When I was 20, I met this guy who I thought was everything. We got married two years later, and I thought we had a perfect marriage, with only a few speed bumps.

It took me walking away from the situation to realize just how toxic the relationship was.

I never went anywhere alone: the grocery store, a friend’s house, or even to see my parents. I wasn’t allowed to go back to school, because he had a good job. It would have been a “waste of money” for me to finish my degree. He never hit me physically, but he hit me emotionally and mentally. If a fight got physical, it was at the expense of the bathroom door or a window. I always thought that as long as he kept his hands off me, everything was okay. He came from a verbally abusive family, and I got sucked right in. I was verbally abused by everyone, even the kids.

It wasn’t until I couldn’t make excuses for the broken windows anymore that I realized that I couldn’t do it any longer. I started having panic attacks every time I was home. I started drinking all the time to be able to face him. I would lock myself in the bathroom or closet just to have the door kicked down and get yelled at for “being a crazy person.”

When it finally ended, and I looked back, I realized the damage that had been done. The damage that still haunts me today. I had to take up a hobby to help me cope with the anxiety, and I chose nail art. Now, four years later, I’m a recovering alcoholic. I also had a friend steer me towards Jamberry. I was able to take my love of nail art, and turn it into a business — a business that picked me up off the ground and helped me regain my confidence, pay my bills, and give me a sense of freedom… something I haven’t had in a long time.

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I grew up in a house with Domestic Violence – it is not just physical. In my home it was emotional violence, controlling, and sexual abuse.

From the outside it looked like a loving home with nice vehicles and everything we would need to live a happy life.

My mom worked for him at his small business. He owned the roof over our heads as well as the income that my mom received from her job at his business. He controlled how much money she could spend on groceries/household items and here was a lot of manipulation.

He is also the person who sexually abused me from 8-16. There was physical violence as well, from his children directed at me to hurt my mother – and he did nothing to stop it. I recall locking myself in the bathroom many times to get away from the attacks. As a child I felt that if I told my mom and she left, it would mean she had no income as she would lose her job, and that we would homeless with no place to live so I remained silent even though I knew it was wrong.

I will never forget Boxing Day (Dec. 26), 1997 when I went to my mom’s for our Christmas celebration – she had half the house packed – she finally had enough and was leaving. I have never been so proud of her as I was that day. It would still be a few months before I told her what had happened to me (she honestly had no idea). I went to the police and he was arrested for historic child sexual abuse. My court case ended in a guilty verdict, although no jail time was ever served. Our story has a positive outcome, but so many do not.
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I met my daughter’s dad when I was 25. I fell head over heels instantly. The first sign of trouble was when he would want prior approval when I went out with friends. If he hadn’t met them before or he hadn’t heard me speak of them before then I wasn’t “allowed” to go out with them.

The third time that I caught him cheating on me I packed his things for him to move out. Obviously this did not go over well. My daughter was 9 months old at the time. When he came in to see his bags had been packed he tried to sweet talk his way out of the situation. At this point, however, I had decided I wasn’t going to raise my daughter in an environment that lead her to believe this type of treatment was acceptable. He became violent and threatened to kill me if I left the house.

When a friend happened to call that night, I used the “distress code” she and I had created for me to use if I was ever in an unsafe situation.

Over the phone I asked if she could borrow her crock pot and her mom’s recipe for spaghetti sauce. This was our distress code to show I needed immediate help. My friend called for police who showed up at my house pretending to solicit donations for the department, and I was able to leave the house with my daughter.

I now have a restraining order against my abuser, but he still has visitation rights with my daughter, and I worry each time they are together. I will forever and always be indebted to my friend who called that night and still call her my savior to this day.
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I first met my abuser at work. He was quite flirty with me and would pay me compliments. I was flattered. Over the weeks we became good friends and would often laugh and joke together. One evening we went out with friends and I realised he was interested in me as more than a friend. I was a young student living far from home and his attention felt good. Our relationship moved on quickly but after a relatively short time, looking back, the signs were there.

He began to get jealous of any men who smiled at me, talked to me or even looked at me. Looking back, I should have ended things because he would accuse me of not taking the relationship seriously. I felt I couldn’t break things off because I didn’t want my family to think that I had ended a previous long term relationship for a mere fling. Besides, I wanted to show that I had a good moral compass. I stuck with the relationship but things got worse and then I fell pregnant. I believed I should stay with the baby’s father and I didn’t want my child to be the victim of a broken home and I certainly didn’t want to look a failure. I became convinced that I could fix any problems that we had and convinced myself that his controlling behaviour wasn’t his fault but was as a result the way he was brought up.

