On a cool and late September night in 1994, to escape my third significant partner's rage, my twelve year old son Bobby and my daughter Olivea, eighteen months older,, held my hands as we walked away from the turmoil that had become very much a part of our lives.. I had no money on me, and wearing only summer pyjamas, we walked barefooted for 2kms along a country road to a phone box. After explaining our plight to the operator,  I was connected to a close friend who immediately came to our rescue, saving me further humiliation of having to phone the police.

       By the time we reached the comfort of my friend's home it was almost 1a.m. Within minutes the children were sound asleep. For me sleep wouldn't come. Instead, I lay awake the remainder of the night, crying for my two beautiful innocent children - the pain I felt, more than I could bear. I considered myself a good mother, yet had failed miserably in protecting them from the hatred and anger of a man, who I mistakenly believed would bring joy and laughter into their lives.  Not until later when I began to heal, would I cry for the woman I had become.

As with most women in abusive relationships, I carried with me a damaged self image from my childhood.  And while I remembered good times, it was the painful times which had held power over me for so long.  In my case it was my father's progressive decline from alcoholism and my parents losing everything they had both worked so hard for as a consequence. While he never physically abused our mother, my siblings and I were constantly exposed to his emotional abuse of her whenever he had been drinking.  Destructive as that was to our psyche, I believe our mother's reaction to his drinking was also detrimental.

       To escape from the pain and shame, I left home the week I turned sixteen. In the ensuing years, I travelled extensively, had many wonderful life experiences and made loads of interesting friends.  Of course, I had no way of knowing, that regardless of how many miles I distanced myself from what I wanted to forget - the pain and shame, unless resolved would remain embedded deep within me at a cellular level.

I vowed never to marry anyone who drank in excess, yet my first partner's overindulgence found him on the wrong side of the law, long before I even knew him.  My second partner, the father of my children was an alcoholic. My third partner was a social drinker who seldom drank in excess - his problems went even deeper.

       I had kept my first partner on the straight and narrow and when the children's father went on drinking binges, I picked up the pieces. My third partner, I tried to rescue from his demons. In all three relationships, I believed myself to be the one who could heal their pain and transform them with the power of love. By so doing, I lost myself in the process. I have since learnt that irresponsible and unstable men do not get rescued - they continually fail and often end up hating the person rescuing them for making them feel even weaker.

In all three of my significant long term relationships, I experienced abuse in varying degrees. My first partner wanted to fight the world when overindulging with alcohol, yet with me his violent temper rarely surfaced.  But when it did, I could easily have ended up in hospital. With my second partner, the father of my children, I suffered emotional abuse, whereas with my third partner, it was physical and psychological.

 The current definition of abuse in the mental health profession covers both psychological and physical violence and is defined as any behaviour designed to control and subjugate another human being through the use of fear, humiliation and verbal or physical assault.  In other words, you don't have to be hit to be abused.  In physical battering the weapons are fists - in psychological battering, the weapons are words. 

I could have been labeled ‘Co-dependent' ‘Rescuer' or ‘Addicted to dysfunctional relationships'. I certainly filled the bill for each one. Yet I never saw myself as a ‘battered wife'. Battered women were those who continually get beaten black and blue or end up in hospital with broken bones, none of which applied to me.

It wasn't until I participated in a play reading about a battered wife, not long after I left my third partner, where the objective for the women attending was to discuss and form an opinion on the play being considered for a stage production, it dawned on me that I too had been ‘battered'. In the subsequent debate, none of the women could understand why some women stayed in abusive relationships. In years gone by, I too had voiced those same opinions, so I understood them thinking that way. While the shame associated with it and my own lack of self esteem at the time prevented me from divulging my own personal experience, I did voice my opinion in the battered woman's defense.  Sadly, human nature being what it is, people are often too quick to judge another without first walking in his or her shoes, and so they chose to remain self opinionated and judgemental.

Six weeks after I left my third partner, I read a little pocket card with the verse ‘Broken Dreams'. It was then I understood why my prayers were never answered - not as a child with an alcoholic father, nor when my life was in turmoil in my three significant relationships. A floodgate of tears poured forth as I cried from the very depths of my soul. From then on, I began to trust in the power of prayer and the wisdom to guide me towards healing.  That little verse remains a permanent fixture in my wallet, and a constant reminder for me to ‘To trust in the Universal Source connecting us all'.

Broken Dreams

“As children bring their broken toys with tears for us to mend

I brought my broken toys to God because he was my friend

But instead of leaving him in peace to work alone

I hung around and tried to help with ways that were my own

At last I snatched them back and cried, ‘How could you be so slow'

‘My child', he said ‘what could I do, you never did let go.

(Author unknown)

In order to heal from the wounds of my past, I began by going on a twelve day juice fast.  Before sunrise every second morning, I forced myself to drive 10kms to the beach to meditate. I then jogged barefooted along the water's edge before plunging into the ocean for an invigorating swim.  Every other morning, I walked several kilometres in the vicinity of where I lived. Whenever driving, I listened to empowering tapes. At night, I read from positive and transformational books, and before going to sleep, I asked for guidance.  Within minutes of switching off the light, I was dead to the world. Five hours later, I awakened refreshed, yet within minutes my thoughts turned to the person I wanted most to forget. Knowing time heals all wounds wasn't very comforting when still feeling pain in the present, but as I was determined to heal myself in body, mind and spirit, I again forced myself to get up and start my morning rituals.

