I recently read an letter to a blog post commenting about the last straw.

The Last Straw 

I had this to say:

I agree with Evana about the need for community support. I had six children under the age of eleven when I fled and went into hiding. If I didn’t have the community support I wouldn’t have been able to get out alive. This is one of the reasons I am so committed to teaching other women how to develop their personal community of support. I fictionalized my own personal story in the novel Silent Cries: A Woman’s Journey to Freedom.As we talk about last straws, it’s funny, like Evana, mine wasn’t a major episode either. My ex had actually gotten help, was in perpetrator therapy, but his anger, hovering over me didn’t stop. One day I had a baby in arms and he hovered over me criticizing me for being fat. He had never called me that before. That did it. I had six children in eight years and he had the gall to call me fat! He was fifty pounds overweight, I twenty, and he called me fat. I called my support team into action and they surrounded me to help me get out of this sticky situation safely. I put up with the fat lips, bruised eyes, damage to my back, and brain stem, but call me fat… I believe in all reality it was because of all the community support I had, the people telling me I was of worth and my children deserve better that it took only the smallest thing to push me over the edge to work for my freedom. Oh, the sweet freedom I now have. I hope that we can help every other person who is suffering to claim this freedom.

Posted in: Domestic Violence at 11:56 am