Sunday's Child

Sunday's Child by Anne Lyken-Garner is the remarkably inspirational true story of a little girl struggling to rise above poverty, appalling living conditions, food lines, violence, abuse, mental anguish and political hardships. It shows how she picks out little glimmers of hope and love and uses them as positive anchors in her life. She draws on everything she has - just to survive. Readers, all of the events I've recorded in this book have happened to me in real life, each and every one of them and more. I have changed the names of the people in this memoir - but not Theresa's - because I did not wish to cause them any embarrassment. Apart from these names, nothing else has been changed; although, a few of the events may not have appeared chronologically. I have recorded these episodes of my life to show that regardless of your past, with God's help, and a few good people, you are potentially able to rise above it and can consciously decide not to allow it to affect who you are at present. It's an agonizing affair, but I believe that if people who've been abused in their childhood allow their entire lives to be ruined by it, they have in effect surrendered to their abuser their right of self. Abusers are aware of the devastating powers of their actions, so if the victim continues to live his or her life in the shadow of that abuse even after it has ceased, he or she is enabling the abuser to succeed in destroying their life, thus achieving their goal. I wrote this book in the progressive developmental language of a growing child to provide an opportunity for the reader to visualise the intimate thoughts of an imprisoned child of that age. This I hope, would offer a tool, which could help to identify a child who is being abused. This approach also enabled me to show how abused children can grow to believe the lies they're told, and actually sympathise with their abusers in some respects. You would've also noticed how easy it is for children to believe the ignorance with which some adults saturate their thoughts and lives. In addition, I wanted to express my experiences in the way I saw them as a child, because I was not willing to add my adult opinions to this story. Firstly, because this approach allowed the person I am now to take a step back and write the story objectively. Also, it meant that I did not have to painstakingly analyse a lot of the behaviours demonstrated in Sunday's Child; patterns which, although I could not understand them then, are clear to me now because of my training, Child Psychology qualifications, and work experiences. For legal purposes, I want to mention also, that some of my then juvenile political assessments of the government were not necessarily factual. They are merely what I believed to be the truth, based mainly on the opinions of the adults I overheard, and also on the effects the Government's policies had on my young life.