Content Warning: This post discusses domestic violence, childhood trauma, and emotional, psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. Please take care of yourself while reading. This is a detailed recall in a nutshell with my experience related to domestic violence. Resources are included at the end and on the Resource page of the website.
Opening: A Personal Truth
I didn’t realize until my twenties and early thirties that much of what I lived through early in life was not okay — or normal. It had simply been familiar. When dysfunction is present from the very beginning, it doesn’t register as danger because there is nothing to compare it to. It registers as life. Silence becomes a skill. Adapting becomes survival. Without realizing it, your sense of what is acceptable quietly forms — not because you agree with it, but because it is all you have ever known.
Early Experiences and Conditioning
My very first memory is violence. I was four years old. We had moved to Manhattan, KS so my mother could attend K-State. I hate that the traumatic moments in my life tend to stick more than the good ones, because I know there were many good times, but my first memory was watching my father beat my mother. I remember sitting on the bed, wanting to jump to break her fall before she hit the dresser, and realizing I wasn’t fast enough or big enough. I remember her being slammed into the sliding glass door while curled in a fetal position and me screaming for him to stop — and he didn’t. What stays with me isn’t just what I saw, but the helplessness — that is the moment my small body learned what it meant to be trapped inside fear. It was entirely out of my control, I couldn’t help her, and I couldn’t leave.
Not long after, my mother left him and moved us back to Hutchinson. But violence didn’t leave our lives. As I grew older, the relationships that followed became increasingly violent — or maybe I was just old enough to recognize the severity of it. When I visited my father, drugs and alcohol were often present, another layer of instability that felt normal at the time. Hutchinson felt safer because my grandparents were there. They were my safe place. Two of my uncles were also strong role models for how men should treat women, and they remain that for me today.
My father also put me in dangerous situations, often taking me to environments where substance use and volatility were common. As a child, I didn’t understand how unsafe those places were — only that unpredictability and hypervigilance were part of being with him. It didn’t scare me. Despite everything, there were times I loved staying with him. He loved me in his own way, but looking back, the drugs won. That exposure to chaos at such a young age shaped my understanding of what “normal” looked like — even when it wasn’t safe.
What I know now is that the harm intensified, not diminished. The men who were kind or stable were often dismissed, while the ones who caused the most damage were endured the longest. At the time, I didn’t have language for it. I was just absorbing it — learning what love “looked” like, how chaos became normal, and how pain could feel familiar long before it ever felt wrong.
Adolescence: Survival in Overdrive
By the time I was twelve — my first year of middle school — my mother moved me out of state with her ex-husband to Perry, Missouri. The environment was violent and unstable before we even moved. Drugs and alcohol were constant. My stepfather would call me out of school and get me high on marijuana without my mother knowing — something that became routine. At the time, I didn’t resist because I was being bullied daily at school, had no friends, and staying home felt easier than facing that. I had never been bullied before and being in this new terrible environment, I felt so alone at school.
To be clear: he never sexually abused me, and none of my mother’s partners ever physically or sexually abused me. She would never have allowed that — she protected me fiercely. She tried and fought her whole life; she was a kid raising a kid and she did the best she could. But my stepfather’s behavior was manipulative. We would sit at home watching daytime television and smoking weed, and looking back, it was an attempt to groom me into trusting or liking him. What he didn’t realize was that I had already lived through enough to recognize manipulation when I saw it. But I used it.
I never forgot what was happening when I wasn’t there. I was always watching, always calculating. My mother, trying to keep me away from the worst of the violence, let me drive and work as a bus girl so I could stay out of the house as much as possible. But even when it was really bad, since I had been taught from a young age not to call the cops — I didn’t.
My second home ironically was his dad and brothers – they were not a fan of him either but super protective of me. However, I regularly drank and used, especially with the older one who was 18 at the time. So, obviously that environment contributed to my use of at twelve. I was driving on the interstate to places like Hannibal and Columbia to get them — which still feels unreal to say out loud. It wasn’t one person or one moment that led me there. It was everything. Survival required adaptation and I adapted the only way I knew how. And of course numbing would feel great to a 12 year old in that situation.
