10 Things I've Learned in 10 Years: A Survivor's Perspective

How do you start writing about something that feels so far away and, somehow, still so raw? 

It's easy to believe it will never happen to you—until you become the person it happens to.

Ten years ago, I was that person.

I was 29 years old. I wasn't a group practice owner yet, but I was already a licensed therapist. I knew about relationships. I knew about warning signs. I knew the things we tell people they should look for.

And still, it happened to me.

It's also easy, from the outside, to quietly judge a survivor.

Didn't you see the signs? Why did you stay? How could you not know?

Maybe I did see some of the signs. Maybe I ignored them. Maybe I explained them away. Or maybe I was 29 years old and thought I was in love.

Ten years later, I don't think those questions matter nearly as much as I once thought they did.

What matters is that I survived.

And I'm here to write about it today.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and for the first time, I'm choosing to acknowledge it by sharing part of my own story.

There are parts of this story I will probably never share publicly. They belong to me. But ten years has given me enough distance to look back at the person I was then—a person I probably wouldn't recognize today—and understand her differently.

So rather than tell you everything that happened, I want to share with you what I've learned.

1. Domestic violence doesn't have a "type."

We've all seen depictions of people in abusive relationships. We create stories about who becomes a victim-survivor: they grew up around abuse, they're financially or emotionally dependent on their partner, they ignored obvious warning signs, or everyone around them knew something was wrong before they did.

That wasn't my story.

I had finished graduate school. I had a stable career. I was a licensed therapist.

And it still took me two years and five episodes of intimate partner violence to leave and ultimately file for divorce.

Knowing about domestic violence did not make me immune to experiencing it.

Education doesn't make you immune. Financial independence doesn't make you immune. Being a mental health professional certainly doesn't make you immune.

Sometimes you can know all the right things professionally and still struggle to see clearly when you're the person standing in the middle of it.

Instead of asking: "How could you not know?"

Try asking: "When did you start realizing something wasn't right?"

Or simply don't ask anything at all. Sometimes listening is enough.

2. Being imperfect doesn't make you responsible for someone else's violence.

I always thought that when I got married, it would be for life.

When I said my vows, I meant them. It was intentional. I loved this person, and I never imagined that loving someone could eventually mean being physically harmed by them.

I'll also be the first to tell you that I'm no saint.

I'm sarcastic. I'm blunt. I'm fairly clumsy. I've definitely spoken before thinking more times than I'd like to admit. I can say the wrong thing. I can hurt someone's feelings. I can make someone angry. I can be a difficult person. 

What I've learned is that none of those things make me responsible for someone else's decision to hurt me.

There is no personality trait, poorly chosen sentence, argument, or moment of anger that makes physical violence an acceptable response.

Instead of asking: "What happened right before they hurt you?"

Try asking: "Are you safe right now?"

3. "Why didn't you leave?" is the wrong question.

I was educated. I had a career. I had people who loved me.

And I still stayed.

Because leaving someone you love isn't as simple as people want it to be.

You can know something is wrong and still hope it will change. You can know a relationship isn't healthy and still grieve the idea of losing it. You can reach a point where you know you cannot continue living this way and still not feel ready for everything that leaving means.

Instead of asking: "Why did you stay?"

Try asking: "What made it hard to leave?"

It's a small change in language, but it's a big change in perspective. One asks the survivor to defend a decision. The other acknowledges that leaving can be complicated.

4. Surviving can be incredibly lonely.

This is one of the things I don't think people understand enough.

Once your friends and family know what someone has done to you, they understandably see that person differently.

Meanwhile, you're trying to make sense of feelings that don't disappear simply because something terrible happened.

Everyone around you may be thinking, How could you possibly still love this person?

And you may be thinking the exact same thing.

That's a lonely place to be.

For me, there was another layer to it: I was a therapist.

At one point, what was happening in my personal life affected me enough that my supervisor required me to enter my own treatment and temporarily step away from seeing clients as conditions of continuing in my job.

I remember feeling incredibly ashamed.

I felt like I had disappointed my supervisor. I felt like I had disappointed the people I worked with. And somewhere underneath all of that was this belief that because I was a therapist, I should have known better. I should have recognized what was happening sooner. I should have handled it differently. I should have somehow been able to keep my personal life from affecting my professional one.

