The most tainted way to see love and to learn love

A blog written by Free your Mind ambassador – Joss Simmons

For me growing up around domestic violence was life changing it was scary and tearful. I feel as though it is the most tainted way to see love and to learn love.

Seeming as it is the person doing the damage is the exact same person who claims they are doing it out of love. Being the child in the middle of it all, only left me to absorb every little bit of it, I never knew how it affected me until I grew up and looked back at it. It separated us all and at the same time made some of us closer. I think because of this, I feel now have some kind of “attachment disorder” like I can love and care with my heart and soul, but at any given moment I can let go, just like that.

Seeing my mum go through hell and back made me paint an extremely negative picture of my father at that point in my life. Somewhat confusing now, but words can’t explain the mixed emotions I have due to my past experiences.

As I grew older I taught myself to highlight the positives and still love my father, all in all, it taught me how to just love freely and always view life positively. The anxiety and mental health issues that may have stemmed from me witnessing domestic violence first hand are still vacant in me, but I do not let them conquer me.

This leads on to me being the way that I am within the work that I do, my experiences have made me care on a level that makes me want to raise a generation of children that don’t have issues that stem from domestic violence or mental health. In saying that it’s made me more understanding towards the children I work with that may have experience or witnessed domestic violence, I can relate to to them even more so.

Growing up I never really knew what I wanted to do in the future, I started djing at the age of 14 and left school with no GCSEs.  As well as a lot of suspensions on my school records from primary up until my last day of secondary school, they were all as a result of fighting and rudeness. Looking back now I can say that due to the environment that I was living in at home I became a product of my environment and my actions reflected just that. I use to lie a lot about everything anything big or small and that stemmed from seeing it at home so it just became a learnt behaviour almost second nature to me.

In my teens I became more loving, caring and affectionate, coming from a big family I was at first the youngest out of all my cousins, but as everyone grew up they all started to have their own children. I was always around my younger cousins and I played a big part in looking after them all. When my little brothers were born, I noticed that I was good with children. Whilst working in “Harrods” as a sales rep for a high end woman’s shoe brand. I was with a customer and whilst I was trying to serve her child was throwing what I call “a wobbly or having a moment”

I intervened and calmed the child down just by distracting her because I didn’t like seeing the child stress herself out unnecessarily. The mother “my customer” was left in awe, and said to me she has never been able to calm her down, in the 18 months that she has had her. This is when I noticed that I was somewhat paternal.

A few months later the same customer came back with her child but not too shop. She came in to ask me if I could babysit and help her at home with her child. I was left lost for words and didn’t know what to do, I said yes, but asked if my mum could speak to her, because I wasn’t sure how to go about any of this.

A few weeks later I got asked to babysit and over time the mum in question kept saying to me that I should work with children because she thinks that I may have a gift.

Around the same this was all happening I was also looking for a career of some sort. My mum found an advert in the local gazette for a nursery that was recruiting. I attended the open day and applied for a job which around 10 years ago.

I started in preschool and eventually worked with all the other nurseries’ from 4 months and up. It was at this nursery that the name for my now business *jossy* came about it’s what the children use to call me when we did phonics and letters. Whilst working here I got asked to babysit by some of my key children’s parents.

The first family I babysat for let everyone else know about what I did, and I then went on and made some business cards and called the business “JossyCare”

I stayed there for around 4 years and i managed to study a level 3 in childcare and completed it in 6 months even though it was a 2 year course.

I eventually moved on from the setting to a number of different nurseries over the years, and even got a role as a nursery manager. Whilst moving around I had a lot family’s approach that wanted me to babysit for them.

I became a nanny a role which has taught me a lot, it is only over the last 2 years or so that I have changed the direction of “JossyCare” and I now plan to offer fathers help and not just babysitters.

But it’s only now that my life experiences have really helped with the work that I do within in a government funded setting. I am now working with families and children that are coming from all different walks of life. I work with families that have a background of domestic violence with both parents and children being victims.

The work I do honestly makes me forget all the negative things that have ever happened in my life and puts me in a happier place.

All of this has geared me up to wanting to have my own childcare business that helps children and families. It’s my chosen career path that’s made a man out of me and growing up the way I did, it has made me more open to having emotions and expressing them and all different types of ways.

Website – TBC

Twitter – JossyCare

Instagram – JossyCare