*TRIGGER WARNING*
Loves,
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Did you know that I’m a survivor of intimate partner violence? You can look back in my archives to when I first started writing my monthly blog. There I discussed in detail all the types of abuse I experienced throughout this relationship. I also talked about the ways I healed.
Last year I interviewed women who’d also experienced abuse, and asked them these three questions: What happened? How did it impact you? How did you heal? Their honest and brave answers touched my heart and reeducated me on how abuse can be very obvious or extremely disguised.
Abuse can be verbal/emotional/physical/psychological/sexual. It can be coercive control, legal abuse, stalking, harrassment, or economic abuse. I’ve experienced every single one of these. So have many other women. And the abuse can go on for years and years even after the relationship has ended.
Some startling facts coming from my home country of Canada are that thirty women and girls were “violently” killed in 2026 in the first three months of the year. (CTV news in March 2026). In 2025 a 147 women and girls were killed and in most cases it was by a man. Murder is most often committed by a current or past intimate partner. And often in their own homes, where women and children should be safe. Police services in Canada recorded a 128,000 victims of intimate partner violence in 2024.
I wrote a memoir about my personal experiences with intimate partner violence and the great measures I took to protect my daughter and myself from harm. I’m writing my second memoir now on the aftershock of these major life events that rippled into every part of my future.
To all women and children impacted by abuse or have had their lives stolen, I see you, I know you, I feel you. I will continue for the rest of my life to help, to heal, to honor all of our lives.
I love you.
