Saving Grace - Rise above domestic violence
🧡 INTRODUCTION:
A Message from My Heart
For years, I kept silent.
About the pain.
The shame.
The confusion.
The things that happened behind closed doors that made me question my worth, my sanity, and even my faith.
But something inside me refused to die.
Even in the darkest moments, a whisper of hope stirred. A voice — God’s voice — saying, “You were not created for this.”
This blog is my beginning.
It’s where I share my truth, rise from silence, and offer a light to anyone still trapped in the shadows.
Speaking up about topics that are hard to talk about, is confronting. Writing a book about family violence, medical gaslighting and my creepy paternal grandfather that reminded me of my ex husband.
The upside there are good men, good people in this world.
I love my dad, he has been through so much and yet has a heart of gold. Eventhough he has experienced horrific childhood abuse, he made choices that have been to help others. Whereas my grandfather was just for himself. An abolsolute selfish, entitled piece of shit.
His sexual abuse of messing with my insides, that bastard. Along with the medical system that dismissed and devalued period pain. It took a lifetime to be believed, to be taken seriously.
After 3 babies entering my womb and saying goodbye It's like the womb has taken a kick so hard it got knocked out.
The upside of this is working with coach Rik Schnabel that has been a life-changer since starting coaching about a year ago. Now the book is coming together finally after 4 years of unscrambling my brain.
Amongst the contractions of life I am grateful for the good people in this world.
People with a heart that care.
Thank you Jesus. 🙏💚
8 March, Friday 2024. First time learning about being a blogger and how this works.
At least I can learn in peace. I don't have all that toxic noise like I did in the marriage. It's a strange land coming out of a narcissistic relationship/marriage. Rebuilding life is a daily commitment and dedication to living. To not just surviving but thriving and overcoming the trauma. As I write about what happened in marriage it's hard to think, I put up with so much abuse from a man boy that just had no interest in my welfare. There are days as I wrote my story into a book, a memoir,.that it is sad to look back and see how much effort I put into a marriage that had no hope from the start. I recall getting told,.'don't give your pearls to swine'. This is hitting hard now that I am away from that insane world.of empty sex, porn, drugs and alcohol and partying. There was nothing glamorous or fun about that world. It was despairing, an endless abyss of shit.
14 October, Saturday 2023. The body keeps the Score, by Dr Bessel Van Der Kolk. After starting treatments in Pelvic Floor physio and remedial massage last week, I can see how much my body has endured. It is liberating to be able to have a means to care for the body. I am so grateful the more time away from that toxic relationship the more I can see how much of a chronic people pleaser I have been throughout my life. I can see how I developed maladaptive behaviours out of survival. What I did as a child to keep safe doesn't serve me as an adult. It's time for a new way forward. Thank you to family for organising the treatments in the interim whilst waiting on the NDIS for support. God is paving a way forward through the wilderness into a new life.
9th October, Monday 2023. Victor Frankl, 'Suffering ceases to be suffering when meaning is found'. Coming out of an abusive marriage with a very controlling, demanding.dominant, demeaning, dismissive, judgemental, entitled man boy has been a traversing through a wilderness of stormy weather. It has been a very isolating and lonely wilderness where I question do I stay or do I go. Coming back to family, parents, sisters and their families is another wilderness of its own. Where do I belong? I've come out of that marriage near death, loss of job due to chronic pelvic pain: endometriosis and adenomyosis and onto the disability pension. I was married to an alcoholic, sex/porn addict, narcissistic psycho, drug dealer, predator, grandiose, manipulative in constant need of admiration. He was judge, court and jury. Family gatherings were a nightmare. He would complain that I was married to my family, even though i hardly saw them and lived far away from them. I hardly saw family, my nieces, nephews, parents, sisters It was heart breaking.
Watch this ! To learn how to break the trauma bond with a narcissist by Dr Ramani
He introduced himself as happy camper. What a miserable prick he turned out to be. I've never heard someone complain like he did. He was in and out of jobs, as soon as something upset him, it was the end of the world. He would explode. He would create dramas by antagonizing people, whether at work or home or out. His words went from loving to poison within minutes.