However, as I learnt to my cost, I couldn’t fix things. There was no excuse for his controlling behaviour and things continued to get worse until he decided that I should leave our home. By now I had two children and he and his family spat at me as I left (without my children).

I was distraught but thankfully help came from an unexpected quarter.

A new friend, told me quite clearly that the kind of behaviour I was being subjected to was simply unacceptable and was extremely unhealthy. He was the person who helped to lift the scales from my eyes regarding what was happening in my relationship and was the catalyst who helped me to move on both mentally and physically and to seek professional help and support. Since that time I have worked hard to be an advocate for women in coercive and controlling relationships and last year published my novel ‘Isolation Junction’- a fictional story based on the real life facts surrounding coercive control. I am now happily married with three children and live in the U.K., and I am a Jamberry consultant.
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In 2003 I met a man that I thought was the man of my dreams. He was handsome and charming and he was interested in me. Everything started out great. He bought me gifts like jewelry and clothing. He was always wanting to be with me. I felt loved and needed and wanted for the first time in my life.

About 6 months into our relationship I noticed that he had started to change. Money started to become missing from my bank account. Some of my more expensive belongings were missing too. Then I caught him doing drugs. At this point, I thought I could “fix” him. But then he started to become violent – forcing me to do drugs and other terrible things. I was in a living hell for three years. Every day I woke up wondering if this was my last.

On Christmas day 2006 I was literally at rock bottom. My sister called me and said I needed to get out of there. No one knew what was going on because I hid it all very well. I was ashamed for anyone to know. I knew I had to get out, but was afraid he’d kill me. He came out of the bathroom and passed out cold on the bed. It was now or never. I quickly got together what I could and threw it in my car. When he saw I was leaving, he tried to hurt me, but I screamed at the top of my lungs “GET OFF ME”. I’d never stood up to him before.

On Christmas Day 2006, I got my life back. It wasn’t an easy road. I went through a pretty bad depression. I slept off and on for about a month before I looked for a job. But I did it, I got back on my feet and lived! One year to the day December 25, 2007, I got engaged to my now husband. I still have bad days, I have flash backs and nightmares, but he is there for me and I love him to pieces.  My heart is now full of love and hope.

I want to help women who are there or have been where I’ve been. I want to be a light to let people know there is hope and that they can be fearless!

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I am a survivor of well over twenty years now. My first experience with domestic abuse was during my first marriage. I did not recognize it for what it was. Although my first husband did not harm me physically, he sought to isolate me from my friends and family and did not like me working outside of the home. During the course of our short marriage, he stopped working, moved us to his parents’ summer cabin with the idea that we would be self sufficient, living off the land. He always wanted details of any conversations I had with family or friends. What he wanted was control.

I thought I was simply being the dutiful wife but became more and more unhappy until I finally decided to leave. I moved out of state to be close to my family. Full of shame and guilt for now being a divorcee, I became an alcoholic. My second husband took complete control the day we were married. He was an intimidating man. My children were afraid of him and I had to cover up for them to try to keep them out of trouble. I became a liar out of self-preservation. He was emotionally and sexually abusive, threatening, and intimidating.

I had him removed from the house and I got a restraining order. He moved into the house next door and continued to make threats against me. We had a son together and I was always fearful that he would try to take him away from me. I got sober about a year after our divorce was final. He moved across the state and I eventually moved out of state. He died of a massive coronary not long after.

There is a lot more to my story that is not included here. It has taken many years of recovery for me to learn that he was a very sick man and we were in a toxic relationship.

I now have 21 years of sobriety. Today I am happily married, my children are all grown up and doing well.

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When my mum first introduced me to him, I was too young at 8 years old to really understand and trust my ‘instincts’. He made my mum smile and laugh, he was nice to me. We played tickles, and he took me to McDonald’s after he yelled at us. He took me to the movies when his hand slipped, he took me to mini golf when I didn’t like ‘things’, but it was ok, because like he said – he wasn’t hurting me, was he?

For the next 9 or so years until I left home, my stepfather convinced me that I would die, my mother would die, my grandparents would die, if anyone found out about our ‘alone time’; despite having been able to condition me into thinking for most of those years that he loved me just the same way every stepfather loves their new daughter. Both mum and I lived in fear, through the physical, verbal, emotional, psychological and sexual abuse, but I never told her what he did to me. I had to protect her, I had to protect everyone.

