For Healing and Forgetting

Abandonment and Healing

I suppose everybody hurts in different ways, and the path to healing may never be a prescription like a pill to deal with a simple headache. Over the past year, as I have lived in the expectation of turning 60, I have also relived memories and events from my early childhood that exude all kinds of pain.

On several occasions, I have shared my experience of secondary boarding school and how the lasting impact meant I have no enduring relationships from that time, neither with friends nor teachers. Whilst there are occasional messages from old schoolmates, I received only one congratulatory message representative of my time in secondary school.

The Trauma of Boarding School

Whilst I was aware of the broader decision-making process my parents engaged in when putting me in boarding school far away from home, it was only recently that I began to appreciate some of the trauma associated with that phase of my life. The privilege of going to boarding school should not mask the lifelong consequences of that experience.

It was meant to toughen me up and give me a sense of independence, but it also destroyed my trust and willingness to confide in them about other aspects of exploitation and abuse that I had suffered before, during, and after the boarding school period. I internalised so much when I should have been screaming for help.

Even when I took therapy, it was limited to addressing the catastrophic loss of status, means, and livelihood after my first encounter with cancer. I still had to fight for that service because I presented none of the indicators of ideation that people typically display with depression or even suicide. Yet I was hurting and suffering, coping mostly through what I learnt in my religious beliefs.

Understanding Boarding School Syndrome

The psychologist Joy Schaverien, who died in 2025, described the hidden trauma from early boarding school experiences using four key elements: Abandonment (separation from parents), Bereavement (grief from loss of family), Captivity (powerless feeling in an institutional setting), and Dissociation (detaching from feelings to cope).

She termed this the ABCD of Boarding School Syndrome, though it should not be limited to the boarding school experience in England alone. I was in boarding school in Nigeria, and it extends beyond those institutional settings to family and life in general.

Abandonment came in many forms: the early months of incubation, being left with foster parents (a norm in the 1960s that acquired the term "farming"), even one 'caring' family starving me, the mental torture of being threatened with reliving a dreadful experience to buy my silence, the lack of curiosity when abuse was reported, and obviously the boarding school experience itself.

This was compounded by the refusal to bring me back after realising my coping mechanisms were highly stressed. [The Guardian: ‘Farmed’: why were so many Black children fostered by white families in the UK?]

Given time, I could develop the other elements of 'BCD', but there is enough in Abandonment to see how it can be the root of additional trauma. None of this has found any means of discussion between the affected parties, except in the catharsis of my writing over the last two decades.

Love and Protection

This is not to say that I am unloved. I am deeply loved, but trauma can set you up for feeling both unloved and unlovable. Love cannot be passive; it needs expression and the conveyance of tangibility and feeling.

Much as we do need a hedge of protection around us in all the issues of life, that hedge can easily look like prison walls, giving you the earnest desire to escape because you are caught in a claustrophobic enclosure that suffocates every facility of self-expression. Their protection becomes your prison, an overcompensation that does no one any favours.

Faith and Letting Go

In three situations, this aspect of hurt has been challenged: from preaching tapes I have listened to, in a sermon at the crossover service I attended on New Year's Eve, and from Brian. "Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past." [Bible Hub: Isaiah 43:18]. You wonder, how do you let go of the past when it still has that much of a hold on you?

It involves taking your eyes off that and looking to see something else that God is trying to catch my attention with. "See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland." [Bible Hub: Isaiah 43:19]. This would suggest I do not need therapy, but belief, trust, and faith. A bit of empathetic counselling could help build that trust too.

Finally, much as it is difficult to explain, there is healing in reconciliation: just reconnecting and carrying on rather than raking over the coals of angst and trauma. Let God handle the broken wings, as we get beyond the narrative to become more than just Boarding School Survivors of childhood and adolescent trauma. The eagle will fly and soar again.

References

The Guardian: ‘Breaking our spirits was the plan’: the lifelong impact of having gone to boarding school

Bloomfield Health: Boarding school syndrome

LinkedIn: Boarding School Syndrome: Understanding the Hidden Trauma Behind Privileged Education

Hope Therapy and Counselling Services: Did Boarding School Shape Who You Are?

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Desert Island Discs: Childhood Trauma and Workplace Pastoral Care

In the passing of stories

Listening to the back catalogue of Desert Island Discs has now brought me into the middle of the pandemic, the year 2020.

However, since I began this exercise way back in March, some of the people featured have passed on. I note with particular significance Yvonne Brewster, who was the first person I wrote about.

