Three months into my chemotherapy regime, whatever relationship we had left was dissolved without repair when he left me on my knees, bald and crippled with side effects, holding a 3 month old baby while a slightly older one screamed from her high chair.  I was begging him to stay - to help – but he stepped past me and straight through the door. 

Some attacks have been so severe I’ve ended up in hospital, others times it’s woken me in the middle of the night, prevented me from falling asleep entirely, greeted me when I wake in the morning and followed me around all day.

Julia was six months pregnant. She was alone in her apartment, having just split with her partner after a tumultuous relationship, when the weight of raising a baby alone dawned on her. “I remember just sitting there and saying, how is this my life? How am I pregnant and single? This wasn’t supposed to be my life,” she says.