Welcome to this safe space for women and their loved ones to share their experiences around separation and divorce, child-custody disputes, domestic violence and abuse, and protection of children.

I’ll be contributing stories from my own personal journey and I hope you will contribute your stories, so that we can open up this much needed dialogue. We can create a hope-filled and caring community that will give everyone the love and support they need to know they’re not alone.

Some ideas for sharing:

  • separation and divorce
  • child-custody issues
  • emotional/verbal/psychological/sexual/financial/physical abuse
  •  the legal system
  • lessons learned
  • coping skills
  • supportive friends/family/community
  • positive outcomes

I would love to hear from you. Click here to find out how: http://lealove.com/contact

***TRIGGER WARNING: Blog posts may contain distressing material***

# 31 Why Do Women Stay in Abusive Relationships?

I won’t speak for all women. But I can speak from my personal experience. From the ages of twenty-two to twenty-five years old, I was in an abusive relationship. This is the average age range for females to experience intimate ...
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#30 Shelter Us

No one wants to end up at a shelter. But we're grateful that they're around. Women's domestic violence shelters are chronically underfunded. The support workers are over-worked and under-payed. They're constantly trying to fill positions and find volunteers because people ...
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#29 Thank You Note

It was a challenge to escape my abusive X in Hawaii. I was on an island in the Pacific Ocean, 2700 miles away from home. And my X’s favorite hobby was me. He thrived on manipulation and control. But I ...
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#28 Sisterhood

There was shouting and berating and an onslaught of verbal abuse. Then my child and I were thrown out of our home. We lived in Hawaii in a remote jungle area a mile and a half up a four-wheel drive ...
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#27 Hurdles

Hi Loves, The whole purpose for the creation of this site was to share my personal stories of domestic violence and abuse (scary and awful), my separation from my X (which was a real-life horror movie), child custody issues (on ...
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#26 Anonymous

When life challenges are upon you, and there are no words to speak of trauma, how does one begin on the healing path? As a sexual ritual abuse survivor, I needed to find alternative healing outside of talk therapy, as ...
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#25 Triggered

I’ve been feeling triggered lately. I know I’m not the only one. Women all over the world watched as B.K. was sworn-in as Supreme Court Justice in the U.S. American women rose up in great numbers to do everything possible ...
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#24 Borders Part 2

I went to China in May. It was a lovely trip full of walking, sightseeing, eating, shopping, and immersing myself in Chinese culture. The flight home was arduous. There was the four a.m. wake up, a two-hour jaunt to the ...
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#23 Illegal Immigrant Part 1

I’ve been reading the news. I’ve been watching Facebook videos of anguished children being separated from their desperate families at the Mexican/American border. Children being ripped from their mother’s arms. Teens, toddlers, babies. The children are taken away to detention ...
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#22 Presence

Going into hiding with my toddler was essential for self preservation. What I didn’t realize, as a young mom, was how it would lead me onto the path of self realization. Living in immediate crisis caused great fear. Fear of ...
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#21 Anonymous Part Two

This post was submitted anonymously by a woman working to regain custody of her children. How to survive battery and violence, look after yourself and your children: Cry as much as you need. There is much benefit in weeping. Figure ...
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#20 Anonymous Part 1

This post was submitted anonymously by a woman working to regain custody of her children. I've had a 250-day sustained trauma recently. Twenty-four hours a day for over nine months. At first I felt like I was dying, the grief ...
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#19 Anonymous

This post was submitted anonymously. At 16 I moved from Portland, Oregon to Cleveland, Ohio to live with my dad. I was a headstrong teenager and wanted to conquer the world on my terms. Spoiler alert, I did not conquer ...
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#18 Trust

How can you ever trust again? I met up with a new friend for tea. I was listening to her vent about her X and how he’d gained custody of her young child through dubious and manipulative means. She was ...
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#17 Exit Plan

Getting out of an abusive relationship is rarely simple. For me it was an absolute doozey. I was living on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in a country not my own, thousands of miles from my family, ...
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#16 The Grey Area

It can be hard to know when to get out. I met my X when I was twenty-two-years old, and vacationing on the islands of Hawaii. He was a year older than my father. From the moment I met him, ...
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#15 Silence

No one wants to talk about the time they were abused. It doesn’t come up in casual café conversations while sipping on a London Fog. “Yeah I was with this guy and he beat the shit out of me. Glad ...
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#14 Anonymous

This post was submitted anonymously. “Murder-suicide sounds like a good idea. Maybe we should try it.” Although the words sent chills through my body, no one believed me. Violent outbursts included ripping the washer out of the wall and throwing ...
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#13 Anonymous

This post was submitted anonymously. An early morning in August 2016, the day before my 60th birthday, the phone rang. My beautiful son. “What, what - what are you saying?? “He is dead?” My son gone, in untenable circumstances. His ...
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#12 Anonymous

This post was submitted anonymously. Have you ever been on eggshells? By this I mean have you ever been so scared by someone on a tirade that you walk with light feet and don’t even want to breathe wrong because ...
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#11 Another Side to the Story

Every time I see a missing children’s poster I get scared. Then I get mad. Wait. I get it. There are organizations in Canada and the U.S. and internationally, who’s sole purpose is to search out and find runaways, stranger ...
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#10 Anonymous

This post was submitted anonymously. I loved being married and the adventure of creating a family. We had a home, our two beautiful sons were happy and healthy, we had a community with other families who were interested in living ...
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#9 101 Ways to Disappear

I’ve stayed in many safe houses. These secret, hidden homes were created by women to protect other women and their children from abuse and domestic violence. To give solace and refuge in a time of great duress. Isn’t that incredible? ...
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#8 Anonymous

This post was submitted anonymously. I wish my mom had left my dad sooner. They were married for 30 years. He was not the kind of crazy that Lea got stuck with, but pretty damn close. He beat my mom and all of ...
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#7 Anonymous

This post was submitted anonymously. After reading Lea’s blog post, Problem, is it any surprise that a mother who is being abused stays with her abusive partner or, if she has the courage to leave, often returns? Or, that she ...
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#6 Solution

I have an idea. When women and children are abused, how about abusers are taken out of their homes and moved to shelters. What a concept, right? Imagine that a family is scared shitless by domestic violence, and they call ...
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#5 Problem

Let me start from the beginning. When women and children are abused and have fled their home, they usually search for a shelter to take them in. They call number after number in hopes that someone can give them safe ...
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#4 Forgiveness

I have forgiven my X. I mean my last name is Love for goodness sake, and you can't carry that name around with hate in your heart. But I did hate him. I loathed this man. I seethed with fury ...
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#3 Proof

I had this lawyer once. He was trying to map out the abuse by my X to build a case. All that he was concerned about was the physical evidence of physical abuse. I told him a story about how ...
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#2 What Just Happened

I didn’t call the police. That’s what you’re supposed to do if you’re abused. And if you wait a millisecond after the deed to figure out what the hell just happened, it’s game over. Wait a day or a month ...
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#1 This is Not a New Story

I was pretty much doomed from the beginning. I’d finally stood up for myself and my daughter, and told my X that it was over between us. Even though we were completely dependent on him, living in his house in ...
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