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pluralstoriesSubmitted by erinptah! Thank you, erinptah!
“OK, Cathy,” she said, not in the least perturbed. “I’ll tell her.” Then she stood up, and started a conversation with herself, in which she told Jodie she wasn’t seeing Mummy or Daddy because she had to be safe.
Blurb: When seven-year-old Jodie was taken into foster care, her behavior was so difficult that she went through five carers in four months. Experienced carer Cathy Glass almost passed on her too, until her own (teenage) children insisted they wanted to see Jodie through. Eventually Jodie began to disclose details of the abuse, overlooked by Social Services for years, while Cathy struggled to get her the professional care and long-term support she deserved.
Why is it worth your time?: The rare outside view of a small child who appears to have DID, who ends up in the care of adults that are attentive and well-informed enough to recognize it.
You wouldn't know it from the promotional copy, and DID doesn't get invoked by name until nearly the end of the book, when a couple of alters firmly identify themselves as Not Jodie. But the dissociative traits are visible from day one, when Cathy reports Jodie having intense, distracted conversations with what she assumes are "imaginary friends." Among the kid's other issues, most of them Cathy never overtly connects with the alters, but there are a few that the reader might recognize as DID-related anyway (e.g. struggles with time perception). All of which suggests that Cathy's original real-time notes about her experience with Jodie were pretty solid.
Plural/1+ Tags: abuse high-focus, cofronting, people: children, type: medical, how would you tag for "real system described from the outside POV of a singlet but not in a horrible way"?
Content Warnings: past child abuse (sexual and physical), past animal abuse, physical aggression and sexual acting-out. Others involve SPOILERS; see comments
Accessibility Notes: Available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.
Misc. Notes (if any): There's some awkward misinformation in the dialogue (e.g. describing the non-Jodie headmates Reg and Amy as "characters"). Thankfully, Cathy's actions stay refreshingly grounded in "managing the issues Jodie-and-company actually have," there's not much focus on her idea of what DID "should" be.
erinptah! Thank you, erinptah!“OK, Cathy,” she said, not in the least perturbed. “I’ll tell her.” Then she stood up, and started a conversation with herself, in which she told Jodie she wasn’t seeing Mummy or Daddy because she had to be safe.
Blurb: When seven-year-old Jodie was taken into foster care, her behavior was so difficult that she went through five carers in four months. Experienced carer Cathy Glass almost passed on her too, until her own (teenage) children insisted they wanted to see Jodie through. Eventually Jodie began to disclose details of the abuse, overlooked by Social Services for years, while Cathy struggled to get her the professional care and long-term support she deserved.
Why is it worth your time?: The rare outside view of a small child who appears to have DID, who ends up in the care of adults that are attentive and well-informed enough to recognize it.
You wouldn't know it from the promotional copy, and DID doesn't get invoked by name until nearly the end of the book, when a couple of alters firmly identify themselves as Not Jodie. But the dissociative traits are visible from day one, when Cathy reports Jodie having intense, distracted conversations with what she assumes are "imaginary friends." Among the kid's other issues, most of them Cathy never overtly connects with the alters, but there are a few that the reader might recognize as DID-related anyway (e.g. struggles with time perception). All of which suggests that Cathy's original real-time notes about her experience with Jodie were pretty solid.
Plural/1+ Tags: abuse high-focus, cofronting, people: children, type: medical, how would you tag for "real system described from the outside POV of a singlet but not in a horrible way"?
Content Warnings: past child abuse (sexual and physical), past animal abuse, physical aggression and sexual acting-out. Others involve SPOILERS; see comments
Accessibility Notes: Available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.
Misc. Notes (if any): There's some awkward misinformation in the dialogue (e.g. describing the non-Jodie headmates Reg and Amy as "characters"). Thankfully, Cathy's actions stay refreshingly grounded in "managing the issues Jodie-and-company actually have," there's not much focus on her idea of what DID "should" be.
Content Warnings
Date: 2025-06-16 10:42 pm (UTC)Sexual abuse from both of Jodie's parents and a range of other people, sometimes in groups, sometimes photographed or filmed, starting before she turned 2. It's described in sparse but unambiguous detail, since Cathy is aware she'll need specifics if anything is going to get prosecuted. Physical abuse that was documented in multiple hospital visits, which left Jodie with learning difficulties due to brain damage, and which she sometimes re-experiences in physical flashbacks.
The precipitating event for Jodie being taken away from her parents was, she set fire to her father's dog. (There's no suggestion the dog itself was involved in the abuse, just that Jodie is displacing her anger at her father.) She starts the book with poor bowel control, sexual acting-out, and physical aggression, and has what seems to be a pretty severe depressive episode towards the end. At one point Cathy's personal information gets leaked to Jodie's parents, and Jodie periodically has flashbacks/hallucinations of them coming to take her, but ultimately they never appear in person.
Although nobody gets prosecuted for Jodie's abuse, 6 of them are prosecuted (and 3 convicted) for the abuse of one of her classmates, which might never have been uncovered without Jodie's disclosures. So that's something.