One night, everything changed. I came home from work thinking my mother was sleeping, only to hear her screaming for help. He had her in a headlock. His brother was with me, but did nothing, just watched it all unfold. I grabbed the biggest knife I could find, jumped onto the coffee table so we were eye to eye, and begged her to get in the car. She refused to leave. Again, calling the cops never crossed my mind — it had never been an option in my world. I backed myself out of the house with the knife so he couldn’t get to me, and I had no choice but to leave her there after multiple attempts. That was the worst feeling — the kind that still brings tears to my eyes — knowing that what I did may have made things worse for her after I left.
That night ultimately sent me back to Kansas. Over the years, I realized just how much I had been forced to carry at such a young age — and how not normal that was. Even after I left, my mother continued to go stay with him on weekends, leaving me largely on my own. The freedom I had in Missouri disappeared in Kansas (at least with the driving) — but the damage had already been done. And I wasn’t going to listen to anyone because I was “independent”. 🤦♀️
High School: Boundaries Shaped by Trauma
By high school, I had drawn one hard line: I would not allow anyone to “physically” hurt me. I made sure of that. What I didn’t recognize — or stop — was emotional and psychological abuse. As an early teen, I accepted emotional and psychological abuse from boyfriends because those behaviors didn’t register as dangerous. I thought avoiding physical harm meant I was safe. And at this point, when my mother and I would argue, it got just as toxic as some of her arguments she was had with her partners (not something I am proud of). It’s how she knew how to respond. It’s how I knew how to respond.
Young Adulthood and the Long Tail of Trauma
Even though I left that environment straight out of high school, the trauma I carried followed me into adulthood. After additional non-domestic-violence trauma occurred later in my life, I found myself drinking more to cope. That led to bad choices, a series of unhealthy relationships, and near death.
Again, as an adult, I still had that physical boundary. What I still didn’t recognize — or want to admit — was that I was still allowing other forms of abuse. Those behaviors didn’t register as abuse at the time because they were familiar, and familiarity felt survivable and tolerable.
Some of those patterns resurfaced in my relationship with my father as an adult. When we drank together, arguments would often escalate to the point where he wanted to physically fight me or vice versa — and I never backed down when I was drinking. I thought I was a giant. That intimidation felt disturbingly regular.
And I’m not proud of this, but there were a couple times when I was blacked out drunk (no excuse), and was physically abusive towards a partner. I took responsibility for that and it was not a recurring event in either relationship. But it is something Im deeply ashamed of, kind of glad I dont remember. But I include this because abuse is not gendered, and cycles of violence don’t disappear unless we’re willing to be honest about how they show up.
However, that same physical normalization followed me into one romantic relationship. He was quite a bit older. The first time there was a physical encounter, he shook me hard enough to leave deep bruises on my chest, and I minimized it because he hadn’t “hit” me (that I know of), because again, I was blacked out. So it was probably my fault and I was out of control, right? The second time, I was fully present. As I was making him move his stuff out of my storage room, there were continuous threats said as he did so (which I acted to not hear). However, shortly after I found myself on my back on the floor with him over me holding me down for a good period of time, just throwing punches but never connecting, continuing to scream things like,“your lucky bitch”, since he wasnt connecting. It was just a psychological mind game to intimidate me. That distinction mattered to me then — because of how I had learned to define violence. That moment was the final straw. There was no “talking”. I left that relationship immediately. And that was the last physically violent relationship I was in.
What followed were weeks, if not a couple months, of stalking and threats — a reminder that abuse doesn’t always end just because a relationship does. A reminder of why many women are scared to leave or tell their story in the first place.
Realizations That Took Time
For most of my life, I told myself I was lucky that I wasn’t sexually abused. And I wasn’t the one being physically abused. Others had it much worse so my issues weren’t important. Just within the last few years, I’ve come to understand how incomplete that belief was.
Looking back, spending time with people twice+ my age as a teenager — being in situations where I couldn’t meaningfully consent — that was sexual abuse. It took years for me to recognize that truth, not because I was in denial, but because normalization runs deep when you grow up without safe reference points. I told myself it was okay — that I was getting free drugs and alcohol, that I was “one of the boys,” that I was grown, and consenting! Now it seems so disturbing — and thinking of how often my friends and I were in that situation (usually a few times a week at least). It is so twisted to think that many adults were in those situations with us and no one ever said anything over the years, like, “Hey, these girls are 13, why are they here?” Never.
