published this book initially because I did not want to believe the warnings of my friend who told me that if I published a memoir of domestic violence I would forever have the word “victim” on my name tag. I am so much more than that.
There are millions of women— and men— who think they cannot say the truth about what happens in their homes, in their partnerships, in their marriages, because they will die of embarrassment. But is never embarrassment that kills them. So many women are loved that way.
Women like me.
We are women in your office, we are women in your car pool, women in your gourmet club, women in your book group, women at your athletic club. We are your students, your professors, women who volunteer with you, women who work with you. We are your dentists, doctors, lawyers, nurses, professors, children’s teachers, accountants, architects. We are famous, we are anonymous. We are feminists, we are mothers of millions of children. We are women of all ages, races, socioeconomic backgrounds and education levels. We are beautiful, we are plain, we are bold, we are shy. We are thin, we are round, we are tall, we are short.
What I have learned in telling this story openly is that domestic violence is everywhere. In no culture on this planet, is there a society absent of domestic violence.
A Cheyenne proverb begins, “A people is not conquered until the hearts of the women are on the ground. No matter how brave its warriors or how strong their weapons, then it is finished.”
It is not a finish any of us want.
I have tried to use my words to further the mission of minimizing if not eliminating partner violence. But I think that is not possible until as a society we will not tolerate violence as a means of expression. It cannot happen until our young boys grow to be men with zero tolerance for abuse of women and children, until they no longer see so much violence in media that they are immune to its consequences. Until everyone realizes that violence hurts.
I am not extraordinary, I am not exceptional. I am one woman who saw the truth and with the help of family, community, agencies and the justice system, wrote her story and rebuilt a life free of fear and without any violence. I have raised my sons, now 23, 21 and 18 to be good men who have no tolerance for violence against women.
I have written about my life since the first edition of this book in a new creative nonfiction memoir, Escape Points. That book, with an excerpt at the end of this edition, deals with my struggles raising the boys alone, their wrestling careers in high school, the help offered by their wrestling coach, Mike Powell, as well as my brothers and sisters, my recovery from breast cancer and my professional challenges to keep all the pins in the air and do it all. I believe it is uplifting and honest, a testament ot the complicated lives so many of us lead.
The message is that I believe you can create a meaningful and joyful life when faced with many difficulties.
“There is an alchemy in sorrow,” Pearl Buck wrote. “It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not being joy, can yet bring happiness.”
I have taken the experience as a woman once married to a violent man and chosen not to let that define me in a static place. It is not on my name tag.
I have moved on to be productive and hopefully influential. I was a victim and have become an advocate. I do believe all women and children should be safe. I believe that hope and hard work will at least curb if not eliminate domestic violence.
Writing this book changed my life. I want my words to continue to change the lives of other women struggling with a partner as I once did. Because for me that is simply the right thing to do.
Michele Weldon
September 2012
Preface
“Will you ever forgive me?”
His voice was familiar, plaintive, beckoning in its mock sincerity. But now I was keen and unwilling to erase all that had come before. I knew this voice too well, the somber, innocent voice, the one that always comes after, the one that sometimes comes right before. I’ve heard it hundreds of times. And what he has done is not okay.
“No.”
In a drumbeat, a denial. There was silence. And then he asked for a favor, to switch a visitation, to have our three boys longer than he is allowed by the courts. I said no. I will not forgive him simply because he demands it. I can possibly forgive him because I have grown to the point where it is better for me to release the pain. But not now, not that day. Not at his request.
His voice changed. He told me if I had sex I would be easier to deal with.
I have read shelves of books and magazine articles extolling the healing qualities of forgiveness, and I wonder. I know it is a popular notion. I know the nation wrestled with the forgiveness of a president. Television talk shows center on themes of forgiveness, bringing out guests begging for redemption for a scorecard of betrayals, hoping to be acknowledged as the audience pleads for a happy ending. I know that atrocities between people are forgiven as easily as coins of red and white striped candy are thrown from a float at a Memorial Day parade.
I know for many an apology embraced is freeing. But apologies are what imprisoned me. I cannot honestly absolve my former husband of the abuse. To say I do would be a lie. He dismisses all he has done as trivial, while the abuse, no longer physical, has transformed to verbal and emotional, playing itself out in bitter phone calls and seemingly endless litigation, with the children as pawns when convenient.
Forgiveness for me means absolution, wiping the slate clean. I cannot do that to a man who I feel deliberately and cyclically abused me. I do not hate him, but I am aware of who he is, and it is not excusable. What he has done to me, and continues to do, cannot be dismissed. Sometimes the only one you can forgive is yourself.
Forgiveness undeserved is what compelled me for one-third of my life, the twelve years spanning the time I was twenty-five years old until just after I turned thirty-seven. Nine years of marriage and three children all added up to a monument to forgiveness. And it was forgiveness that perpetuated the spiral, a forced compassion required to constantly understand and forever swallow explanations that were hollow and unworthy. I was moved further into this quagmire by my own driving desire to make my marriage work, to succeed at all costs, and to cover up the glaring evidence that this model man I married was not at all who he seemed. I see now that forgiving him is what granted the violence permission. Being the forgiving rubber wife is what allowed this to unfold.
Perhaps the word I need for him is not forgiveness but understanding. That may heal me. The anger does wash cleaner as time passes. It does get farther away, lost in the separateness of our lives, the wholeness I feel without him, the fullness of work that I love, and the business of loving my boys. The harsh, jagged edges of my rage at having been so duped and gullible are worn smooth by time and new experiences, but the rage is there, nonetheless. Ubiquitous, but tamed. The passion of my indignation has faded, bleached by the new, honest life I began the day he left.
I know it would be futile to say I will forget. I cannot forget that I was the victim of a hushed, private violence; it is as much a part of me as are my three small boys who shout desperately for my attention from rooms down the hall. To forget would mean to embrace the chance that it may happen again. My memories, aggressive and ravenous as tigers, will not let me forget. I can pray someday I will understand why he did what he did. I am beginning to understand why I accepted the violence, and it has not been simple.
Surviving domestic violence is like walking away from a raging fire that has consumed your home, your life, and your self-definition. You are plagued with the details of how this atrocious fire began, how it spread, and how it took so long for you to jump to safety. Sometimes it just starts with a forgotten match. And before you acknowledge the danger, your life is engulfed in flames.
In June 1997, on my thirty-ninth birthday, I came home from dinner with my friend Mariann, her treat for my birthday. I pulled my gray 1990 Volvo station wagon