On The Page, Poet Mourns Daughter’s Murder

Fresh Air from WHYY – originally aired July 29, 2009.

SLAMMING OPEN THE DOOR By Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno, Alice James Books

Terry Gross interviews poet Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno, whose collection of poems, Slamming Open the Door, documents the aftermath of the murder of her daughter Leidy Bonanno.

Leidy was found dead in her apartment in 2003, strangled with a telephone cord by an ex-boyfriend. She had recently graduated from nursing school.

Read the transcript of the interview, and excerpts of Bonanno’s poems, on npr.org.

Fran’s story

Back in 1981 I was a stay-at-home mom (former RN), married to a prominent physician in the community.

I knew my husband was controlling, and did not manage his anger well, because he yelled a lot, and I was not perfect . He made me feel terribly small as a woman, wife and mother, and I thought I was very small and inaffective as a human being., and clung to whatever good I could. He had a few affairs along the way, I went into long-term counseling. He didn’t think he needed it. After being separated for almost 3 years, we got back together, which was a horrendous mistake on my part., as a mother of two children.

It confused our teen-age daughters, caused much instability for them, and after 2 years of being together again, he walked in one day, looked at me with a strange smile on his face, grabbed me by the hair, swung me around the room, pulled my left arm out of joint, smashed my head into the wall, & how I managed to survive all that, is beyond me.
I felt so guilty and was too terrified to tell anyone locally, but my family in Canada knew, and pleaded with me to go to the authorities. I didn’t think anyone would believe me, but my girls had witnessed the damage, and were quite shattered at the time, because after a few such instances, I realized I could die, I told my best friend, and hid at her place while a restraining order was served to him , and I filed for a divorce. the police had to take him off the street several times, because he didn’t want me in “his” home.

My girls actually wanted to stay with him for awhile, because I was almost a basket case by that time, and I let them go. However, they ultimately came home, to me because to punish me, he stopped paying alimoney, money for their dance lessons and school tuition, and left them alone in his place frequently to be with his girlfriends.

They came to their own realizations along the way. I retained my sanity, and eventually he became quite ill and is now in a retirement home. I don’t think his third wife even visits him which is quite sad.

My girls are now grown up and I would say are doing relatively well, he has since sent me a formal letter of apology, and I have come to forgive him , but have not befriended him since. I was left with some permanent damage to the brachial plexus nerves in my left arm and damage to one of my ankles that periodically causes problems for me.

Even though some couples develop later friendships because of the children, I decided my civility towards him and compassion regarding the strokes he has had, has been enough. We no longer have any friendship whatsoever, but one of my daughters calls him periodically just to say hello, and more out of pity for his present state than anything else. My oldest daughter in England is happily married with 2 young boys, but doesn’t communicate with either one of us. Once in awhile her husband and I talk to each other, long distance, and that’s about it. That part of it is a sadness in my heart that I live with.

This is what I have to say to other women.

“Do not think you can stay and change this scenario into something beautiful, by being different. You can alter your behaviour only so far, but this kind of diseased relationship will only open up the wounds and damage you and your children more and more and maybe take your life!

Get out, go forward, better yourself on your own, and don’t ever put your children in the middle of the situation! It is easy to do, when you are afraid, but very tough to undo the damage it causes.

Love yourselves, and don’t look back. Keep good friends and make some new ones that you can rely on, and be active in something creative. Get out of your own negative behaviour problems. You can be healed emotionally and spiritually, eventually.

Fran S.

Father accused of murdering his 15-year-old daughter in ‘honour killing’ told her to ‘kiss her youngest brother goodbye’

by Lucy Ballinger for MailOnline, October 21, 2009

A schoolgirl murdered by her father in an ‘honour killing’ was told to kiss her brother goodbye the day she went missing, a court has heard.

Mehmet Goren, 45, told his daughter Tulay, 15, to let her brother embrace her one last time in an emotional farewell, it is alleged.

Her mother Hanim, 45, said her husband had tied up Tulay with bits cut from a shawl and left her face-down on the floor of her bedroom the night before, the Old Bailey heard.

He and his brothers Ali, 55, and Cuma Goren, 42, are charged with Tulay’s murder, and the attempted murder of her boyfriend Halil Unal, then 30, in 1999.

They were furious the pair planned to marry as he was a Sunni Muslim, while their family were Alevis, the court has heard. The day before Tulay went missing Mrs Goren and her husband visited their daughter at her boyfriend’s home and insisted she come home with them.

