I am running the BUPA 10,000 this year, and I would love and appreciate your support in a number of ways.

I am going to be raising money for Refuge, a charity that exists to help women and children who are suffering, or have suffered from domestic abuse.

I have chosen this cause because I know first-hand what it is to live with domestic abuse. I know what it is to grow up with it, and what this means in terms of my capacity for happiness in the longer term. The damage it causes is irreparable. The scars are permanent. Although as I am discovering, some healing is possible. I used not to be able to look  in the mirror without seeing someone disfigured with loneliness, guilt, and shame.  I have begun to be able to look, and see myself appear out from underneath the shadow of my past, despite the fact that the spectre of my abuse, my abuser, can be discerned in the very shape of my face.

I put my progress down to the fact that I have started talking about it.

I believe that the ignorance there is around the matter of domestic abuse - how common it is, the devastating and irreparable damage it leaves in its wake, how to help - is due to the misapprehension that it should be kept as a private matter, behind closed doors. This attitude is dangerous and compounds the damage caused.

I would like to use my participation in this run as a means of starting to be open about a subject which I have always felt to be a debilitating personal secret. The fact that abuse is generally seen to be, responded to, and thus felt by victims as something private, shameful, not to be spoken of, is the reason I have always felt alone, despite the alarming fact that 1 in 4 women have, or will suffer from it in their lifetimes.

I have already begun to be more open about my past, and this has already effected dramatic positive change in my life. I realise now that it was not my fault, that I did nothing wrong, that I should not feel ashamed. Therefore, if you feel comfortable about broaching the subject, and here I’m addressing my family, my friends and others that I don’t yet know – if you have ever seen something and wondered, or wanted to talk, help, or just understand, I would love you to play a part in my recovery. I am inviting you to talk to me about it. Or, if you have a story to share with me about your own experiences, I would love to read it, and will send a heartfelt reply. My email is anna.rickman@gmail.com.

In the meantime, please do sponsor me for the Bupa 10k. Please help me raise money to help Refuge ensure that others don’t have to suffer in silence, and alone.

One last reason why I have chosen to raise money by running 10 kilometres, rather than by baking some cakes (which I also enjoy) or shaving my head (which I would enjoy much less!), is that sport has always been something which has helped me in terms of regaining some sort of feeling of agency and power over my own body, life and happiness. I am therefore also training hard to complete this distance in a super speedy time, so please feel free to donate a bonus for every few seconds I manage to shave off my personal best!

All my love,

Anna