![]() ![]() If you or a loved one are contemplating suicide, please call the free and confidential national Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988 or access help through their website at. If you or a loved one is experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-80 or visit. Each time a survivor shares their story, we take another step forward, towards progress. It’s too easy for those who pose a threat to themselves or others to access guns, and it’s especially dangerous when this happens around children. If I chose to avoid embarrassment or fear by not speaking at all, how would I share my story? How would people learn that this can happen? But we must support survivors-and this includes listening to them when they have a story to tell, even if it comes out in broken segments.Įach time I question whether or not to speak, I remind myself that my voice is powerful. Victims and survivors often feel alienated by our responses to trauma, like forgetting thoughts, having trouble speaking, or crying and shaking. I think many trauma victims don’t share their stories because they don’t know what to say, or are afraid of saying the wrong thing. The trauma has taken a toll on my brain-sometimes, I lose my train of thought and pause in the middle of a sentence. I tried several treatment techniques with my therapist to overcome these hurdles. Having to say goodbye to my son in a hospital bed in the emergency room, hours after he passed, was the worst moment of my life. In the months after, the sight of caution tape on TV would make me cry. I will never forget the crime scene, blocked off with barricade tape. I replay the event in my head often, trying to put together the pieces of the real-life nightmare. Though I didn’t witness my son’s death, I suffer from PTSD and secondary trauma. There are probably others in similar situations who have no idea they’re victims as well. I’m aware that I was a victim of domestic violence-and that was a huge awakening for me. ![]() I’m aware of the pain and exhaustion, of the word “filicide”-which means the killing of one’s son or daughter-and of the need to warn others of what to look out for. Since Wyland’s tragic death, I’ve become even more aware of the signs of abuse. If he took too long to respond to a text message, I worried about Wyland’s safety. I was worried I might be caught in an outburst or manic episode, and that I wouldn’t be able to decode his messages and actions. After eight years of marriage, I became a shell of a person. While there were no visual manifestations of violence, his emotional abuse created small bruises on my psyche. But mental abuse doesn’t work that way, at least not for me. ![]() Maybe if I had a black eye, others would have noticed-or I would have. I worried my ex-husband would take his own life, causing our son to suffer emotionally for the rest of his life.īut I wasn’t physically abused. My son, Wyland, and I experienced emotional manipulation and verbal abuse at his hands, and I was held hostage by the fear that he would hurt me, my son, or even himself. My ex-husband was diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder. The combination of intimate partner violence and access to firearms is an especially deadly mix. ![]()
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