Mrs Goren claimed when she returned home from picking up their other young children eight-year-old Tuncay, and Hatice, 13, she found Tulay with her hands and feet bound so tightly they were ‘purple and black’.

Speaking through an interpreter, she said she and Hatice had tried to untie Tulay but she had said: ‘Mum don’t untie me, I want to die.’

She told the court: ‘In the meantime Mehmet had come from downstairs saying, “Don’t touch her… so that she doesn’t run away again, I tied her up”.

Later that night Tulay was seen by Mrs Goren trying to escape from a window. Mehmet is said to have slapped her and then drugged her with a sleeping pill.

The next morning Mehmet told his wife to take their children to his brother Cuma’s house, but leave Tulay. She wept as she told the court he said to her: ‘I am going to stay with Tulay. I am going to make her talk about what her problems are.’

She added: ‘Mehmet said “Come let Tuncay kiss you, Tulay. This will be the last time you see each other.” Mehmet phoned his wife later that day to say the teenager had run away.

The next day when they returned to their family home Mrs Goren said her husband had a ‘deep wound’ on his hand and that his hands were covered with scratches. Two kitchen knives were also missing.

She said: ‘Mehmet’s hands were exactly like as if he had been working in the garden without gloves.’

She also said soil in the back garden had been disturbed.

Mrs Goren claimed her husband told her to disown Tulay.

She said: ‘He said to me “From now on she is gone, I disown her. She is not my child any more. From now on we don’t have four children any more, we will have three children only.”

The prosecution claim Mehmet had buried Tulay’s body in the back garden.

Mehmet Goren, Cuma Goren, and Ali Goren, all of East London, deny the murder of Tulay on January 7 1999. They also deny a conspiracy to murder Mr Unal.

The case continues.

Tracy

I was raised in a very secular home.  Though my mother was Jewish by blood, the only real mention of G-d was a family member telling me that G-d punishes the wicked and that bad things happen to bad people.  I tried very hard to be good.

When I was 17, I was in a relationship with a very abusive boyfriend.  It started as jealousy which I viewed as a compliment.  He just wanted to be with me as much as possible.  He loved me so much.  He soon began to control so much of my life that I was unable to discern the “me” from the “us.”  The emotional and verbal abuse became sexual.  He told me he was sorry.  He told me he couldn’t help himself.  He told me I was beautiful.  No one else had ever said that.  Without knowing what was healthy, I stayed.  After all, I had been told that any man is better than no man at all.

Once high school graduation drew near, I began to think of a new beginning, new possibilities, and I broke free.  This is when the physical abuse really began, in private at first, then in public.  I tried to defend myself, and asked about getting a restraining order, but I was told it was better to let it go away.  It got worse.  The defense by others only made the abuse more severe.  I moved hours away for college, but there were letters, phone calls, and a surprise visit.  For years afterward I was stalked. What do you expect, said some, you broke his heart.

Yet, somewhere in my own heart, despite everything done and said to me, I thought that I must have some hidden goodness.  For years I was an atheist, convinced that no G-d would let this happen to me.   Believers all around me, I studied religion.  As much as I could get my hands on, I read, I interviewed, I visited houses of worship, but nothing stuck.

One Friday night, I went to services at a reform temple.  The Torah portion was the Ten Commandments.  The sermon was essentially this:  The rabbi said, well, what can I say about the Ten Commandments that hasn’t already been said?  Of the hundreds of commandments in the bible, all of the “thou shalts” and “thou shalt nots,” we break many daily, some even as we meet here tonight.  Look, there are really three you must follow, if you do no others: thou shalt take no other G-d before me; thou shalt not kill; and thou shalt not rape.  These are the things you can never take back, for which complete forgiveness in the traditional sense may perhaps never be given. These are things which can go to the very root of destruction of the soul. Yet G-d is there for us, to help us heal and come out stronger.  I had found the higher power I had sought for years.  In that moment, my life was changed.  In that moment, I became a believer.

Yearly during the High Holy Days, I reflect upon what it means to forgive.  To let go of the pain that I allowed to define who I was, and recognize it as a part of my past that I can use to help others.  To teach my children well.  To advocate for those without a voice.  I know he will never repent, and probably never even see himself for what he is.  Yet I no longer let him have the power to define who I am by what I have endured.  The Jewish people are strong and resilient believers, and this is where I belong.

elder abuse

A 91-year-old Spokane woman died after she was found living in squalor, suffering severe neglect at the hands of her grandson.

