I was typing this for the previous thread! Cold hands!
Regarding the ‘alcoholic menopausal woman’ and victim blaming. I really didn’t see it that way. If the police were victim blaming, they wouldn’t even bother to search for her or spend the last three weeks investigating.
Anyone labelling Nicola an ‘alcoholic menopausal woman’ is doing so because they are choosing to read it that way or are judgemental and uneducated.
Alcohol dependency is very common and often happens in plain sight. We will have colleagues who are alcohol dependent, but they are functional because they take the children to school and hold down a job. It’s a spectrum really and isn’t the stereotypical ma on the park bench or someone who drinks all day.
My mum was alcohol dependent for many and I looked after her for years after my dad left. But she also had a respectable job which she eventually struggled to manage because of the further distress of my dad leaving. I have been to many Al-Anon meetings and my own therapy to learn how to manage my relationship with her because to some degree she is a dry drunk.
My brother has also had issues with alcohol dependency over the last few years. Part of it is probably learned behaviour, but also the toll of being married to a woman who is basically a narcissist who is also dependent on alcohol like her own mother.
People who are dependent on alcohol are using something outside of themselves to fix how they feel. It’s the same as a gambling addiction or eating disorder.
Nicola is not a bad person or a bad mother. She was struggling as lots of us are. But she wasn’t her struggles. I’m sure that her family and friends have lots of great stories to tell about her.
The map shows where she was found in relation to the bench... it's such a long way, round bends etc. And if she did enter the water there... why!? Sadly I think it will always be a mystery.
xx
or this 
emoji on tattle….. because the options we have really do not convey how I feel about some posts on these threads. There is no conspiracy!