She passed away on 12th October at the age of 87 and was featured on last week's edition of BBC Radio 4's Last Word. [AkinBlog.NL: Desert Island Discs: To Be Young, Gifted and Black]

The interview format possesses an almost disarming innocence. What gets revealed shows how the context of sharing one's choice of music can inadvertently expose both vulnerability and discovery.

A spectrum of care

Whether it's the child sexual abuse suffered by Christopher Hazlewood, who founded the Paraorchestra, or the obvious abandonment of Professor Dame Elizabeth Anionwu, born mixed race and illegitimate, housed in a convent with nuns whilst her mother visited monthly, you appreciate the kind of trauma that forms part of the history of these remarkable people.

Then there's the story Dame Sally Davies told. At the point of retiring as Chief Medical Officer, she highlighted something missing from today's teaching of vocation, the grooming of talent, and the nurturing of expertise.

On the matter of junior doctors, she observed that pastoral care was missing. Very few knew the name of a consultant; that is, if consultants could even name others they had taken under their wing.

One example stood out. She arrived for an interview in a sports car and, on arrival, ended up in a driving manoeuvre that spun her around 360 degrees.

A consultant stepped out of the department and asked if she had come for the interview. On responding in the affirmative, he called to postpone the interview until the next day, taking the time to settle her down and getting her a cup of tea.

She returned the next day, interviewed, and got the job. However, she said, without the care and consideration of that consultant, she would likely not have got the job.

Care in the workplace

By extension, that lack of pastoral care and consideration of the humanity of junior staff, when interacting with sometimes overworked middle management who are under pressure to deliver to almost impossible terms and without the time to manage effectively, diminishes the productivity of the employee in many unquantifiable ways.

This is besides the way managers use promises they would never fulfil to lure new talent onto their teams.

In the end, it is usually left to the individual to decide whether they are fulfilled in settings that barely appreciate them.

When it comes to the tussle between self-respect and being patronised to the point of feeling belittled, I would hope the former would guide the person towards seeking greener pastures whilst nipping avoidable workplace stress in the bud.

Desert Island Discs references

Desert Island Discs: Yvonne Brewster 01/04/2005

Desert Island Discs: Christopher Hazlewood 29/05/2020

Desert Island Discs: Professor Dame Elizabeth Anionwu 04/06/2020

Desert Island Discs: Dame Sally Davies 02/08/2019

Pastoral care in modern workplaces (AI-generated)

Then I asked AI the question, How could the lack of pastoral care be addressed in modern workplaces?

That's an excellent question that extends beyond the scope of blog editing, but I'm happy to explore it with you.

Based on the themes in your blog post, here are some thoughts on addressing the lack of pastoral care in modern workplaces:

Structural Changes

Mentorship programmes - Formalising what once happened organically. Assigning senior staff to genuinely know and support junior colleagues, not just tick boxes. The consultant who postponed Dame Sally Davies' interview demonstrated this perfectly.

Protected time - Managers need designated time for pastoral duties, separate from productivity targets. When middle management is stretched thin, human connection becomes the first casualty.

Smaller teams - The anonymity you described, where junior doctors don't even know their consultants' names, suggests units have grown too large for meaningful relationships to form naturally.

Cultural Shifts

Redefining success - Measuring managers not just on outputs, but on staff retention, development, and wellbeing. What gets measured gets valued.

Slowing down - The consultant who made tea instead of rushing to the interview understood that five minutes of humanity can change someone's trajectory. Modern workplaces resist this pause.

Accountability for promises - Your point about managers using unfulfillable promises to lure talent speaks to a deeper dishonesty. Holding leaders accountable for what they commit to would restore some trust.

Individual Actions

Modelling care - Even without systemic change, individuals can choose to be that consultant. Remembering names, checking in genuinely, postponing the interview when someone clearly needs a moment.

Choosing environments wisely - Your conclusion about self-respect guiding people towards greener pastures is crucial. Sometimes the best response to uncaring systems is to leave them.

What aspects of pastoral care do you think are most critical in your own experience?

Thought Picnic: Just trying to be human

Usually totally misread

The way it creeps upon you is strange and unsettling; I try to keep constant what I can control, while letting go of the things that seem expendable, as much as possible. I suppose people see in me a disposition that never suggests I could be as vulnerable, so when I do feel it, it is often read as something else.

I was shocked when I was asked if I had an idea to end it all; though I’ve faced overwhelming situations, I have opposed them firmly with positivity and hope. What I want to be remembered for is quite different from what that might suggest. Put that under the rubric of concern, I was advised.