A 60-year-old Ottawa County woman spent four months behind bars for abusing her elderly father.

Nearly five million cases of elder abuse occur each year, but 85% go unreported.

The typical victim of elder abuse is a woman over 75 who lives alone.

Some 14,000 allegations of abuse, neglect or gross negligence are reported in nursing homes.

Close to 50% of those with dementia experience some form of abuse.

Eggshells and Tightropes

I.

eggshells are fragile
they easily break
you walk on them carefully,
for safety’s sake.

And yet with each step
you surely know
as eggshells come
and eggshells go

that break they will
with a crunch and crackle
and then you will feel
the collar and shackle.

II.

A tightrope,
that’s different
that you can master
and walk it quite nimbly;
avoiding disaster.

A tightrope is narrow
so do watch your step;
and maintain your balance
become quite adept
at reading the signals

that shape your demeanor
so the tightrope will give you
that slack that you need
to stay on the precariously,
watching the lead.

III.

Eggshells are fragile,
eggshells will break,
and that can be scary
when your life’s at stake.

Tightropes feel safer
you feel that if only
you try really hard,
you’ll do it with ease
and reap your reward.

When the tightrope wiggles
and your balance will waver
you know it’s a signal
that you’re losing favor.

IV.

You need to continue
to pay close attention
always be pleasing,
avoiding dissension

Come on,
you can do this;
you’ve done it for years,
and learned how to handle
your hopes and your fears.

You can stay
on the tightrope,
your life is at stake.
Below you lie eggshells
that crunch when they break.

Liz Lippa

Heather Thompson

From a June 2009 Today show report:

When Heather Thompson learned her ex-husband was about to be released from prison some 15 years after he beat her to within an inch of her life — the prison from which he had written her a letter in which he vowed to finish the job when he was paroled — she faced an agonizing decision: whether to uproot her family out of fear, or stare mortal danger in the eye.

The letter Thomas H Price, Jr. mailed to Heather Thompson from prison in late 1995.

Deborah’s story: “Truth Heals”

When I started my journey of healing, one of my strongest memories was the voice of my inner child screaming, “Please don’t hurt me, Daddy!” Oh, he didn’t beat me. Instead, his violence took the form of molesting me, starting at the age of two, raping me at the age of nine and continuing to do so until I was thirteen and graduating from elementary school.

It was painful physically, especially when he used foreign objects, but the scars to my psyche were far worse than the ones to my body. Like all other victims of abuse, my sense of self disappeared, or never really had a chance to form. Even after the abuse had stopped, daddy was the person I most wanted to please. I became a lawyer, just like daddy. I joined him as a partner in his law firm. I was his friend and companion. It was all about daddy.

And who was I? I was a mess. In trying to cover up the lie of my life, I became addicted to booze and Valium as a teen and young adult. I slept around, waking in strange beds after alcoholic blackouts. I was sick a lot. And then, in my mid-twenties, I got cancer.

Cancer was a wake-up call of gigantic proportions. Soon I was in AA, giving up alcohol and pills in one fell swoop—forever, one day at a time. Because I didn’t want invasive surgery, I started to seek out alternative health practitioners and healers. I did everything I could to bring all the hidden and repressed painful emotional experiences of my life into the light of a new day.

I journaled like crazy, allowing my emotions to run rampant on the page. I had a lot of therapy. And most importantly, I learned how to meditate and how to access the space of peace and clarity deep within me. Ultimately, I had a remission from the cancer and became a student and later a teacher of alternative medicine myself. Today, I’m an abuse and addiction expert, and have written a book, Truth Heals: What You Hide Can Hurt You, which tells parts of my story along with a process for connecting our emotions to what’s happening to us physically.

When Mackenzie Phillips told her incest story on Oprah, it reminded me of the time when my father was diagnosed with a terminal illness and given six months to live, he wanted to go to Rome. Good Catholic that he was, he wanted to see the Vatican and St. Peter’s. My mother suggested I take him there. After all, wasn’t it my job to keep daddy happy? Needless to say, that was never going to happen. Instead, the whole family went. Even though my father was quite ill, I still locked the door to my single hotel room each night during the trip.

