to suffer silently because of the Asian cultural tradition of ‘saving face’.
Her harrowing true-life story has been written to remind others that even the depths of despair can be survived and overcome, but that it needs more than personal strength and determination – it requires the support of others.
Q. As your new memoir, The Fate We Make – Book One: Heartbreak reveals, you’ve survived unimaginable hardship and thrived in spite of it. What would you say to your younger teenage self?
A. Stop trying to impress others or please everyone. The most important opinion is your own – no one else can walk in your shoes so why let them determine your direction. Find the balance between putting everyone else before yourself and pursuing your own dreams. Be kind to yourself. Tell yourself every day that you deserve to be happy until you actually believe it. You can learn to love yourself.
Q. Based on your own experiences, why do intelligent and often successful women stay in abusive relationships?
A. It’s a hard question to answer. Put simply, I stayed because I believed it was my fault; that my actions and words triggered the abuse and I deserved to be treated badly. I felt that even though my partner was flawed, his heart was in the right place and I could fix him, saving him from himself. I had witnessed physical and verbal abuse between my parents when I was growing up and this ‘normalised’ abusive behaviour for me. I initially stayed because I felt sorry for him and because he had made me promise to stay. Then, after the children were born, I felt I had to stay to keep the family together.
Abusers often cut you off from people who can help you see things differently. They do this really subtly, so you don’t realise you’re being isolated. When you are isolated, you have no way of checking with anyone else if the abusive relationship is ‘normal’. There is also a strong sense of shame and not wanting to admit that you failed to make the right relationship choices. In my situation, some of my experiences during my teenage years made me feel that I didn’t deserve to be happy, and that I had to try harder to atone for past sins, so I could prove I was finally worthy of happiness. Putting up with the abuse was a form of atonement for me.
Q. Your book underlines the importance of breaking out of a cycle of intergenerational trauma, where the behaviour of our parents have a bearing on our own behaviours and decisions. How do we avoid passing on generational baggage to our children?
A. By pausing to reflect after things go wrong or bad things happen. However painful our past experiences have been, it’s important to ask ourselves why we made certain decisions. That’s when you see the pattern and recognise the unspoken lessons passed down from previous generations. Once you recognise the pattern and realise that history is repeating itself, you can break the cycle.
When I realised I had married a man who was far worse than my father, I allowed myself to admit I needed help. I confided in a few people I could trust, reset my pre-programmed ways of thinking and doing, and became very intentional about creating the best environment for my children to thrive.
Q. If our parents are unintentionally passing on intergenerational trauma, how do we recognise this, and how should we seek to break the cycle?
A. I don’t believe in dwelling in the past, but retrospective reflection is the only way we can recognise that our parents are unintentionally passing on generational trauma. Asking them (where possible) and ourselves questions about past experiences and events throws light on the ‘why’. This then illuminates how we can break the cycle. Once you see how the links in the chain have been forged, it becomes possible to break the chain and create your own new and improved version.
Q. You were able to succeed professionally while sinking personally. What are the consequences of the traditional Asian attitude of saving face?
A. When you don’t speak up, it’s a one-way ticket to becoming mired in your own mind with extremely unhealthy self-dialogue. Having to pretend that everything is hunky-dory and presenting a brave face to the world makes it almost impossible to admit that you need help. If you don’t ask for help, you don’t get it! Most of all, it isolates you from sense-checking your perceptions, thoughts, and experiences with others. Without feedback, how can we course correct or change things for the better? Saving face is a sure fire way to sinking personally, and if left unchecked, can lead to serious consequences including self-sabotage, self-harm, and suicide.
Q. In your book you write moving about falling pregnant and having to make the heart-breaking decision of whether to have an abortion. There is an ongoing global debate between Pro Life and Pro Choice. What is your view?
A. I think that everyone has a right to make their own decisions. This should not be about politics or policy – it’s a very personal choice. Whatever your moral, religious, and political views, every person involved in a decision for or against abortion needs to be able to live with the consequences of their decision. This applies not just to the mother but also the father of the unborn child. You have to make the decision that is the right one for you.
Q. Most people live in fear of being judged and found wanting, and everybody faces hardship at some point in their lives. What would you say to them?
A. Does it really matter what other people think? We all make mistakes and we all fail. This is what defines us as human beings. In moments of hardship, I know how easy it is to slip into despair and feel very alone. Give yourself time; time to process how you’re feeling, to unpick your thoughts. Just hang on for one hour at a time, from day to day and week to week until, eventually, enough time will have passed to give you a different perspective. Don’t suffer in silence or on your own. Talking to other people (even strangers) can be a great relief. They might even be able to help or, at the very least, you will feel heard. I know it’s a cliché but the darkest hour is just before dawn, so just keep the faith and continue to hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel … because there is.
