A Little Bent, Not Broken - Hervey Bay Author
Written by Holly Fay
I was adopted at six weeks old, My life started happy as one unit and later split into two families. While other kids were free to be kids, I was already surviving in between. By my early teens I was a carer for my terminally ill Father. I grew up before I even had the chance to live a childhood. Responsibility wasn’t a choice, it was survival for me.
So when I finally broke loose, I lived by the rule of “ play hard or go home”. I remember that was Dads saying when I was growing up. I did it drugs, booze, wild messy nights, outrageous adventures and the unapologetic moments.
I carried locked jaws, tight shoulders and fists ready for protection. I have done things I’m not proud of, I have made memories I will never forget. Some moments cloud me others shine, But all of them built the woman I am today.
At sixteen I became a mother, by aged nineteen I was married, By twenty I was already a single mum raising two kids. Carrying the bruises and the blows of domestic violence. I thought I had found a fairy tale but that turned into the darkest chapter of my life, I was stuck in the cycle of manipulation, brainwashing, the begging, the false promises that comes under Domestic Violence. I kept trying to give something to go on, but all it ever did was hurt me. More violence, more fear and More near death moments I somehow survived again.
For years I masked, people called me “functional.” I worked, I raised kids, I kept the wheels turning but I was numbing myself every single day. It wasn’t the drinking I was hiding, it was the pain. It was the emptiness of not wanting to feel. For twenty-five years that was my longest relationship, the alcohol.
Three years ago, I finally let it go.
Three years sober, Three years of light of actually feeling again. It’s like I woke up, I am calmer now more at peace in ways but I would be lying if I said the jaw clench and the shoulders of protection aren’t still there, they are. These days I meet them differently.
At 21 years of age I had my biological parents reach out to want to meet me, I met up with them . It still spins me out sometimes to know how small the world is with my drinking hole being the same place as my biological fathers and playing on the same pool tables and juke box.
On my 24th Birthday I was diagnosed with a brain tumour resulting into having emergency surgery days later. It saved my life but left me scarred, foggy and carrying OCD, fatigue, and a brain injury I’ll live with forever.
I had two more children, one of those pregnancy whilst having brain surgery. my miracle child. All four kids born out of messy circumstances but always from love. One relationship grew out of mateship not romance, it left me asking the same question so many do, are we in love or just surviving side by side ? . What I do know is that the love I have for my four children is non-negotiable.
Between them all I have raised four neurodiverse children, each with their own brilliance and battles and at the same time I was carrying another load, caring for my Mum whom suffers Parkinson’s and on set dementia which has stolen her independence. Seven years ago, I had to make the decision she wasn’t coming home, I had to place her in an aged care facility her new home. Another reminder that I have carried both roles, first for my adopted father now for my adopted mother.
In 2020 I nearly lost my life again.
One split second I looked away from the road and slammed into a telegraph pole. Eight days of dying on the inside before doctors realised, then emergency surgery and a stoma bag that became my lifeline. I lived with it for nearly two and a half years before several reversal attempts, and at last a successful surgery which gave me my second chance.
The stoma wasn’t just physical pain to me, it was humiliation. People stared, whispered and even asked if I was “stealing” due to the bulge under my shirt. I was stripped down and treated like a thief, discriminated against when I was already fighting to stay alive and still I held my head high. I didn’t argue for pity or payouts I argued for the respect and apologies.
I have been told to shut up even threatened into silence, I wrote anyway.
A Little Bent, Not Broken started as millions of words and was cut back to hundreds of pages, not because my truth wasn’t real but because I had to protect myself and at times my kids and others. Writing became my release, My therapy, My scream without breaking my own voice.
And here is the truth....
I have been writing this story my whole life, I wasn’t stopping now and
I wasn’t letting anyone silence me.
Families don’t always look picture-perfect, Sometimes they’re split across two homes, Sometimes they’re under one roof with two sets of rules, all seperate rooms or on lounges with no respect, and kids stuck in between and you just find a way and you pray it doesn’t eat you alive before you learn to put yourself first.
I have been through the family courts. I’ve seen the tears when kids beg you not to leave, and the fights that break out when you stay.
There are no easy answers, all I know is I am not alone, too many people live this same stuckness but keep quiet out of fear.
I find being a parent There is no manual. You can give everything you have got and still be questioned, still be hurt by the ones you had bleed for.
The hardest part is letting them go and trusting they will find their own path. Even when it breaks you, you hold on to this, no matter what, we’re all under the same stars, and my kids will always know I’m not far away.
Now, nearly forty years of age I don’t pretend to have it all together.
Some parts of my life flow others are bent and jagged, but I won’t let those bent moments break me. Healing isn’t smooth, It’s raw, messy and can be brutal at times. It’s not change but growth. The Feeling of stumbling and rising again, every step, even the hardest has shaped who I am becoming.
Today I am still climbing. I am a Reiki Master, Mindfulness and a holistic healer in mind, body, and soul.
I have hustled my whole life from bakery shifts, pubs, cleaning, small businesses doing anything to keep going. Now I use every scar, every relapse, every rise as the foundation of my work. I am stepping into my roles shaped by lived experiences,
because I know what it is to numb and I know what it is to finally feel.
I have been told all my life this story needed to be shared, and I believe that now. Because Hervey Bay has been the backdrop to all of it from the brokenness, the rebuilding, the rising. It is where I survived, and it is where I give back. The truth is this You are your own inner healer, Your own light.
Bent doesn’t mean broken, Stuck doesn’t mean always, and I am living proof of that every single day.
I am Holly F**ken Fay.
A Mother, Survivor, Healer, Mentor and Coach Kids Yoga Teacher my business being called HolStar's Phoenix Flow
If my story shows you anything, let it be this: you are your own healer, your own light, and your own damn reason to keep going, I am living proof of that.
A Little Bent Not Broken
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