Incest and sexual abuse are just as violent as physical battering, as demeaning as verbal abuse. It makes the victim feel shameful, guilty, and “dirty.” It takes a lot of courage to speak out, so I’m very proud of and grateful to all of the survivors of domestic violence who are now telling their stories.  Someday, hopefully, no child will be screaming, “Daddy, please don’t hurt me.”

See Deborah’s comprehensive list of DV resources on Twitter.

CNN: ‘Dance’ judge Murphy says she was abused wife

Watch Mary Murphy’s October 20th interview with Larry King.

By Alan Duke

published on CNN.com, October 21, 2009

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) — TV dance judge Mary Murphy said singer Chris Brown’s attack on his girlfriend, Rihanna, prompted her to talk publicly about spousal abuse that she says she suffered first as a teenage bride three decades ago.

Murphy — the vivacious judge on Fox TV’s “So You Think You Can Dance” — told CNN’s Larry King that she wants other victims to learn from how she endured, but escaped, domestic violence.

Discovering her talent with dance eventually changed her life and helped her flee the relationship after nine years, she said.

Her ex-husband strongly denied that he ever physically or mentally abused Murphy, whom he married in 1978 soon after they met as teenagers in college.

“I did just tuck it away and just buried it and went on with my life and I thought that, you know, I could leave it there and I wanted to leave it there until my father died a couple years ago,” Murphy said.

Discussions with her dying father led to him apologizing for not being “my knight in shining armor” by intervening, she said.

Mary Murphy’s October 20th interview with Ellen DeGeneres.

But Murphy said seeing a photo of singer Rihanna’s bruised face, taken soon after Brown’s admitted attack last February, convinced her to go public with the story.

“I still had no intention to talk to anybody until I saw Rihanna’s face and seeing that just brought it all up.”

“Abuse, it just survives and thrives in silence,” Murphy said.

US Weekly magazine’s current issue offers a detailed version of Murphy’s revelations in its cover story.

Murphy tells the magazine about a whirlwind romance that began in 1977 when she was a 19-year-old Ohio State University student — swept off her feet by an 18-year-old who was “extraordinarily handsome.”

She told King that the marriage began “getting out of control” after just three months when her husband’s jealously triggered fights.

“It increased until we started to have just horrible fights,” she said. “And then at the time, after a fight in which I didn’t want to have sex, it just escalated to the point that he literally had to rape me in order for me to have sex.”

When a neighbor called police to her home, Murphy said she was too frightened to press charges.

“I looked at him and with the look on his face, I said ‘absolutely not’ and went back in my room and just laid there and cried,” she said.

Murphy said she left her husband several times over the nine-year marriage, but “there weren’t the shelters that there are today.”

“I did try to leave, and I was having a hard time making it, and he would sweet talk me and I would go back” she said. “It was back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And I don’t feel really proud of that.”

Murphy discovered her talent and love of dance several years into the marriage when she took a summer job at a dance studio while her husband was away for several months running the family’s business in the Middle East, she said.

“It made me feel beautiful instead of how I was probably really feeling inside, totally ashamed and dirty,” she said.

Their marriage ended only after she and her husband renewed their vows in a wedding ceremony in front of his family and friends in Amman, Jordan, in 1985.

She learned he had a girlfriend — to whom he was engaged — in the Middle East. It was his infidelity that convinced her to divorce him, she said.

Her former husband — who spoke to Larry King off the air — said he was “totally shocked” by Murphy’s account of their marriage. “I never harmed her,” he said.

“If all of these allegations are true, she could have had me deported,” he said. He is not a U.S. citizen.

He questioned if her motivation was “more fame or sympathy.”

Still, he said he is “very, very proud” of her.

Murphy told King his response is what she expected.

“I think a lot of men out there, by the way, that when they do get married they feel like this is their right to do whatever they want to do, and it’s not,” she said. “And I was a scared, frightened person.”

Murphy said she is still afraid of her former husband.

“I’m not going to lie to you that he still scares me,” she said. “I still live in fear that he will do something to me, that I will go missing.”

Fear of not being able to make it on her own still drives her today, she said.

“I put this behind me, went out and worked like I’ve never worked before,” she said. “And I still work today like I could still be homeless.”

© 2009 Cable News Network

Man gets 15 years for biting off part of ex-girlfriend’s nose

Prosecutors call incidents surprisingly common in family violence cases

By Tricia Bishop
published in The Baltimore Sun, October 20, 2009

A 24-year-old Baltimore man was sentenced to 15 years in prison Monday for biting off a portion of his former girlfriend’s nose, a disturbingly intimate form of violence that prosecutors say is surprisingly prevalent in family violence cases.

