If there is a name for the feeling when you’re waiting for the floor to drop out from beneath you, when you’re lying awake at night wondering whether you’ve done enough today, when you’re walking home from work and you wonder if you should buy groceries this week or pay rent on time, that word is capitalism.

Under a capitalist system, there is no safety net. There is no innate support system. There is no benefit to the capitalist mission of competition by supporting one another. The capitalist reality is that not everyone can afford to meet their basic needs and where basic needs can be afforded, emotional intelligence cannot.

Capitalism makes no room for emotional intelligence because the entire concept of capitalism comes from an inherent subscription to social Darwinism — that is, only the strongest (and the most willing to exploit and hoard the most money) survive, while everyone else is left to suffer in desperation. Capitalist ideology de-prioritizes mental health, mindfulness and conscious communication as necessary resources so they’re ultimately reserved for the richest and the whitest, forcing healthy relationships to the fringes. With healthy relationships coming at great personal expense,abuse and toxicity are permitted to run rampant — unchecked.

My family was not unlike many others when it came to the toxicity of my upbringing. One of my earliest and clearest childhood memories is of my mother hammering my father’s skull with the receiver part of the cream-colored corded phone that hung in our kitchen years after it stopped working. In my memory it seems like it was only a few days later that my parents were fighting, my mother in the driver’s seat of her 10-year-old minivan, and my father standing in the grass with the passenger’s side door ajar, my younger sister and me in the backseat — when my mother decided it made the most sense to end the disagreement by flooring the minivan into reverse, knocking my father to the ground with that door and breaking so hard that the door shut.

I don’t remember if my mother offered any kind of explanation for the events that transpired that day, but I grew up being told my father was an abuser and that my mother’s reactions were a normal response to the stresses our family endured, solely as a result of my father’s ineptitude.

My father with his compulsive gambling, alcoholism, and long history of addiction had left my mother isolated for much of their marriage. Throughout my childhood and into adulthood, my father has found comfort in being absentee.

Typical of what capitalism demands of a man via gender roles, he’s always understood his role as going to work, earning an income, and giving it freely to his family as a stand-in for actually showing up. When his one business didn’t meet his expectations of living, he sought to gamble ferociously, hoping to win big and transcend the class of the working man. After losing one business to his compulsive gambling, he was able to get sober in his divorce and become a partner in a well-known Italian grocery store. While having never been to one of my swim meets, being late to my actual birth, and seldom having been home when I went to bed, my father has never notprovided on the financial end of things.

Islamophobia Informed My Mother’s Silence On Domestic Abuse — And Mine
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But even though he was able to fulfill that ultimate goal of capitalism, there were issues roiling.

It only took my mother six years to realize my father wasn’t what she had bargained for, and five more after that for her to divorce him. My father’s inactive role in the day-to-day functions of our family inevitably left him uninvolved in any of the decision making and childrearing process before and after their divorce. It’s not to place the blame of our particular brand of familial toxicity squarely on my father, but had he been around, things may have gone a little differently. My father’s absenteeism empowered my mother as the sole disciplinarian and her preferred method of discipline was physical, verbal, financial, and ultimately spiritual abuse.

My first punch to the mouth came no more than a month after my father had left our house. The beating worsened in the days, weeks, and years after that, and my self-esteem, or lack thereof — so shattered by puberty and abuse — only served as further justification for why I deserved it. I remember sobbing on my bed, thinking back to the many times I bore witness to my mother doing to the same things to my father, desperate to find a reason for why my mother wanted to hurt us so bad and so often. I blamed him, and I blamed myself. I figured that — because I was told this — if my father had made different decisions then my mother wouldn’t be so stressed out.

And for most of my childhood that’s how I justified the abuse. I felt that if my mother had access to more resources to be both a working mother and a present parent, that the abuse wouldn’t have happened. I began to see myself as a burden on my mother’s finances and on her well-being because, again, that’s what I was told. Unfortunately, this wasn’t inaccurate.