     
By holding onto anything negative, I knew that the only person I would be hurting would be me, and so I sent out love to those who had hurt me. Forgiveness is a wonderful healer, and in time the wounds from my past began to mend. It took a lot longer for me to come to the realization that each of my partners came into my life to move me into the next phase of my personal evolution. They were all my teachers, just as my children are - each one, to a certain degree, a reflection of myself

As I began to share with other women the healing work I was doing on myself, I was frequently told how it helped them to see something within themselves needing to be resolved. It made me question if everything in my life had happened for a reason and if it was my purpose to share with others my journey. In spite of not having written anything other than letters since leaving school, a few weeks short of turning fourteen, the seed was planted to write a book. However, I had no intentions of undertaking such a mammoth task, until such time I believed myself to be completely healed.

       Several years passed. Everything in my life appeared to be on an even keel, yet the book remained a thought in my head. I had no idea how to go about it or where to start.

Aware of the damaging affect my father's alcoholism had on me and much closer to home with their own father, I felt confident that even if my children were to experiment with drugs at some stage, they would be able to take it or leave it, the same as they would with alcohol. I had raised them both to respect their bodies, and when on the antidrug council at high school, Olivea believed anyone on drugs to be a loser. So it goes without saying how devastated I was, when a few weeks short of her twentieth birthday, I learn of her drug addiction.

      Watching her in the depths of despair, struggling with addiction and powerless to do anything about it, I needed to share with her and Bobby my life experiences, both negative and positive, and my gained knowledge from those experiences.  By doing so, I hoped and prayed they would transcend beyond what they had been conditioned to, and that hopefully the cycle of abuse and addiction be broken. And so I began the laborious and sometimes painful task of transcribing my life into print.

      
Olivea chose the title ‘Someone's Father, Someone's Son' and while the book was to be primarily about her and Bobby's father, it is also about my journey since his and my life became entwined, including the six months leading up to it. But as it took my relationship with my third partner for me to delve deep within myself and to confront issues which had prevented me from fulfilling my own potential, the book may never been written - and why I'm compelled to include some of my experiences with him as well.  And as he too was someone's father and someone's son, the title remains the same.

In 2004 when I spoke to someone at ‘Sister's Inside', an organization in Brisbane which helps women who have been incarcerated, I was told that 98 percent of women in jail have been physically abused and 89 percent sexually abused. What does that say about our society and what is being done to rectify such a tragic situation?  

      
Regardless of race, creed or status, domestic violence isn't just a problem of the uneducated, poor and unassertive and when I did a search on the internet for books about abusive relationships, Amazon alone had almost 24,000 books on the subject. Most were written by psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers.  There weren't too many books written by women or about women who had been abused, and even then, they were usually well known personalities, or they were about someone who had either killed an abusive partner or vice versa.

When in 2007, I contacted the Domestic Violence Council in Brisbane to find out what books were available in Australia written by Australian women who had been in abusive relationships, I was told of only two books - ‘Point Last Seen' by Ricky Hunter, who originally hails from New Zealand and ‘Judas Kisses' by Donna Carson.  While the abuse I experienced is very tame in comparison, any kind of abuse - be it physical, psychological or emotional is inappropriate behaviour and needs to be addressed.

Unfortunately, many abused women are in denial - most are hopeful that the situation will improve - just as I had hoped things would improve in my three relationships. It seldom does - if anything, the abuse escalates.  Sadly, because of the shame associated with it, far too many women never seek help and why I believe the ultimate solution is for more women to share their stories of abuse and recovery with others.

My credentials are my own personal experiences and the healing work I have done on myself.  When I first began to write, it was for my children and for the multitude of other wounded women. I say women, because of my own personal experience as a woman. I am certainly not excluding men - they too have been wounded.  Invariably though, women have been the healers and nurturers and therefore in the majority when it comes to reading self help books and looking within themselves.  Even so, I believe that if we learn to change how we feel about ourselves and to love who we truly are, then everyone we come in contact with, be they male or female will benefit.

As the holistic approach to healing also applies to those with an addiction, there is a tremendous need to establish such a place on the Sunshine Coast, for those on low incomes, so that they too can have a choice as to which recovery program they undertake. And because of my own personal experience with loved ones, past and present, who have struggled with an addiction, I have considered trying to raise the money to purchase some land in a rural setting, and to find the right people willing to become involved to establish such a place - but where to start.  A lot more also needs to be done for women and their children who find themselves in need of emergency accommodation when trying to break free from an abusive relationship.

While the writing of my travels flowed easily, overall this has not been an easy book for me to write - some incidences I would have preferred to remain in the recess of my mind, but if writing about them helps someone else in an abusive or alcoholic relationship, then it has been worth.

I have no desire to inflict pain or to cause anyone grief, therefore some names have been changed. First and foremost, it has always been my intention to write about love, healing and forgiveness and I trust I have portrayed that within the pages of this book.

I won't apologize for incorrect grammar or any other mistakes I've overlooked, as my story has been written from the heart, my most painful secrets laid bare for public scrutiny, and perhaps even criticism from some - it was never intended to be a literary masterpiece.

NAMASTE  

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