Charles Bowers pleaded guilty to first- and second-degree assault last month in the 2008 incident, which followed an argument over house keys.

Judge Alfred Nance recommended that Bowers be allowed to serve his sentence at Patuxent Institution, a correctional mental health facility in Jessup, and that the young man, who said he grew up in an abusive home, be referred for psychiatric evaluation and treatment.

“I’ve been a victim of my emotions since I was 6,” Bowers told the court, issuing a seemingly sincere apology and begging for help. “My biggest fear,” he said, is it “possibly happening again.”

Assistant State’s Attorney Julie Drake, head of the city’s Felony Family Violence Division, said a fatality review team made biting a focus this year after realizing a murdered woman’s body showed signs of previous bite marks.

“That was really kind of a trigger for us to start thinking about the whole issue,” Drake said.

Last week, she recommended to a criminal justice panel that biting be included in routine medical screenings for domestic violence and on petition forms for protective orders. She also asked that medical personnel be trained to look for bite marks in the hopes of preventing further aggression and to document potential forensic evidence.

“Whenever you can intervene earlier, you stand the greatest chance of preventing either a homicide or more serious domestic violence down the road,” Drake said.

During Monday’s sentencing, the victim, who asked The Baltimore Sun to withhold her name for safety, sat near the back of the courtroom. She said she was still too afraid of Bowers to approach the trial table.

Prosecutor Eileen Murphy read the woman’s statement to the court.

She’s had three plastic surgeries already, and though she looks whole, she still needs several more, which she can’t afford. She can’t bear to have her picture taken. She’s ashamed and still in shock, looking in the mirror and still unable to believe “the mess” she sees.

“How can a person who claims to love you so much,” Murphy read, “do something so horrific?”

//

Copyright © 2009, The Baltimore Sun

Causing Pain: Real Stories of Dating Abuse and Violence

This 2006 Emmy nominated film about teen dating abuse and violence shows real teens telling their stories of dating abuse and violence. The film describes how dating abuse and violence starts, how it progresses, how the abuser acts, and how to recognize it.

Abused Heiress – Anne Scripps Douglas

Anne Scripps and Scott Douglas

Anne Scripps Douglas lived the typical life of a battered woman — the whispered telephone calls, the lies to friends and family, the coded messages to the few she could trust. Like a frightened animal she jumped at every loud sound, each ring of the phone, and most of all at the drunken curses of the man she had once loved but who now terrified her…

Read Mark Gribben’s entire account of the Anne Scripps Douglas story at TruTV online.

A Woman’s Glory

I keep looking in the mirror and crying. I can’t stand to see myself. My hair was down below my waist. I hadn’t cut it in over twenty years. Now look at me.

Photo Construction 12"w x 17"h x 4"d ©2004 Kate Sartor Hilburn

He didn’t speak to me during supper. He had been calling me all day, but I was working in the garden, so I wasn’t by the phone. I tried to tell him that, but he just stopped talking to me. That’s what he does when he gets mad. So I got the kids into bed and I took my bath. When I came out, he walked up to me with a pair of scissors. I didn’t know what he was going to do at first, but then he grabbed my hair and pulled it so hard that tears just popped out of my eyes. Then he just chopped it off.

I tried to fight him, but he said he’d stab me if I didn’t sit still. I cried so hard. Then he told me he was going to get the belt. When he went to the bedroom, I ran outside. I ran to our next-door neighbor’s house and hid in his workshop. Ben came out looking for me, and then he got our 15-year-old son to help him. My own son!

I used the phone in the shop and called the police. They came and got me. I had to leave in my nightgown, and both of the kids are still with their dad! When will I see my kids?

I’m so worried. I had better go back home. I need some clothes. i want to talk to my kids. What about my daughter? She’s only eleven. She’ll cry when she sees my hair.

I can’t stay here. I have to go back home. ben will be mad, but I can handle it. I appreciate your help and all. Please don’t be mad at me. I just have to go home.

BEATING HEARTS: Stories of Domestic Violence is a photographic project inspired by true stories of domestic violence, documented by Kate Sartor Hilburn and Terrie Queen Autrey of Louisiana. Visit www.beatinghearts.net to view more posters and photographs from the collection.