Ten years later, I don't see that version of myself the same way.

I needed help.

That's it.

Being trained to recognize someone else's pain doesn't necessarily make it easier to recognize—or admit—the severity of your own. And being the person who usually helps other people doesn't make you immune to becoming the person who needs help.

The people who love a survivor usually want them safe. Sometimes that fear comes out as anger, frustration, judgment, or an urgent desire to fix the situation. But judgment can make an already-isolated person feel even more alone.

Instead of asking: "How can you still love them after everything they did?"

Try saying: "You don't have to justify how you feel to me."

Sometimes a survivor doesn't need another question. They need somewhere safe enough to hold all of the conflicting feelings

5. There is life on the other side.

When you're in the middle of something traumatic, it can be almost impossible to imagine a life that doesn't revolve around it.

At the time, my world felt incredibly small.

There was the relationship. There was surviving what was happening. There was figuring out what to do next. There was worrying about what everyone thought of me. There I was trying to hold myself together while privately feeling like everything was falling apart.

I couldn't see ten years ahead.

Honestly, I could barely see the next few days.

And because I apparently process major life events through Taylor Swift albums, Reputation became part of the soundtrack to that season of my life.

There's a lyric from "King of My Heart" that has stayed with me:

"Is this the end of all the endings? My broken bones are mending."

I don't think I understood then how true that would eventually become.

Healing didn't mean what happened suddenly stopped mattering. It didn't mean I forgot about it. And it certainly didn't mean that one day I woke up and everything was magically okay.

Life just slowly became bigger than what had happened to me.

There were new people. New experiences. New relationships. New iterations of myself. Eventually, there were things I built that the 29-year-old version of me couldn't possibly have imagined yet.

If you're currently in the middle of your own story, I won't tell you that everything is going to be okay. I don't know your circumstances, and those words can feel incredibly hollow when you're just trying to make it through the day.

But I can tell you something I wish I could have told myself:

You haven't met every version of yourself yet.

6. Sometimes surviving means grieving someone who is still alive.

This may have been one of the hardest contradictions for me to understand.

There were moments in that relationship when things became so frightening and chaotic that I remember feeling like I couldn't tell reality from a nightmare.

Please wake me up. Please get me out of here.

And yet, this was still someone I loved.

That's the part that's difficult to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it.

I loved someone.

I was afraid of someone.

I grieved someone.

And those statements can all be true at the same time.

Leaving an abusive relationship doesn't automatically erase attachment, memories, or the future you thought you were going to have. You aren't only leaving the person who hurt you. You may also be grieving the person you believed they were, the person you kept hoping they would become, and the life you thought the two of you were building together.

Sometimes part of surviving is accepting that you can love someone and still know that you cannot safely have them in your life.

I think that's something we don't talk about enough when we talk about domestic violence. Grief is not linear, and it can be complicated.

7. Leaving isn't necessarily the end of the story.

After everything that happened, the only thing I wanted was to be left alone.

I don't want to speak for every survivor. Some people want accountability through the criminal justice system. Some want answers. Some want acknowledgement. Some want something entirely different.

At that point in my life, I wanted my cats and a fresh start.

That was it.

I moved closer to my family. I changed my phone number—which, honestly, I was disproportionately angry about. I'd had the same number since I was 15 years old, and after everything else, having to give up my phone number somehow felt particularly offensive.

But leaving didn't create the clean ending I imagined.

Within a few months, my new address and phone number were obtained without my permission, and I was contacted again.

I was beyond disturbed.

That was when I learned that physically leaving someone and actually feeling safe from them can be two very different things.

Instead of asking: "But didn't you leave?"

Try asking: "Do you feel safe now?"

8. Asking for help can bring feelings you weren't prepared for.

Until that point, I hadn't reported what had happened.

Eventually, I felt like I had no choice. I needed help, including help getting out of my lease.

What I wasn't prepared for was how complicated asking for that help would feel.

I had to tell painful parts of my story more than once while trying to navigate a system I didn't understand. And once the case entered the criminal justice system, I learned that although I could communicate what I wanted and how I felt, I didn't have sole control over what happened next.