I am aware that I always want to tell a better story. Those who think they know me rarely sense that sometimes I’m not feeling social or wanting to go out. Usually, when I am alone, I am more of a loner, an introvert, even if I express myself too candidly with words, generally well put together.

What I really feel

Yet, to the question about how I do feel in myself, I can never be negative, even if I do not feel the way I want to feel. It’s an intrusive but understandable question, yet even in my relationships, you’d hardly see past the surface; genuine closeness and physical intimacy are needed to see beneath.

By pressing on, I have avoided exposing my vulnerability, lack of desire, or disinterest. That feels like a luxury I can ill afford, given the demands placed on me to respond, engage, reach out, contribute, be present, and consider others' perspectives, often at the expense of myself.

There was a time I could shut myself away completely — curtains drawn, indoors for days, like Miss Havisham, who’s never stopped her clocks — but no one truly understands that need for occasional hibernation. Yes, I do value solitude and being alone.

I have lost my weakness

Much of this stems from repeated experiences of abandonment across different stages of life, including during illness, where my coping mechanism masks deeper suffering. Even my way of recovering downplays the seriousness of what I face; what people see and what is real are often different.

Heck, Akin, you had a malignant cancer diagnosis just over a year ago, and during those critical moments — from diagnosis, decisions, to treatment while working every day — you faced it largely alone.

I didn’t take a break until a month after radiotherapy, as I realised I had exhausted much resilience and needed someone to lean on, despite many challenges and the feeling that seeking help was somehow wrong.

We are never depressed

There’s so much I want to say, but I can’t put it into words. I have weaknesses easily overlooked because of the 'firstborn syndrome' and the idea that I am a pillar of strength. It’s a constant struggle to live up to that myth, as if I’m superhuman, when I am simply human.

We are never truly depressed — this would be an incomplete reflection, and I don’t want to be scrutinised or given poor advice based on assumptions. We don’t all fit preconceptions or boxes, but others rarely understand when someone’s difference doesn’t match their frame of reference.

How many allowances can be made for others? In the depths of the night, I hear a cry: “Please, don’t forget me.” Just as I want to reply, “Hold yourself together,” I realise I have to cater to these pleas — and it’s a pipe dream to think I’ll always be looked after.

I am tired, not of living, but of constantly meeting others’ expectations, which strains my mental resources, making me want to retreat into my own cocoon. Obligations, responsibilities, duties, commitments, demands — all of it. Yes, that sense of depression can creep in strange and unsettling ways.

Lest I forget, Africans are never depressed when you have the weight of expectations pressing down on you.

Childhood: When parents think they know best

Classic inadvertent abandonment

I happened upon a Facebook status at the end of last year, where there was a discussion about some parents sending their foreign-born kids back to Nigeria to apparently teach the kids discipline and resilience along with avoiding any possibility of their kids being dragged into inner city issues like drugs, gangs, and crime.

After reading some of the comments one especially of a parent who had successfully reared kids in America and could not countenance the idea of sending their children into the care of strangers, be they relations, paid guardians, or strict/conservative boarding schools, I offered a perspective of my own experience.

The lifelong consequence

Imagine being sent from a private primary school environment with a majority international pupillage in Kaduna to a boarding school in Sagamu, Ogun State, at the age of ten. It could have been worse as I had admissions to even more remote places.

The lasting effects of that experience apart from feeling abandoned even if it helped make me both independent and resilient, not that it was unachievable at home, but my parents knew best.

As a child, I was quite outgoing, precocious, and inquisitive, with independent views. I have decidedly refused to associate with old student activities at my secondary school, nor do I retain any enduring friendships from that time. The scars are lifelong.

A rash of parental control

I suffered serious child psychological issues just months before I was shipped off and then in the first term at boarding school, that my parents' closest friends pled with them to bring me back home, those appeals fell on deaf ears, as if they had not learnt from the experiences of being placed with foster parents in England, one of such even starved me, much of that, I have blanked out of my mind.

These seemingly benign parental decisions still affect my relationship with them, and they are both octogenarians. There might be an immediate benefit to fostering your children out to strict environments, but the long-term break in the familial bonds would scarcely ever be repaired.

While there are parents who still think the boarding school experience is a rite of passage that is wholesome and germane to child development, if I was blessed with offspring, I would have totally negated some of the decisions taken as part of my upbringing. I know many parents of my generation did not repeat that vicious cycle.

I speak as someone who will be fifty-nine in less than a week. I charted my own course and chose what was good for me in the scheme of things. Some memories are best left unrecalled. [This was drafted before my birthday in December 2024.]