It sounds lofty, and it is. But my resolution this year is just to do anything I personally can to advocate, educate, and help survivors get free of abuse. Join me? Some years after my abuse experience–yes, it took years!–I made myself a very serious commitment that I would leave any situation or relationship that…

Today I’m thinking about my fellow survivors…from those of you who are still being abused, to those who have left your abusers, but still find yourselves shell-shocked and confused, to those who are actively healing, and those for whom abuse is but a footnote in your lives. Sometimes a survivor will say something that always…

What started out as a true as a true story reported out by LA Times journalist Christopher Goffard turned into a podcast, a Bravo miniseries, and a cultural phenomenon. For those not in the know: TRIGGER WARNING. Dirty John is the real-life story of how Debra Newell and her daughters Terra and Jacquelyn heroically survived…

“I feel dead inside,” I told a friend of mine, a fellow survivor, when she came to visit me post-abuse. “Please tell me this feeling will end.” “It will end,” she promised. I’m going to make the same promise to you. It will end. You just have to ride it out for a while. For…

If you summon up a connotation to the term “financial abuse,” chances are you’ll think of someone being deprived by and dependent upon a paternalistic other. It could be a parent, it could be a partner, but this is the person who holds the purse strings, and they make sure you know it. I’ve known…

Contrary to the fears survivors have of being chosen for being weak, or unlovable–after all, abuse wears down anyone’s self-esteem after a while–abusers choose you for one reason and one reason only: You had something they wanted. They don’t want to work very hard for things they want, so they do the next best thing:…

If you are anything like me, it might have taken you years to figure out you were in an abusive relationship because it didn’t involve physical violence. That is the most overt form of abuse, but even physical violence is part of a pattern of coercive control and typically not an isolated incident. As it…

Love bombing is as far from love as you’re ever going to get. First comes the love. Then the bomb goes off. Every single abusive relationship I have ever heard of starts off this way. This is why survivors often darkly joke that “they must have a manual” of abuse because the stories are so…

When I began talking to my friends and fellow survivors about starting this website, I asked them what they thought what was most important for womxn to hear about abuse. And over and over they said: “Shame. Talk about shame.” It’s one of the reasons I find the whole “victim mentality” crap to be so…

When you have talked to perhaps hundreds of survivors, you begin to see very clear patterns. Especially when I am seeing a survivor who has not yet identified her/their partner as abusive, I repeatedly hear the below phrases and behaviors. I should add that I did all of these, as well. What I hope for…