If a man or a woman stays in a violent home, their life will continually rotate around the cycle of violence. Help is available. Look at this cycle and see if it is familiar to you.

                                                                      You do not deserve to be hit, slapped, kicked, punched 

                                                                      mentally abused, ridiculed, forced to have sex, or suffer trauma.

Millions of Americans are living in violent homes. The children witness the violence. This is very bad for children to see. A son, even if he tries to protect the victim, statistically he will grow up to be an abuser. A daughter, learns to be a victim. Growing up in a abusive home will effect children for the rest of their lives.

If the daughter of the violent home grows up, down deep, if a boyfriend or girlfriend begin to batter them, unconsciously they believe that it is what they deserve. They don’t. Nothing they could say or do would justify their being battered. Fear is a huge part of this relationship.

When a person feels fear and knows that they live in violence, everything they do could bring about abuse. The kids are fighting, his boss chewed him out. The grocery store did not have his favorite beer. It could be that he didn’t like the dinner you cooked. It could be because your Mother sent you a present and the FedEx guy who brought it to the door smiled to brightly at you or seemed too friendly.

It could also be that your son’s report card wasn’t as good as usual and his teacher wrote a note that he has been acting out at recess and occasionally in the classroom. Schools have zero tolerance these days and you are terrified that he will hit your son. Often in these cases, tension begins to build until it feels as if it were thick enough to cut with a night. You have two choices. One is to just play the evening out. Knowing that you will put your body between the children and the batterer. You are sick with worry and you don’t want to have to go to the hospital again. They know, even though you deny it every time you end up in the ER.

Your other choice is to tell the hospital staff that you are not safe at home. They will call the police. He will be arrested. Beginning this process, can quickly change your entire life. It could also make it worse because you belong to him. That ownership, he feels, gives him the right to do anything to you that he wants to do. If you stay long enough, you will die of your injuries or from a heart attack because you are living will huge amounts of stress every day of your life. You can’t blame yourself, no matter how often he/she tells you it is your fault. You can’t tell by looking if someone is an abuser. It may not even start until the honeymoon, or pregnancy or with no obvious trigger.

There are millions of people ready and willing to help you. To make sure you have shelter. To make sure your injuries are documented and treated. They will see to it that your children go to a safe school, have help with homework, and will provide someone to talk with them and listen to what they have to say. You don’t have to stay. You are worth much more than a life of violence. Since Domestic Violence in generational, the only way to protect future generations is to get out and stay out. Do it for your children if you can’t do it for yourself.

Male or female, no one deserves to feel unsafe in their own homes. It is a horrible way to live and it damages you and all of your children. Taxi drivers know where shelters are and will take you to one. Once the shelter door closes behind you, you have taken the first step in making a new life for yourself, or yourself and your family.  Namaste.

You can get out. There is help for you.