He would flip if things didn't go his way he would have man boy tantrums. He would lose his shit and punch holes in walls and doors. He was unpredictable and dangerous. Nothing was ever his fault. Accountability was not in his vocabulary nor was the word responsibility.
Even just doing this blog. It's a first time creating a blog. Where does one go to release, to speak up about the crazy making in an abusive marriage. And when is it OK to speak about. I've been told by family, it's too heavy, too much for them to hear about my marriage. A family member told me I talk a lot about what happened. Family don't want to hear it, but they want me around. It's confusing like living with him. This part of you is accepted but not that part, just bring the part we are OK with. 13 years I was with him and married for 10. It's a big chunk of time spent under the spell of demons dressed up as an easy going Aussie guy that called himself happy camper. What a load of shit, he was no happy camper. Sadly, I bought it, the whole chilled out Aussie guy, bong smoking, Cider drinking happy camper. Happy when he had his Cider, sucking on his bong and getting his sexual needs met.
.I remember waking up to him crying about his shriveled up penis seriously disturbing to wake up to a grown man pointing at his shriveled up walnuts and penis, crying it's my fault, look what I've done to him, he would cry. WTF was I living with. How much of my values did I compromise because I thought we could work through our stuff together. But he wasn't interested in changing his ways.
5th October, Thursday 2023, just working through strong sensations through the pelvic region with massage, breathing and my beautiful fur baby curled up on top on my abdomen. I notice the sensations are linked to body memories about being in pain. Now that my life is completely different, it can be a shock at times.
4th October, Wednesday 2023, the body is exhausted. The pain of waking up to what I lived with is shocking. Shocking to come to realize how twisted my marriage was. It was madness. Utter craziness. It's like the body needs so much reassurance and nurturing, to have the care it deserves.
The idea for this blog was birthed during an endometriosis flare up which seems to be going into week 4 as I write this. Which means I've been housebound nursing intense pelvic pain that comes in waves of intensity that leaves me incapacitated in the physical, but also on the mental as it plays havoc on the mind and tests my will for living.
Living with chronic pain is isolating, its not really a sociable thing to have but it does come with lots of time for reflection and prayer for a renewed me. My prayer has been 'to be transformed by the renewal of my mind', since 2014 after our 2nd pregnancy loss. I knew I had to change but what, I didn't know. As I was deeply grieved and lost in the dark with a husband that I found was having an affair and gave me an ultimatum, to stop grieving or that was it, he would leave. I was an emotional mess. A hormonal mess of confusion.
In saying all of that; this space has been created from a place of healing with love, safety, and ongoing prayer that has kept me focused on what is possible.
I trust now that it is safe to speak up.
Healing and recovering from 13 years of living in a narcissistic wilderness is taxing on the body. On the whole system; mind, spirit, body and the soul.
This blog is one way of getting the word out in taking a stand in putting an end to generational abuse.
No more abuse. That's it. In Jesus name amen. I declare a new generation of eagles to rise up with new flight into a new way of living, that soars beyond our human imagination. Ephesians 3:20
I have created this blog as a safe space platform to share and finally speak up about my experience of living in an abusive marriage of 10 years (together 13 years) along with a lifetime of medical gaslighting that added to the abuse at home.
It has been a wilderness of landing back into my body and now it is time to up speak up after 3 years of escaping the devil's snare, which was like escaping a dungeon with all its demons.
- Do you or someone you know, have a story to tell about living in a toxic environment? (toxic, abusive, life-taking, living like walking on egg shells)
- what is getting you through this time? are you living with them or out of the relationship?
- what needs to change in your area, state, region, what is something that could make all the difference?
Sinking Ships/short film-domestic abuse
This short film brings me right back to him screaming over me, towering with rage about something that would piss him off. The apologies, the lies, the explosive rages that would leave me rattled to the core. He would come home with yet another dispute at work, someone that pissed him off and of course it was never his fault. Everyone else was to blame. Come home to see him drinking and smoking bongs and into his porn sites. That was the crux of it. Drinking, smoking, porn, sex and more sex.