My mother had a 15-year gap in her resume from marriage and parenting, so it wasn’t easy for her to get back out there to earn a living for her family the way she had hoped. Of this notable pattern in the women’s workforce, Julie Torrant writes:

“This role [as a full-time parent] has structurally blocked women from full and equal participation in the wage-labor force. It has, in other words, made women ‘bad’ competitors in the labor-market. At a time when a ‘family-wage’ was the norm (that is, when the norm was that the husband would be the breadwinner and his wage would support the entire family and thus women did not ‘have to’ compete on the market to sell their labor), a system of social welfare was put in place that worked to (at least) alleviate the hardship this norm placed on women who did not have access to such a male wage.”

Dealing with the debt of divorce, my mother had negative funds to raise us and desperately needed a career change if she had any hope of independently providing. She applied for welfare, but the cost of education plunged her further into debt. When she went back to school, she stopped parenting altogether. The only time I saw her was when she came home to lock herself in her bedroom, where she did homework and came out only to beat me for knocking on the door asking about dinner.

Tasked with the decision between parenting and breadwinning, my mother decided to go absentee and chose neglect — an impossible sacrifice many single mothers in America are forced to make.

But sourcing the causes for my mother’s toxicity does nothing for the weight of trauma on my shoulders. I know my mother, like my father, an addict, would likely still be an abuser regardless of her life’s circumstances. But I also know that capitalism gave her all the tools.

Tasked with the decision between parenting and breadwinning, my mother decided to go absentee.
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Teetering on a cliff of survival or not, the inherent stress of having a family under capitalism allows families to become isolated and violent institutions. In February 2015’s Socialist Review, Susan Rosenthal’s indictment of the capitalist family says exactly what I’ve been trying to say for the last 1,200 words:

“Today’s perpetrators are yesterday’s victims. While only a small minority of child victims become adult perpetrators, studies of those who do perpetrate reveal that almost all were traumatised as children. Capitalism cannot acknowledge that most perpetrators are former victims because it cannot admit that families transmit trauma from one generation to the next.”

Both my parents came from blue-collar immigrant families in which the mother was left at home with the children and the father was rarely seen. Both my parents came from families that didn’t meet their needs and were able to rationalize their neglect as just.

The wounded child in my parents never had a chance to heal, and so they went on to wound their children.

More than half of all female homicide victims in the United States are killed by their intimate partner. On June 8, 2013, my mother became a part of this statistic.

In one defining moment, my father, with full consciousness, shot multiple bullets into my mother’s chest. Even as she lay there dead, he kept shooting. As is the case for so many, the murder followed years of abuse.

As someone working in the domestic violence advocacy field, I want to be able to share my experience, to educate people and push for crucial change. But as the daughter of Libyan Muslim immigrants to the United States, I have often felt the need to show caution.

I want to prevent, to as great of an extent as possible, perpetuating damning stereotypes about Muslim men and women.

As a Muslim woman, I am often faced with overt Islamophobic aggressions — and these often come from my fellow domestic violence advocates. In my first month working at a shelter in the Bay Area, an advocate remarked that a young Egyptian Muslim mother’s suicidal tendencies reminded her of ISIS suicide bombers. Another time, when the shelter hosted a faith conference on domestic violence, I inquired whether any Muslim faith leaders would be a part of the conversation — and one of the facilitators of the event stated that she had not thought to invite any. She then asked me whether Muslim women are even allowed to talk.

The Fear And Guilt Of Being A Muslim After A Terror Attack

Lila Abu-Lughod, an Arab-American anthropologist who has written extensively on Orientalism as it pertains to Muslim women, expresses how the West has been obsessed with Muslim women and their perceived oppression since 9/11. In her exploration of the Western image of Muslim women and Islam, Abu-Lughod cites a “moral crusade” that has successfully positioned Muslim women as submissive and in need of saving, and Muslim men as spectacularly violent and patriarchal. I remained silent about my father’s actions out of a fear of lending legitimacy to these racist tropes.

In the wake of my mother’s death, I became enraged — at my community, at my father, and at myself. My experiences with racism and Islamophobia as a North African Muslim girl growing up in post-9/11 America, amplified by my mother’s visibly Muslim identity, reinforced in me the need to protect my community.