GPS To Warn Domestic Violence Victims

(originally aired on NPR August 8, 2008)

This week, the governor of Illinois signed legislation that will allow the state’s judges to tag domestic violent offenders with GPS tracking devices. The abusers’ victims will get monitors that warn them if their attacker is in the area. Alex Chadwick talks with Michael Bischof, who spearheaded the movement to pass the bill after his sister’s death.

Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®.

Heather’s story

Hello.

My name is Heather, and I wanted to share my story with you.

I am a sister, daughter, friend, dreamer, student, pianist, future radiologist, full time customer service rep, woman, and a hopeless romantic.  I’m also a survivor of sexual abuse, sexual assault, and domestic violence.

I could spend a lot of time sharing my horror stories, sharing my history of assault, abuse, and torture but I think it’s important for me to skip that part of my past.  Most of you reading, are here because you or someone you know was affected by domestic violence.  That being said, I’d like to share my experience, and hope that you can take something away from it.

Xander and I met, on a crisp October day in 2002, at a certain university, where I was a college freshman. We sat by the fountain, and started the first conversation of many. We had a lot of common interests, and his blue eyes drew me in. Tall, lanky, and everything I had ever dreamed of in a person.  We began spending a lot of time together, and in January 2003, we began dating exclusively, consummating our relationship on the night of my sorority’s formal, in Chicago.  That night started the series of ups & downs, the roller coaster that was Xander & I’s relationship. My family & friends loved him– He was your “All American Boy”, the one guy that everyone wanted. My parents thought he was “just what I needed”.

And he was until about a month into our relationship.

We began living our lives recklessly, with no abandon to anyone else, including each other. Drugs became the center of our relationship, hard drugs. We tripped, we rolled, we got high, we shot up, we did anything to keep our feelings out of the equation. Until one night, in a drunken, messed up stupor, Xander hit me. Hard.  I wish I could tell you I got up and left that night. I wish I could tell you that I was strong enough to walk away, after that one hit. I wasn’t.

One hit became a million more. And when that wasn’t enough, he started raping me. The emotional, physical, and sexual abuse I endured with him, was something that even now, 6 years later, I am still directly dealing with. The emotional scars are so much bigger and deeper than the physical ones.  The drugs became an escape; the alcohol became an escape, for both of us, until April of 2003 came to a screeching halt with a plus sign, and numerous bouts of nausea. I was pregnant.

He swore he’d stop. He swore he’d get help. He swore a lot of things that day, and we vowed to start anew, together. We could do this, right?

Wrong.

On Mother’s Day 2003, I lost the baby. We don’t know why, and quite frankly, it was a blessing in disguise because I never wanted my child to know the hurt of what Xander put me through.  But the miscarriage was enough to drive that final stake in between the both of us. He began cheating, drinking, and stuffing pills down my throat, and his. He put the bottle in my hand, and I gulped it up. We were a combined mess of disaster, destruction, and a swirling mess of emotions, bottled inside.

On May 30th, 2003, my 19th birthday, he asked me to marry him. He promised a new beginning, a wedding, babies, graduation, sobriety for himself, and I stupidly, said yes.  And then, on June 16th, 2003, he agreed to get help after he almost killed me. One too many blows to the head knocked me unconscious for almost 11 hours. I tried to leave then.  I remember that feeling still, to this moment, I can feel that fear, that unbelievable fear that living in abuse causes.  I walked to a shelter with my purse, $15, and a pair of flip-flops.  I checked myself in.  I remember sitting in the corner of the shelter, in a plastic chair, and telling myself that being in the shelter was better than being dead.  And that night, that first night, as I stretched out onto a cot, I thought of how lucky I was to be alive.  It lasted 34 hours until I went back.

On July 23, 2003, he ended his life by swallowing a bottle of vicodin, and drinking a gallon of vodka.  My life was destroyed on July 24, 2003, when I received the phone call. I can still remember that sick feeling of relief and agony that I felt in my stomach. Relief that he was gone, he was out of my life, I was safe. Agony that the one person I loved, as sick and twisted as it may be, was gone.

A week later, a letter arrived in the mail. A letter that ripped me to shreds, blaming me for his choice to end his life, for my choices in ending a life, and his actual hatred for me was revealed.

I know the horror that each of you is feeling, the conflicted feelings on whether or not you should go back, or how to help the person you love, how to keep them from going back.  Some of you have left everything, some of you have been here before, some of you are here for the first time.  All of you have the power to change your life today.  You have taken the first step in becoming a survivor, the first step in leaving the word “victim” behind.