That was difficult.

This was someone I had once loved and believed I would spend the rest of my life with. I believed people should face consequences for hurting others, and at the same time, I wasn't prepared for the grief and shame I felt once the process was no longer entirely within my control.

I didn't know what I didn't know.

Looking back, I wish someone had helped me understand the process, my rights, and my options before I had to navigate them while already overwhelmed.

Instead of asking: "Why didn't you report it sooner?"

Try asking: "Would it help if we found someone who could explain your options?"

There is a huge difference between telling someone what they should do and helping them understand what they can do.

9. There may be resources you don't even know to ask for.

I didn't know about many of the resources that were available to me.

I didn't know there could be financial assistance to help survivors relocate. I didn't know about all of the advocacy and support resources available. I didn't know which questions I should be asking.

I was figuring it out while I was living it.

That's one of the reasons I'm including resources at the end of this post.

If I could change one thing about that part of my experience, I would have wanted someone knowledgeable to sit beside me and say:

Here are your options. Here is what each one might involve. You don't have to decide everything this second.

Information can be empowering without being prescriptive.

Survivors deserve access to both information and choice.

10. Your worst chapter doesn't get to write the rest of your story.

So, what have I learned throughout all of this?

For one thing, I give significantly fewer F's about what people think about me now.

But the bigger lesson took longer.

For years, I looked back at the 29-year-old version of myself and wondered how she got there.

Why didn't she leave sooner?

Why did she tolerate things she knew weren't okay?

Why didn't she know better?

Ten years later, those aren't the questions I want to ask her anymore.

I'd rather ask:

What did you need?

What were you afraid of?

What were you trying to hold together?

What would have helped you feel less alone?

And maybe most importantly:

Do you have any idea what's waiting for you on the other side of this?

Because she didn't.

She couldn't have known about the life she hadn't lived yet. The people she hadn't met. The things she hadn't built. The person she would become.

What happened to me is part of my story.

It isn't my identity.

Ten years ago, I was that person.

Today, at 39, I'm still her.

I'm just also everything that came after her.

And if you love someone who is experiencing domestic violence, maybe that's what I want you to remember most.

You don't have to understand why they stayed.

You don't have to convince them that their relationship is unhealthy.

You don't have to ask why they didn't see it sooner.

Instead, try:

"I believe you."

"Are you safe?"

"What do you need?"

"How can I help?"

"Would you like me to help you understand what options are available?"

And then be willing to listen to the answer.

Because sometimes the person you're talking to already knows far more about what's happening than you think.

They may just need someone safe enough to tell.

If You or Someone You Love Needs Support

If any part of this story feels familiar, you don't have to figure out what to do next by yourself. You also don't have to wait until you're ready to leave, make a report, or make another major decision before asking about your options.

National Domestic Violence Hotline

Confidential support, safety planning, information, and connections to local resources throughout the United States.

Call: 1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
Text: START to 88788
Online: thehotline.org

Houston Area Women's Center (HAWC)

For survivors in the Houston area, HAWC provides confidential support, safety planning, emergency shelter access, counseling, legal services, and other resources.

24-Hour Domestic Violence Hotline: 713-528-2121
Toll-Free: 1-800-256-0551
Online: hawc.org

Texas Crime Victims' Compensation Program

The Texas Office of the Attorney General's Crime Victims' Compensation Program may help eligible victims with certain crime-related expenses, including medical care, counseling, lost wages, and qualifying rent or relocation expenses.

Call: 1-800-983-9933
Online: Texas Crime Victims' Compensation Program

Harris County District Attorney's Office — Victim Services

For survivors in Harris County who need help understanding the criminal justice process or accessing victim resources. Victim Assistance Coordinators can help survivors understand their rights, navigate the criminal justice system, access community resources, and apply for Texas Crime Victims' Compensation.

Victim Services: 713-274-0250
Online: Harris County DA Victim Services

A Note About Technology Safety

If you think someone may be monitoring your phone, computer, browser history, location, email, or online accounts, consider accessing these resources from a safer device they cannot access. A domestic violence advocate can also help you think through technology safety as part of a broader safety plan.

If you are in immediate danger or experiencing a life-threatening emergency, call 911.