Sheilas book is a moving account and a powerful piece of social history. It should act as a reminder of mental health care in the past, and the impact that mental ill-health can have on friends and family – Paul Farmer, Chief Executive MIND

Description

I felt constrained to write this book for several reasons. The World has changed so much during my lifetime that I wished to relate the memories of my childhood in the 1930s and during the war years to how life is lived today. I wanted to compare the innocence and simplicity of life during my childhood and the restrictions and scarcity of goods during the war, with the complexity and materialism of life today, to contrast the broken eduction the war produced with the wide facilities available in the twenty-first century.

About the Author

Sheila Brook was born in 1931, and long periods living in other peoples homes occurred during the first eight years of her life, owing to her mothers recurrent episodes of mental illness. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War her mother was again admitted to a Psychiatric Hospital and Sheila did not see her again for over twenty years. Her father employed a housekeeper and Sheila was able to return once again to her own home in Kenton, Middlesex, now part of Greater London.

On leaving School at fourteen in 1945 Sheila had a little further education, which included what was then called commercial training ,shorthand, typing and bookkeeping. She then became Secretary to an Almoner at a private, pre-NHS Clinic in London before becoming Secretary to a Harley Street Consultant.

She left work when she married in 1952. She and her husband spent the first eleven years of their marriage living with her father in Sheilas childhood home, looking after her father, husband, and, in the course of time, two children. In 1963 she moved to Hertfordshire with her family, and when her sons grew older she studied and passed the required examinations that enabled her to go to Teacher Training College.

In 1971 she began teaching in a local Primary School, and soon enjoyed the responsibility for Girls games, coaching the Netball Teams for the inter-school matches and annual Netball Rally, activities that she had been unable to enjoy herself during her education, due to the restrictions of the war years. Severe, long-standing, facial neuralgia forced her to take early retirement after some years of teaching, and the satisfaction she had in her chosen career made this hard to bear. She felt that she had made a positive contribution to her pupils futures, which had been curtailed because of the constant neuralgic pain.

Sheila has always enjoyed an active life, and played tennis until she turned seventy. She attends a weekly Keep Fit class and also a Medau movement session. She spent many years singing in a Senior Ladies Choir, and enjoyed Folk Dancing until very recently. She is an avid reader when time permits, loves her garden, but now has a lesser love for the work it requires. Her marriage continued for almost fifty-five years, until her husband died from cancer in the Spring of 2007. Eight months later Sheila herself was diagnosed with breast cancer, and had surgery in January 2008. Her other hobby of doing jigsaw puzzles has not been indulged for some time. Life is too busy, and she is in constant pain.
Sheila Gaylor wrote her book in her maiden name of Brook as a tribute to her late parents. As she wrote her story she appreciated how much anxiety and sorrow her father had suffered, and how her mothers mental illness had deprived her of her home, her family and her freedom.