From chaos to clarity – healing from a stepfather’s addiction 

My name is Charlotte Ratcliff, and I grew up in a home shaped by addiction. My stepfather struggled with both alcohol and drug dependency. 

The chaos was constant with arguments, unpredictable behaviour and walking on eggshells. 

I didn’t grow up quiet; I grew up loud with pain. Misunderstood, reactive, labelled. But really, I was a child drowning in emotions that had nowhere safe to land. 

That pain didn’t leave me, I carried it into adulthood. 

Without realising it, I found myself in a relationship that mirrored the very chaos I was raised in, unpredictable, emotionally unsafe. 

I never felt safe

I never felt safe as I was so unsafe in myself. A lifestyle around me that was completely unpredictable triggered my wounds. I knew I had to break the cycle for myself and my kids.

In 2018, I fled that relationship with my two children and entered refuge. I thought the hardest part was over.

But what followed was a complete emotional collapse, a breakdown that stripped away the survival patterns I’d worn my whole life. However, inside that collapse was a doorway; I began to see the root of it all. 

The connection with my childhood

I began to understand the connection between my childhood and the choices I made.

I wasn’t broken, I was unhealed. And from that understanding, I began the long, painful, sacred process of awakening. 

I trained as an emotional health coach and began healing from the inside out, through nervous system work, shadow work, inner child healing, and trauma-informed support.

Through that process, I realised what’s missing for so many women like me; after refuge, there’s nowhere to land emotionally.

You’re out, but you’re not healed. You’re alive, but you’re lost. 

Building a women’s healing centre

That’s the gap I’m here to fill. 

Now, I’m building Coming Home To Your Truth, a trauma-informed women’s healing centre in Kent which will offer food support, clothing donations, a safe, nurturing community, and the Freedom Programme, which was key in helping me understand the abuse I endured. 

But it goes deeper than that. This centre will be a space for women to feel. To grieve. To reconnect to themselves. It’s not about getting over it, it’s about getting through it, together. 

On offer will be 1:1 support, women’s healing circles, and embodied practices that support emotional and spiritual recovery. This isn’t just a project, it’s the place I needed and couldn’t find. 

This centre will be for the women who have left but still carry the shame. For the mothers who don’t want their daughters to grow up with the same cycles. For the version of me who didn’t yet know she deserved peace. 

And it’s for the generation that comes next. For the children watching, just like I once was, hoping someone finally chooses truth. 

Charlotte Ratcliff

To read more experience stories, go to Support & Advice.