I remember the day he left with my ex-husband. I broke apart into a million pieces. I was inconsolable. Even though it was a mutual decision for Buddy to go with my ex, it didn't hurt any less to see him leave. When little Buddy boy was 6 months old he saved my life in a brutal dog attack. We were attacked on a walk after work one day. It was a man that heard my screams that came to our rescue. The other near death incident was when my ex-husband almost killed me in a drunken stupor, he'd come back from a Christmas work party with an open tab. His work place saw the fun side of him. Buddy and I saw the drunken violent intruder. Buddy was my first witness to his drunken rages filled with demons.
I was in a marriage with a narcissist that almost took my life. I was blind and so deceived believing love could get us through. But we were on 2 different value systems that came together in their wounds and exploded from their wounds 13 years after. Trauma bonded.
It has been a massive wake up a call.
And now with peace in my heart and freedom of spirit I can give my gratitude to my family (mum dad, sisters, their hubbies and their families, my amazing nieces and nephews that absolutely rock in their own way: I am free now to give as an aunty can with love and joy to watch them grow and blossom, to extended family, dearest friends that have been a light during some very dark storms; their love has been a god sent, church families that foster god's love, 1800 respect for their 24 hour telephone support line for those in domestic and family violence, CASA (centre against sexual assault)- Aisha what an amazing worker brilliant, she was there during lock down 2021 isolated at the Peninsula after he left the state. Emily, brilliant for her work in somatic liberation, that has been an immense learning curve for me in how to listen to my body, by giving myself permission to be in my wholeness; in my full colourful humanness and of course my heavenly father, Jesus Christ, my comforter, restorer, counselor and friend along with all the angels that have helped me along the way.
Family and domestic violence comes in so many different ways: sexual, financial, spiritual, psychological, physical, and emotional abuse.
My story is a tapestry of love and kindness, shame and humiliation, chronic people pleasing, isolation, Somatic Liberation which is learning about my body and building on the relationship between my body and self, Addictions: sex, alcohol and other drugs, infidelity, women's health: endometriosis and adenomyosis, miscarriages, Medical gaslighting, Narcissistic abuse, Melbourne Lock down, Trauma and CPTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder).
To be able to finally speak up after living in darkness is triumphant. After 13 years together, 10 of those years married. It is now time to heal and restore.
'START WHERE I AM' - 'Start where I am.' That's what the 1800 RESPECT worker said when I rung from having a flashback. I was a mess. She said, to start where I am. Some days I don't even know where I am at. One of the biggest hurts that I have been healing through escaping that abusive marriage is the loss of pregnancies and the abuse endured from losing pregnancies.
Sleep was never the same again with him. I would be too scared to go to sleep and too scared to wake up.
Life with him was mental; the things he would say day to day some things made no logic, its like he created the dramas for himself, he created unnecessary stress.
Daily crap that he would speak like 'Get them young and train them'
Alcohol addiction - How many times did he piss the bed? lots
Alcohol and weed and other drugs, like party drugs -Cider and bong were his best friends. I never understood why he would try and push needle use onto me, glamorizing using speed by needle when he was in his 20s.
financial control; because he knew it all of course and his way was always better and smarter than my way or ideas.
Faith and spirituality: this was a way to put me down and call me names in front of friends. As much as he used my faith and spirituality to bring me down, I continued to pray and know that Jesus my heavenly father is bigger than the husband.
Psalm 23 meditation -this was one way of feeding my spirit. I had headphones in 24 hrs during lock down. It was a way of tuning out from his verbal diarrhea and tune into feeding my mind, body and spirit life giving words. The first part of the psalm is like a balm to the soul. Lying down in green pastures beside quiet waters. He restores my soul. Something about those words that spoke deeply into my spirit. I yearned so much for streams of water, I felt so dirty in the marriage and out of it. So dirty I wanted to sit in a stream for a year to wash away all the dirt from my soul of living with a predator.
Psalm 23:
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me bedside quiet waters. He restores my soul. He guides me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear not evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil: my cup overflows. Surely goodness and love with follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the lord forever.
I painted the butterfly at the end of 2020 after escaping the devil's snare. I was a skeleton of myself when I looked in the mirror I did not recognise the person looking back at me. I could barely walk without collapsing from chronic pelvic pain which had become unmanageable. I'd had surgery, a laparoscopy back in September 2019 to find out if I had Endometriosis as my period pain had become ongoing pelvic pain that was becoming harder to manage and harder to work and function.
