THE TRUE SCOPE OF MY 17-YEAR STORY Seventeen Years of Survival This is not a story about one event. It is not a story about one trauma. It is not a story about one system failing. It is a seventeen-year continuum of illness, disability, trauma, discrimination, violence, neglect, and survival. For seventeen years I have lived through circumstances that most people will never experience in a lifetime. My body has failed me. Systems have failed me. Institutions have failed me. P

I never wanted to tell this story. Not to friends, to strangers, not online, and definitely not publicly. And if I’m being honest, I spent years trying to make sure I never had to. People see the ending and can assume that’s where the story began. They hear about the divorce. Maybe there are mentions of police reports. They hear about court orders. They see me speaking openly about domestic violence and assume I wanted to expose what happened. Sorry, but the truth is much MUC

My title says emotional abuse, but it was physical abuse with bullying as well. I was married young, at 22. I had come from a home where I had been physically abused by my stepfather, and then he left my mom, my brother, and me. He just didn't come home one day. So knowing how to have a healthy relationship was not something I knew. In my marriage, I had no idea what a narcissist was. But as the years went on, I learned that it was actually the disorder my husband had. It sta

I am a survivor of domestic violence, stalking, harassment, and identity theft but my story did not begin the day I escaped. Its roots reach back four generations, woven through the lives of the women who came before me. I am the daughter, granddaughter, and greatgranddaughter of women who endured what they should never have had to survive. My mother, a woman full of beauty and pain, turned to drugs to cope with the violence in her life. When I was eight years old, she was mu

I was in my first abusive relationship for two years before I even realised it was abuse. This set my dating pattern for most of my adult life, where I accepted abuse because I believed it was okay due to me fighting back. WHAT THEY BUILT AFTER I began studying and attending therapy. I struggled with therapy and the processing of therapy after I completed it. It was hard to know that I should have had therapy years before bringing up my children, who got the unhealed version