For a considerable part of my life, Islamophobia informed my mother’s silence, and mine.

About those stereotypes.

It’s true that Muslim women experience abuse at the hands of their intimate partners — however, the same holds true for women in the West. Nordic countries, for instance — despite being some of the most gender-equal countries in the world — still suffer disproportionately high rates of intimate partner violence. In the European Union, the average rate of the lifetime prevalence of intimate partner violence is 22%. In Sweden, the rate is 28%; in Finland, 30%; and in Denmark, 32%. In the United States, one in four women will suffer severe violence at the hands of their intimate partners in their lifetime. (These numbers closely mirror a survey of Muslims in the U.S. that found that 31% reported having experienced intimate partner abuse.)

I remained silent about my father’s actions out of a fear of lending legitimacy to racist tropes.
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What is unique is the presence of distinct cultural norms that make it especially difficult for Muslim women in the U.S. to report abuse or seek help. Ruksana Ayyub, a researcher on domestic violence, conducted a survey within the South Asian Muslim community and found that at least one in four women were dealing with domestic violence. Ayyub notes, however, that the numbers are probably much higher.

What the American populace is most often impervious to is the ways in which Islamophobia — through surveillance programs, incessant negative portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in mainstream media, and excessive news coverage of crimes committed by Muslims — has acted to reinforce and proliferate the abuse that is suffered by Muslim women at the hands of their intimate partners. Because of Islamophobia, Muslim women are encouraged to be silent about their abuse so as to not contribute to the further demonization of their faith and communities.

My community’s subsequent response to my mother’s death, or lack thereof, revealed how this can manifest. My mother Nadia, like most other Muslim immigrants to the United States, had her strongest roots at the mosque. She was beloved in our community, known for her exceptional cooking and shrewdness. But though her funeral brought together people that I had not seen in over a decade, celebrating her and her life, not once did anyone blame my father for what he did. Everyone wrote off his choice to kill my mother as a psychological illness, as a whisper from the devil, ignoring a reality that had been building up for years prior. Denial made the reality a bit easier to bear on each side — as a community, and as a targeted group in the United States.

Similarly, my mother, strong as she was, harbored reservations about disclosing her abuse to those within the Muslim community and outside it. I have inherited these same reservations from her, as there is a very real fear that my mother’s murder will be blamed on our culture and faith rather than on a culture of patriarchy and violence — a culture which America is hardly exempt from.

There is a very real fear that my mother’s murder will be blamed on our culture and faith rather than on a culture of patriarchy and violence .
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This silence is further compounded by the fact that Muslim women who are victims of abuse in America lack options when it comes to seeking help. As our places of worship continue to be surveilled, and racial profiling remains widespread in airports, law enforcement is deeply mistrusted. In New York, for example, the Police Department’s Intelligence Division has overseen a surveillance program since at least 2002 that involves mapping predominantly Muslim communities throughout New York City, providing photo and video surveillance of mosques, and keeping an intelligence database on thousands of innocent New York Muslims.

Even domestic violence centers specifically designed to help those in need often fail to adequately serve Muslim women, thanks to a lack of cultural education and training among advocates. In a study published in Journal of Social Work Research and Evaluation, an overwhelming 46.7% of Arab women who were victims of intimate partner violence agreed or strongly agreed that there were not any domestic violence programs or services that were established to cater to the particular needs of Arab immigrant women.

Asra Milani, a Canadian researcher on Muslim women domestic violence victims, expressed how Muslim clients seeking help from shelters may harbor feelings of suspicion or uncertainty in the presence of domestic violence advocates. Furthermore, Milani states that Muslims who are in need of mental health services “may be reluctant not only to seek services, but to express fears and problems in their lives created by Islamophobia.”

If Muslim women facing intimate partner violence cannot be comfortable in places established explicitly to assist abused women, then there is little faith that there is any place else for them.

Muslim women are constantly othered and dehumanized, their narratives fabricated in ways that intend to rob them of sympathy and needed actions to create change.

