Abuse Hides in the Dark. Turn on Your Light.

Domestic Violence Problems


  • Abuse Makes Me Wanna Be a Banshee

    I read that victims of abuse are not abused because of who we are. We’re abused because of who we are NOT. I am NOT whatever person my husband wants me to be or thinks I should be. And because I am not (an can NEVER BE) a person who my husband has imagined, the…

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  • Stop Saying ‘It Makes Me Sick’

    My sister tells me to stop saying “It makes me sick” because she’s afraid “it” (the abuse) really will make me sick. Once upon a time, “It makes me sick” was a kind of heart-sickness, an expression. Now I really am sick. The first time I realized that I really felt physically sick because of…

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  • Expectations

    Like many of our “good” conversations, my husband and I talked for over three hours last night. I went to bed at 3:30am, tired of course, but also daring to hope that MAYBE we opened discussion on a basic problem in our marriage. Expectations cause us a LOT of damage – a lot of hurt…

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  • In Your Heart of Hearts, You Know You’re Leaving

    Understanding is not what I need, and it’s not what I need to give. “Understanding” has super-glued my heart and mind to a mad man, and “understanding” will doom my children to repeating my loop.

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  • Work to Undo

    I’ve got two boys that are going to be their own men in a few short years. I have a lot of work to undo. And hey – if you have a second, send a prayer or some positive thoughts to whomever or wherever you send them, for me and my family, please. I am…

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  • Wish in One Hand…What Goes in the Other?

    I must stop wishing him to “feel the way I feel” because in order for him to feel like me, I have to act like him. I don’t care if he feels like me or not. I feel like me, and that is becoming enough.

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  • Can't We Talk?

    I don’t want him out of my reality, but if co-existing in a mutual reality means that I have to hide myself and rely on hoping that he’ll be nice to me, then any mutual reality between myself and my husband is going to end.

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  • at least

    i am no longer a mess but i may be becoming a new kind of crazy. hazy. unpredictable. but no longer unfortunate. no longer in ruins. edging out of the confusion i dare look to a horizon i didn’t notice before. like the old horizon, there is nothing discernible there. nothing special. unlike the old…

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  • Why Can’t I Just LEAVE?

    Why Can’t I Just LEAVE?

    Reasons You Might Stay So many people beat themselves up over the question “Why can’t I just leave?” Do you want the easy answer? You aren’t ready to leave yet. You Notice I said fill in your reason here. These are not excuses. “The reasons you stay may sound like excuses to someone else, but…

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  • It's too hard

    My thoughts hurt. My heart aches. My body is tired. I’m breaking into tears on the outside, but breaking into pieces on the inside. This is too hard. I want to give up even caring if I’m in an unhealthy relationship or not. But I won’t because once you’ve seen the truth, there’s no going…

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