For eighteen years I could not explain my marriage to anyone, including myself. In front of other people he was charming, and I was the one who seemed difficult. I did not start writing to prove anything. I started writing so I would know what was true, because his version of an argument kept replacing mine. The record kept my memory my own instead of deferring to his.
This book is that record. Dated entries, written while I was still married to him, published with the mess left in.
You will see how ordinary it sounds from the inside. The apology that resets the whole week. The fight I picked myself so the waiting would end. The way I edited my sentences before I said them, and how normal that came to feel. Toward the end, each entry carries a countdown to the day I left. You watch it get close before I knew it was close. The journal started as the Verbal Abuse in Marriage blog, and you can still read the entries there.
I didn’t know what I was doing while I wrote it. That is the point of it. Every woman I have heard from who read it said the same thing in different words: she thought she was the only one whose marriage looked like this from the inside.
privacy
The sample is a PDF and will stay on your device until you move or delete it. The Kindle edition shows in your Amazon account and on anything signed in to it. You already know what that means in your house. Nothing on a device someone else can access is private.
Read the first pages before you spend anything.
Who it’s for. You’re still in it and you can’t name what’s wrong. Or you’re out, and you want to know you didn’t imagine it.
Who it isn’t for. It is not a safety plan. It is not advice, and it will not tell you whether to stay or go. It is what happened to one person, written down while it was happening.
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What readers said
“To say I am an avid reader would be an understatement. I have over 1,000 books on my Kindle yet this is the first review I have felt compelled to write. . . . If you or anyone you know is in a relationship of abuse, I can not stress enough, get a copy of this book.” ~Movinon, verified Amazon purchase
“I discovered her webpage Verbal Abuse Journals shortly after I left man who savagely attacked me as if I wasn’t even a human being. Searching to find myself again and searching for answers, Kellie’s work guided me through that year of brutal nightmares.” ~Angie
“I would recommend this book to any woman / man who knows there is something that is not right but just can’t put their finger on what is wrong.” ~Tracey Carter
“A must read for anyone who was in or is in an abusive relationship. What a connection I felt to the author having gone through similar relationship.” ~Anonymous review
If what you need today is a tool instead of a story
The Incident and Pattern Log is for writing down what happens while it happens. The Domestic Violence Safety Plan Workbook is for planning. They also come as a bundle.