After Xander died, I went back to college and tried to act as if nothing had happened to me. I started drinking even more, sometimes I’d drink a fifth of vodka just to make it through half of my morning classes. Then I’d go back to my dorm, crawl into my bed, and cry myself through a nap. When I’d wake up, I’d drink another fifth of vodka, swallow some pills, smoke a joint, and then, only then, when I felt like I was numb enough to handle it, would I call someone to see if they wanted to hang out. I spent most of my time self destructing, and finally, after being there for almost 7 months, I left college. I continued to abuse myself, continued to abuse my relationships with those who truly cared about me, and it wasn’t until I hit rock bottom one night, that I realized that I had completely stopped dealing with what had happened to me.

Not only had I lost someone I loved, but I had been sexually and physically abused to the point that, honestly, I didn’t even look at my body as mine anymore. It was as if anyone could own me. I was in a bad place. I abused myself more than he did, in the end, by ignoring how much I was hurting. Instead, I shut it out by drinking, by getting high, by having sex with random strangers. Anything to numb the pain or shut it out. But, then, after hitting rock bottom, I realized just how important it was for me to fight this, for me to get better, for myself. I stopped the drugs, I stopped drinking, and I put myself into therapy.

I’m not going to sit here and lie to you, and tell you that therapy is a cakewalk, and now I’m healed, mainly because all of you know that fear and hurt don’t magically go away, and also because I know how frustrating it can be to hear “You can do this,” “Well now that you’re out of that..” and “Move on from this, work harder in therapy,” etc because let’s face it, that’s fucking bullshit. It’s hard. Therapy hurts. It works, but it’s not easy. I’m still, 6 years later, learning how to deal with some of the nightmares that haunt me in my sleep. There are certain smells that take me back to an exact moment when he hit me, or raped me. Certain songs cause me to hit the floor and curl into a ball. The month of July is a long, and emotionally challenging month, even 6 years after his suicide. But therapy, it’s the best way to start with those baby steps, those steps towards healing and growth.

How do I cope? Even now, music and writing have healed me the most. I listen to all different types, and just write. I started my online blog 5 years ago, to deal with the pain that I felt in losing Xander, and as I started to remember more and more about what happened to me with him, it evolved into a blog where I could write, and heal. Let’s face it, as a survivor of sexual abuse & domestic violence, sometimes, it’s a lot for people to take. My friends didn’t know what to say—They were 19, 20 years old, and enjoying themselves at college, partying, and living their lives. My parents were completely unavailable for me, emotionally & physically, and I had no one. So I just started writing, as a means to just let it out. And it worked. 5 years later, I have started to tell my story to many more people. I am not healed, but I am certainly not where I was 6 years ago. I don’t pop pills, though there are some times I am tempted. I haven’t used drugs in over 4 years. I’m still in therapy, sometimes as many as 3 times/week, and even though I want to give up sometimes, I know I have to stick it out. I am engaged, I’m getting married in January to the most incredible man I’ve ever met in my 25 years of life, and I cannot wait to start my life with him, to truly start over and have a new beginning with this new me that I have met through all of my hard work & dedication in therapy.  It was a long road, my relationship with my fiancé, learning to trust him with my heart.  And learning to trust him with my body.  For once, sex wasn’t just about control, or grasping at straws.  It has become so much more than that to me.  My fiancé taught me that love doesn’t have to hurt, that we can scream in anger at the top of our lungs, but I don’t have to cower in fear, even if that is still my instant reaction at times.  He treats me how I deserve to be treated, he is patient with me, he is loving, tender, and caring.  He is my rock, my strength, the first person in my life to love me unconditionally, and I am blessed because of it.

If I could go back, I would have walked out the night that Xander hit me, but you can’t live life on regrets, so I try to focus on the positive, I try to focus on the fact that I made it out alive, the fact that I was strong enough to keep fighting, to keep pushing through my healing.  There are so many women who don’t ever get that option.  WE are their voices.  WE are the ones who have the power to change this.  WE are the ones who can speak out, even when other voices have been silenced.  We all have a path in life, and a purpose.  With the right amount of therapy, the right amount of healing, and the right amount of support, you or your loved ones will find it.  Have faith.

And with that, I will close this by giving you my favorite quote of all time, by Maya Angelou, the one quote that keeps me going on the darkest of days, even now.

“I can be changed by the things that happened to me; I refuse to be reduced by them.”

HEATHER