I was brought up in a Christian family, with  family values and lots of love.   I had always envisioned that my life would continue that way....I would find the man of my dreams and we would get married and have many children, living happily ever after.   I was wrong.   Life never turns out the way you foresee it when you are young....and most times life deals you with unexpected obstacles.   Still, I never expected that I would experience what I only saw on TV.

I have not experienced any form of domestic abuse in the home - my father is a very loving and devoted man, and loves my mother and my brother and myself very much.   We went to church every Sunday, though I know that that does not exempt anyone from abuse, and my mother today is still very active in her church.   My father is still a loving man and even helped me to create my first website.  I never knew where my "attraction" to abusive men came from....until recently.   I was never attracted to abuse, I only thought I deserved it ~ and nothing better.   When I was 20, something happened to me that changed the path of my life forever....and therefore led me into the cycle of abusive relationships.   Of course, I never thought it was normal practice within families and I never condoned it, and I grew up thinking that I would never LET  that happen to me, and that it never would.

When I was young I never had any friends, and was a highly unpopular girl, where my peers would play jokes on me by convincing a boy to "go out" with me as a joke - then to dump me.   I was a sensitive girl who wanted nothing more than to fit in and please everyone.  Maybe that is where it began initially ~ in my desire to find someone to accept me and to like me.  And then when my life changed at 20, I would then get involved with the wrong guys who ended up treating me like dirt and hurting me.   Sometimes I believed that it was the best I could ever get.  I believed I wasn't worthy of the fairytale prince who would wisk me off into the sunset where we would live happily ever after.

Needless to say I have had a number of "run-ins" with abusive relationships ~ not all physically abusive, but all just as damaging as each other.  And after the abuse I endured in each instance, I fell into a deep depression that still lingers today.

Here I have written my stories of abuse ~ one of which was my ex-husband.   All are in chronological order of events.   It has not been easy reliving the abuse, and the nightmare of the hurt, isolation and emptiness.   But if my story can help one woman, one child, one victim to stand up and leave, then I have accomplished what I set out to do in starting this site.
Please click on the links to read them, and remember, you are not alone.
 

My Story Begins....and so does my path of abuse

The Man I married

Emotional abuse leaves scars too
 
 
 

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Thanks to Donna from
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When I saw this image, I saw myself and how I felt
when I was a victim of abuse