“SHE SURVIVED” it all.

I have not addressed this issue in a long time, but felt compelled to share with you food for thought.

There is a woman who doesn’t really know what functional really is, pertaining to marriage.   A woman who has not really had a home to compare anything to, so she accepts whatever life throws her way…Complacent.  Abuse becomes part of her daily life, not believing it gets any better, or that she deserves any better.

One day she is going on with her daily routine of being a housewife and her husband, who is usually drinking….Snaps.  There is no apparent reason for it, but it just happens. Police come and he spends the night in jail, only to come home apologizing for what he had done, or pretends nothing ever happened the night before. The day after, varies, depending on his mood.

Finally one day she has enough and has the courage to leave him and begin a new life and things SEEM to be changing for the better.  She’s living with her best friend, dates occasionally and believes in herself again….If she ever did!

The night before her 40th birthday, she decides to drive to a town at the base of the mountain where she lived.  Her friend pleads for her not to go, because the roads may have ice on them and it had started to snow…but she was use to driving in that kind of weather.  On a narrow lonely road she had driven hundreds of times in all seasons, her car begins to swerve on the road.  She wished she had listened to her friend, for it was quickly becoming very nasty weather.  She pulls her car over thinking it doesn’t sound right, so she gets out of the car to check under the hood, keeping the car running and the headlights on.

Now keep in mind, the mountains had been her home for quite a long time, so she felt confident that someone she knew would drive by and see her.  While looking under the hood of her car, out of no-where, a man appears, asking if he can assist.  There seemed to be no car around;  Maybe he was a local farmer checking on his cattle, or mending a fence, that was common;  Nothing out of the ordinary.   A glance at the man, then continuing looking under her hood while she babbled on what she thought could be wrong.

She could hear herself screaming and struggling with the man, as though she was watching a horror movie; Outside herself, watching from a distance. They slid down the bank on the backside of the car, so no one from the road could see them.  Her head was pounding, she was in pain, he was angry and her screaming only made him more determined to proceed.   At that moment, she began to pray out load, in spite of what was being done to her, believing praying out loud would distract him.  Whether or not it did, she wasn’t to know until much later, because she was drifting in and out of consciousness. The snow and ice was coming down full force and she was coming in and out of consciousness, gradually crawling to the headlights of the car.

Now at this point, you would think someone would stop right away, but they didn’t, because it appeared seeing her bloody nude body in the furry of the storm, it was a dead deer, someone had hit, so…NO ONE stopped…Not for 2 hours.   Eventually someone DID stop.

I’ll not continue the details, but to tell you this……

A few years later, this same woman was taking self-defense, a strong supporter of the fight against domestic violence, a journalist for a local newspaper, on an exclusive article about her story, which reached large cities across the state.  Local Sheriffs departments were offering self-defense tips to women in seminars, cell phones became more common;  Way before this age of technology.  Through all this, her greatest accomplishment was to write in an article;   That enraged the men in the county, because domestic violence was brushed under the table there,   Everyone was related to someone, so no-one spoke out.

Her words were:

We as a Country expect our men to protect our country and to protect us from intruders in our homes.  Who protects us from the danger within our homes?  Who?  How does society expect a battered woman to successfully raise her children  to be responsible citizens, when they are surrounded by these horrific acts?  How do we teach our sons and daughters, this is not acceptable, or build their self-esteem, when we have none?  Only when We as a whole PEOPLE, can we stop the viscous chain of events coming full circle.

As a woman, a fighter, a mother………..”SHE SURVIVED” it all.