After I left home, I locked my past, my memories in the darkest recesses of my mind, and focused on moving forward with my life and trying to forget it ever happened. My Mum stayed with him, he had broken her. I was so sure he had changed, and I had locked so many memories away that it would just destroy the current ‘happiness’ both my mum and I had found. I had a son and was confident he’d be safe, I had a daughter, and started to worry, I had another son, I was struggling, my marriage fell apart, I leaned on my mum and ‘him’. My kids loved their ‘Grumpy’ so much, but when I walked in on a tickling game with Grumpy and my daughter, everything hit me – he was conditioning my baby girl.

My baby was NOT going to go through what I did. I finally told my mum, she left him. We are still struggling, years later to rebuild our relationship. We know we are not to blame, we are victims; but the damage he caused runs so very deep, we are also survivors. I am proud be able to share my story and I hope I have managed to help someone find their courage, their strength, their voice.

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I was born in a small city, but was moved to a BIGGER city when I was 4 years old. I was raised in that Big city by my Mom and my Dad. While living there I went through things that a little girl should NOT have experienced! My Mom always worked 12 hour shifts at night and so did my Dad.  So we had a “sitter” at this house these people felt like family! But at age 9, their Uncle touched me in very inappropriate ways. I told my sitter and her sister what her Uncle did they did not believe me. So I did not tell my parents, they had too much going on and I didn’t want to add to those issues!

By the time I reached 9th grade, I guess I started looking for love in all the wrong places. Summer before I entered into the 10th grade my family moved back to the small town I was born in to be close to family! This is where my nightmare of what I thought was a love story began. The guy I fell in love was not the guy I thought he was! I ran away from home 2 hours away from my hometown with him, where he left me alone with one of his Uncles one night to go party with his friends. That night while once again I was sleeping I was awakened to a man on top of me. I had flashbacks of when I was 9, this time I was 16 and fought off my attacker and was able to get out of the apartment before he touched me again! Cold, dark corner I crawled in to hide.

Back to my hometown after being put on the news as a “runaway.” Off to the group home I went. This relationship continued because the guy became the “Father” of my children. After turning 18 and moving out, I lived with this man. After my son was born when I was 20, is when I found out about his crack cocaine drug use. And the verbal, physical, and mental abuse became overwhelming. He would beat me up when he cheated, when he wanted money for his drug habit. He would beat me when he “thought” I was cheating on him. But it was really him cheating on me and his guilty conscious wanting an excuse to leave to go do drugs. He would threaten to kill me if I left him. I was brainwashed and thought I had to stay for the sake of having a “family with a Mom and a Dad.”

But after 9 years of being beat on by him, I had had ENOUGH! I was no stranger to Domestic violence. I lived it!! The night I was being beat, and my daughter walked in to see me being chocked on the ground, and I yelled out for her to “GO CALL 911, THE NEIGHBOR IS WAITING”!! The fear in my baby girl’s eyes and her screams of confusion, as she was trying to figure out who does she listen to me who is screaming for help, or her Dad who is telling her “NO DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR”. I had already told my neighbor that I was going to send my daughter to use her phone to call 911 because if I tried to call for help he would rip all the phones out of the wall. NO cell phone back then.

The next thing I know he is jumping out of the bushes every where I went. The 10th year I fought back and started calling the police on him every time he broke into my house and attacked me. I started getting really scared that he would kill me! So I got a restraining order, but he kept coming back. Next I went to CODA to get help in getting a “No Contact” order against him.  After the police finally caught him on my property violating the “No Contact” order he was only put in jail for six months. So while he was in prison I starting seeing a Therapist who helped me FIND ME!  And realize that I did not deserve to be beat on, and that I was not only going through physical abuse, but I was going through verbal and mental abuse as well. I had no clue what she was talking about! Mental abuse, depression?? I was just trying to help him get off drugs!!

The Therapist kept stressing to me that his abuse was more than physical and that verbal and psychological abuse were just as harmful. She helped me believe I could overcome the mental control and verbal abuse and see that I was strong enough to leave him for good! Like many women in these situations I stayed and I kept going back because I believed he had changed, believed that he was sorry until he wanted drugs again, and beat on me. He stole money from me and my kids for his drug habit. I was terrified of what would happen to me if I left.

I wish it hadn’t taken me 10 years to get out. I’m glad I did because I’m so happy now with my husband of 10 years! I have learned to love ME, myself first, and now I know what I will NOT accept, no verbal, physical or mental abuse from anyone. I’m so blessed to have my husband by my side and support me with every thing I do! And he loves me for me person I am, along with the things I’ve been though! He doesn’t make me worry about any hurt, harm or danger coming to me from him! I’ve learned that finding love in the WRONG place has hurt my kids and their future! I love me enough to be happy and have joy without a man in my life! Love yourself first. Know your worth! Your life and your kids lives depends on it! Once you are stronger, they will be strong enough to NOT go through the same cycle of abuse!
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