I had struggled with finding myself. I had struggled with being myself. I felt like Mulanwhen she sang the song, “Reflection.” Then I eventually learned to be like Elsa, and […]

Until Halloween 1998, I hadn’t been the victim of any actual violence. By this time my parents split up due to my dad drinking too much and becoming verbally hostile with people. The final straw was him threatening to kill me if I said anything else of him being mean to me when my mother was at work.

The first time I experienced physical , mental and sexual abuse was as a child. My first impression of what relationships looked like stemmed from my toxic family environment. It […]

This is when the hitting started, he’d grab at me and as he puts it “restrained” me, the punches, kicks, strangling marital rape, bruises all over, black eyes, bloody lips, broken nose and wrists, all sometimes happening before any healing began.

Every relationship I got in was tainted with some form of dysfunction. This is because I didn’t know what a functional relationship was supposed to look like. I didn’t know […]

“I think you love me,” I tell him. He laughs. “You think I love you?” “Yes.” “Alright,” he says, “so I love you. So what?” I’ve been fighting for most […]

It’s a part of my past that I rarely bring up because there was always a question about what I did to contribute to the fighting, or why I allowed […]

I was being abused and didn’t even realize it. It started so subtly at first that I didn’t even recognize the signs. Thinking back to the first time I sensed […]

My father sexually and physically abused me as a child. He also physically abused my mother and brother. He would take pleasure in punishing us for silly things. Any little […]