Acknowledging my experience doesn’t take anything away from anyone else’s pain. There is no hierarchy of trauma. There is only harm, experienced in different ways, and the long process of learning to cope with it. So, I was told never to downplay what I have been through, just because I think someone else may have been through worse. What I went through was personal; everyone takes things differently. It isn’t a better or a worse situation than A, B, or C. They are all just fucked up! (Although I still think it could have been much worse lol; my counselor and I will have to agree to disagree.)
A Different Kind of Love
After Dustin passed away, I eventually met Justin. He was the first person who fully showed me how I deserved to be treated. I want to make this clear — that doesn’t mean Dustin wasn’t a fantastic man to me — because he truly was — but it was no secret that we had our problems, especially related to addiction.
What stood out after spending time with Justin was how different conflict looked. Before him, fights with anyone were always screaming matches that could last hours or even days, even with my own mother (has lasted months). With Justin, disagreements are resolved quickly — rarely lasting more than ten minutes. He hates to see me cry. He has never called me a name. He hates the thought of him being the reason I feel worse about myself (when we have had disagreements). He hates the idea that I don’t want to be home (when I try to run away). And he would never even think of putting his hands on me. He is my protector — and I have never had that. When I don’t feel okay, he does everything he can to make it better.
Justin has shown by actions that he truly cares about my physical well-being, my mental health, all of it. He has allowed me to change my entire life from something I dreaded every day to something I am passionate about — it’s one of the most exciting things that has happened in my life now that it’s all coming together! He loves me and there is no doubt in my mind about that. It scares him to lose me. And visa-versa. I am so fortunate to have finally found a relationship as healthy as I believe ours is (not just romantic, but just relationships in general).
Through him, I learned that chaos isn’t love — love looks more like safety.
Lessons Learned
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that abuse isn’t always physical, and it often hides in plain sight. Emotional manipulation, gaslighting, control, and chronic disrespect can be just as damaging — and far easier to dismiss.
For a long time, I was extremely codependent, always taking care of other people even when I wasn’t taking care of myself. Meeting Justin was a turning point, not just because of how he treated me, but because he didn’t rush me into anything. He didn’t push for timelines, to meet right away, and respected my boundaries as I was still deep in the grieving process. Before we even met, he told me he would be there as long as I needed, whenever I was ready — and he meant it. And that support was incredibly important in how I acted in the years after losing Dustin. I could have gone down a dark path. That respect changed everything.
Self-care and recognizing your own worth and boundaries are not luxuries; they are necessities. Nobody deserves to be treated as less than or to be hurt regularly. That’s not love.
Why This Matters
I am not an anomaly; the pain behind my story is not that uncommon. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, approximately 58% of survivors report that emotional abuse was as damaging as physical violence. The World Health Organization estimates that 1 in 3 women worldwide have experienced intimate partner violence, including psychological abuse.
Children who witness domestic violence are at significantly higher risk for long-term mental health challenges, substance use, and entering abusive relationships themselves — even when they are never physically harmed.
Witnessing violence is trauma.
Closing
I’m sharing this not because it’s easy, but because silence is how abuse survives. What happens behind closed doors shapes children, follows them into adulthood, and quietly teaches what they think is normal.
I am happy to say that my mother and I have both broken the domestic violence cycle in our lives. I am so proud of her. And she ended up graduating from college the same day I graduated from high school. 💚😊
If any part of this feels familiar, please know this: you are not weak, broken, or dramatic. You adapted to survive. And you are allowed to want — and expect — more.
Nobody deserves to be hurt as a condition of love. Ever.
Resources
If you need help related to Domestic Violence Support (in the U.S.)
- National Domestic Violence Hotline
📞 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
💬 Text: START to 88788
🌐 thehotline.org
If You Believe a Child Is in Danger (U.S.)
- Immediate danger: Call 911
- Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline
📞 1-800-4-A-CHILD (1-800-422-4453)
🌐 childhelphotline.org
We all have a responsibility to speak up if a child is in a dangerous situation.
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