It was affecting my whole
life, my marriage, work, social and health.
I was pushed through into category 1 emergency surgery in 30 days with
The Royal Women's public hospital. After years of medical gaslighting along with living in a culture that does not honour the feminine. Growing up, period pain was not spoken of and suffering in silence with pelvic pain became a way of life. Life was never the same after my period came along at age 12.
The year 2020 was a crescendo of insanity in the world at large and in my world of domestic and family violence, the home environment grew even more sinister and unpredictable. Trying to find ways of leaving a relationship that is volatile and risky is hard enough without the added pressure of a lock down, forcing victims to stay at home with perpetrators is a crime. It is hard enough and terribly isolating trying to escape an abusive relationship without a lock down. Forcing people to stay in their homes is a crime unto itself. It was a very dark time. I was on my own with my perpetrator and my health was rapidly declining before my eyes.
The madness was ramped up during the Melbourne lock down when services were having their own breakdown. Melbourne city went from the most livable city into a war zone of unrest into Battleground Melbourne. It was a very lonely and frightening time because family violence and mental health didn't seem to be so important at this time and trying to escape made exiting even riskier and isolating. I remember calling 1800RESPECT in the dark, hiding away in the backyard in the shadow. I was so nervous watching behind me in case he was lurking in the background listening in on my phone call.
There was no privacy with him. Anything that was mine was his and that included my body. He believed he owned my body, my mind, my finances and anything else he felt entitled to. Hope with him was dim. Very dim. He had squashed my light down to a flickering flame, just flickering. The darkness in him wanted me dead.
Once I lost my job in March 2020 my salary packaging stopped paying off his home loan and lock down forcing us to stay under the same roof, it was a ticking time bomb in the home. I had become so unwell after my surgery in September 2019 that I was vomiting with diarrhea, losing so much weight it terrified me. The pressure of sex didn't go away because I was unwell, it intensified to another level of nightmare. I was stuck in a trauma bond and not sure how to exit this insanity I was living in.
As soon as I could I dived into
books about narcissism and gaslighting.
It was thanks to his dearest and longest friend that alerted me to a
checklist of narcissistic behaviours. She helped me to identify the
abuse which I learnt is narcissism. As it turned out his behaviours
checked most of the boxes. The more I
researched the more it made sense why I was a skeleton of myself and why
nothing made sense with him. Living with
my husband was like living in a washing machine on crazy cycle for thirteen
years. It was Jess Hills, in her book 'See what you made me do' that led me
onto studying trauma and what happens to the brain under threat. The need to understand what happens to the brain and body under prolonged accumulative stress is a big part of the healing and recovery.
I learnt that I had been raped in my marriage. Not feeling safe enough to say no to sex. The sexual pressure and demands were incessant. He would cry with tears about dying from 'blue balls’. I had never heard of this term before. According to him he needed sex this many times a week, a month, whatever rule he came up with day to day was how it was.
Marrying a man that sold himself as a happy camper and then turning out to be one of the most miserable people I have met. I remember my gut telling me something was off with him proposing so early and giving me the key to his home very early on, along with hearing the words he loved me. This was all very early in the relationship. Between a low self-esteem in myself and the pressure of getting married as I was mid-thirties at the time and coming from an Italian background, I felt the pressure building up to get married.
It was seen that I was less than because I was single. I was not looking for marriage but rather a companion, but little did I know how this man was going to impact my life. I was never in a hurry to get married, it was not on my to do list in life, as I lived with pelvic pain that I did not know at the time was endometriosis. Huge amounts of pain around my period. My period had been a problem from 12 years old when it came into my life and changed my life from no pain to insane pain that left me suicidal, questioning myself about this pain, am I crazy.
I went from GP to GP without any positive outcomes but only to be gaslighted and told the pain is in my head and to just go have a baby, or take a Panadol. This mind you came from mostly men who have no clue what it is to have a uterus, to bleed, to have tender breasts that hurt so much that would bring tears to my eyes just from walking or from the water shower.
Comments
Post a Comment