Q. How did you feel while writing The Fate We Make and what was the greatest challenge in completing it?
A. I felt extremely emotional. In some ways, it was a great relief to finally speak up about some of my painful experiences; to finally confront my demons. But in order to write it, I had to relive every turn of the emotional rollercoaster I’ve been on – feelings I had buried deep down inside me: fear, misery, anger, shame, and unrelenting guilt. But, also, happiness and love, remembering the good things that have happened and the kind people I have met. The greatest challenge was overcoming my cultural reticence and speaking openly and honestly about how I really felt.
Q. How do you hope your memoir will help others?
A. I hope my memoir will help anyone facing difficult decisions, experiencing hardship, or struggling with their mental health to realise that it is possible to survive anything with the help of family, friends, or even kind strangers. I hope it will inspire them to see how it is possible to move beyond surviving; how they, too, can thrive by speaking up and asking for help.
Q. You have a further two books planned in The Fate We Make series. What can you tell us about them?
A. Book Two: Hurting will take us through the challenges, choices, and consequences faced by someone very close to me who we find out about in Book One: Heartbreak. Book Three: Healing is the conclusion of the series and will cover events that are yet to unfold, a happy ending where I finally put to bed the ghosts from my past who haunt me still.
The Fate We Make – Book One: Heartbreak by Simone Warren is out now on Amazon in paperback, eBook, and audiobook formats priced at £11.99 (paperback/audiobook) and £9.99 respectively. A limited-edition, signed hardcover version of the book is also available from the author’s website, priced £20. For more information, please visit www.thefatewemake.com
Exclusive Extract From The Fate We Make – Book One: Heartbreak by Simone Warren
Powerfully conveying the experiences of a woman thriving on the outside but sinking on the inside, The Fate We Make – Book One: Heartbreak should be on everyone’s reading list this year. In this exclusive extract, author Simone Warren recounts the tragic dilemma of whether to abort her unplanned child.
Aged seventeen, I have a choice to make. While other girls my age are deciding which outfit to wear to their weekend parties, if natural or smoky eyes would allure more, to dance in kitten heels or kinky boots, I face the impossibly difficult decision of whether I should end my unborn baby’s life.
I stare blankly out of my bedroom window at the kidney-shaped swimming pool of our noveau-riche District 10 condo in Bukit Timah, trying to make sense of the situation. My Inner Conscience is doing a decent job of drowning out the clamorous chants of her cousin Common Sense. Their internal debate rages on endlessly like a discordant cacophony of jarring voices, each shouting louder and competing to be heard. My sister stands helplessly by my side, also at a loss about what to do next, but trying her best to support. This is unfamiliar territory for both of us, the hardest decision we’ve taken so far in our lives is which subjects to choose for study at A-Level. I choke back the wave of panic as I struggle to breathe, sweat beading on my brow even though the air-conditioner is on, my chest heavy with the weight of my dilemma.
Trying desperately to regain some semblance of balance, I make a list, like so: (see image, above)
This list lengthens as I agonise over every single conflicting perspective. I imagine every potential outcome. I feel sick to my stomach as a kaleidoscope of bloodstained abortion images projects across my mind’s eye, and I can actually feel the excruciating pain of my baby as it is torn limb from limb, then forcibly removed via the Dilation & Curettage procedure. It puts my teeth and everything else on edge. I recall watching a graphically gruesome video depicting what happens during an abortion by the Pro-Life Society at the Catholic primary school I’d attended only six years ago. I shudder with guilt at the thought of inflicting such pain and suffering on an innocent child.
Almost immediately switching scenes to escape the horror, I picture myself moving on from Babyblip to successfully complete my A-level and Oxbridge entrance exams; I see myself laughing while enjoying a punt on the River Cam and dining in ridiculous robes alongside newfound friends, soaking up knowledge and opportunity.
In an alternative universe, I’m an unmarried mum shunned by everyone except my parents, living a shameful existence with a bastard child, all hopes and dreams of studying and living abroad dashed forever. Or perhaps the slightly less unappealing prospect of marrying Adam, my boyfriend of four years, and trying our best to bring up our child without any support from my parents, who I feel sure would instantly disown me. Mentally, I travel down that path, desperately trying to picture a positive outcome, but all I can see is another child growing up unhappily in another broken home with disillusioned parents who had married in haste and were repenting at leisure. All potential paths appear bleak and desolate.
I grapple with crippling guilt, feeling that I am damned no matter what I decide to do. I’m completely convinced that my soul will burn in hell for evermore, bypassing purgatory altogether, and all because I had chosen not to resist the guilty and forbidden intimacies of pre-marital sex. More than anything, I want desperately for my fairy godmother to wave her magic wand and erase everything that has led to this painful point in my life. I just want someone to hold me and lie to me shamelessly that everything will work out well, and we will all live happily ever after.