The Importance of Dreams

Today I want to talk about dreams. Big dreams. You know the ones you had when you were younger? Maybe you wanted to visit an elephant sanctuary? Travel the world? Learn Italian? The plans you had before life got in the way. When I was a child, all I wanted to do was write. I couldn’t not write. Writing was as natural to me as breathing. I would write and illustrate stories for my little sister, folding a few pages of paper in half and stapling them together to make a “book.”

As I got older, I kept writing. And when I wasn't writing, I was thinking about writing. Characters took up residence in my head, living there rent-free as they chatted among themselves and told me their stories. In my free time, I wrote. I wrote until my arm got tired. Then I got a word processor and typed until my fingers got tired. I won the school literary prize, so I guess I wasn’t bad. And then…life happened.

Marriage, career, kids...you know the drill.

But writing didn’t leave me. The people in my head continued to tell me their stories, as plot twists and snippets of dialogue bombarded my brain. One day, I’ll write a book, I would tell myself, as I pictured myself on a sun-filled balcony far in the future. Retired. Kids grown. Sitting at my laptop with endless hours at my disposal to bang out a bestseller.

Well, it didn’t quite happen like that.

In 2014, I left my abusive husband and filed for divorce. The two years that followed took me on a journey I could never have imagined. A journey of love, loss, jealousy, betrayal, revenge and fear that led to me running for my life and driving across Europe with my daughter.

It was in the small hours of the morning, as I contemplated my uncertain future on a beach opposite Venice, that the book I knew I would write someday, was born.

"On the water’s edge, I smiled at the memories as a new day danced tentatively on the horizon. The light was different now. First light. Shimmering across the glass-like water and bathing the famous skyline in an ethereal glow. As I watched the sunrise, a fragile peace settled over me. A stillness. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I stopped thinking. About the past. About the future. About anything.

The voices were silent now. The questions ceased. The accusations stilled. Then, from somewhere inside the silence, came another voice. My voice, although it didn’t sound like me. A voice without judgment. Without blame. Without fear.

“It’s going to be OK,” it said.

Suddenly, everything was as clear as the dawning day.

In taking away my old life, Serkan had unwittingly given me a new one. For the first time in my life, I had nowhere to go, no one to answer to, and nowhere to be. My future stretched in front of me like a blank page.

I could start again.

When I was a little girl, I used to write stories. I would fold pieces of paper in half and staple them together before filling the pages with words and detailed illustrations. A multitude of characters and stories took up residence in my head, and I was frequently told off at school for daydreaming as I stared out of the classroom window. When did I stop daydreaming? I wondered as I gazed across the water. What happened to that little girl and her imagination and her stories? Life had swept me along on a relentless river of marriage, career, children, chores, and bills. My dreams were pushed aside to be periodically taken out and examined, like a precious family heirloom before being put away again. One day I’ll write a book, I would tell myself. Waiting for something, although exactly what, I wasn’t sure.

The right time?

The right place?

The right story?

It seemed that I had run out of excuses.

The domes and spires of Venice were clearly visible now. The to-ing and fro-ing of scattered birdsong punctuated the silence. A light came on in one of the caravans. The click of a kettle being switched on. The tinny sound of a radio as the world stirred into life.

Getting to my feet, I crossed the dewy grass to the car and pulled open the sliding door to the backseat. Elif’s school notebooks were still there, in her backpack, as they were the day we left. Some of the pages were scrawled with her childish handwriting, sentences in pencil, and mathematical problems. Others were filled with sketches she had drawn on our travels. I selected the one with the most empty pages and returned to the water’s edge.

“It’s going to be OK,” said the voice again.

And I knew that it was.

Opening the notebook on the first blank page, I smoothed down the paper with my hand and began to write."

excerpt from The Other Side of Fear

In the beginning, writing served as a kind of therapy. A way of making sense of what happened, but soon, those scrawled notes across the pages of my daughter’s old school notebooks grew, took shape and metamorphosised into a novel. As I continued to write, it soon became clear that it wasn’t about me anymore; it was about telling my story. A story that could give hope to the millions of women all over the world still trapped in abusive relationships. To inspire them to be brave. To find the courage to leave. To live without fear. To follow their dreams.

It's been ten years almost to the day that I escaped Turkey. It hasn't been easy, but my life today is unrecognisable from that of the woman I used to be. I am a full-time writer. I am happy and healthy. I have financial independence, an active social life, and good friends.

Above all I am free.