Perhaps what has infuriated me most since my mother was killed is the fact that no one calls what claimed her life by its name. No one says that it was patriarchy that killed her. No one talks about domestic violence as a public health epidemic. No one cares to break the silence around domestic violence in the Muslim community, even in the face of such a personal loss. No one seeks to draw connections between patriarchal indoctrination and my mother being brutally murdered by her husband.

No one talks about domestic violence as a public health epidemic.
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Though it is true that all Muslims in the U.S. are deeply affected by Islamophobia, Muslim women continue to suffer the greatest loss: loss of agency, loss of power, and loss of life. There is also a grave cost to Muslim communities when voicing issues is discouraged. If Muslim women are to be vocal about their abuse, the inimical culture of Islamophobia cannot exist. Islamophobia informs the silence of abused Muslim women; that silence, in turn, is killing us.

There is a price to pay if we speak out. There is a price to pay if we do not. But if there is any prospect of saving our lives, we must know that our silence will not save us. Central to our livelihoods is that the culture of Islamophobia be dismantled. Without this, Muslim women lose access to the services that exist for abused women. Without this, Muslim women will, unjustly, continue to choose between protecting their faith and communities, or protecting themselves.

Nour Naas is at the beginning of a project which seeks to lend a platform to marginalized women, with a particular focus on Muslim women, who have experienced intimate partner violence. If you are interested in learning more about it or becoming a participant, you can contact Nour directly at dvpinquiries@gmail.com.

Content warning: descriptions of physical abuse and sexual assault

The memory that haunts me most is not being strangled until my body gave way to seizure. Nor is it the three days I spent being beaten in a motel by my lover. It’s not the day he raped me on the bed next to our three-month-old son, or the time he punched my head again and again into the cement floor of a garage until I had to prop myself against him, his arms wrapped around my waist, just to get home. These memories hold their share of terror, but the one that haunts me most begins with a bicycle.

It was evening, and already dark. A breeze traced the shiver of fall across my bare arms. We were riding BMX bikes up a long hill. I remember the endlessness of it, how my lungs felt like they would shatter along the way. He’d been my boyfriend four months already, though we became friends when I was 14 and he was 21. It was two years since we met, and I thought I knew him well.

He had more practice riding bikes. I watched, flush and panting, as he cruised ahead, lifting his lithe body over the seat and pumping the pedals with his long, strong legs. When he summited the crest of the hill, he disappeared from sight.

I was afraid there, alone in the darkness, but I was also determined. I’d catch him. He wouldn’t run off and leave me to spend the evening with some other girl, not tonight. I ignored the burning in my chest and forced myself the rest of the way up that hill.

Protesting Trump As A Survivor Of Abuse

When I reached the top, I found him waiting for me, smiling. He was sprawled across a couch someone had left on the side of the road, his bike toppled at his feet. I tossed my bike next to his and crashed onto him. We kissed deeply, before I lay my head on his chest. He wrapped his arms around my skinny frame. While the sweat cooled on my skin, and my heart settled into its resting pace, I was overcome by joy.

Anything is worth this moment, I thought, anything that happens is worth what I’m feeling right now.

That is the memory that haunts me most.

Ten years after the end of that relationship, I have told many stories. I have revealed that when I came home with a black eye, it wasn’t the result of a car crash like I had initially claimed, but because my boyfriend kidnapped me and beat me for three days. I’ve talked about the numerous rapes. I have disclosed the many times he strangled me to the brink of death. When people hear my stories of abuse, sexual assault, and coercion, they tell me I am brave. Strong. They thank me for speaking out. But the story that requires true bravery is the one I haven’t told yet: the love story.

I remember lying on the floor of an abandoned house with my boyfriend — my abuser — so close to one another our lips touched when we talked. I remember filling notebooks with love poetry, and devoting entire writing workshops solely to him. I remember meeting at my apartment and embracing midway on the stairs, unable to wait for the top. I remember kissing for hours at the park, ignoring onlookers who shouted at us to “get a room.” I remember making plans for our future together. I remember sitting on the hospital bed, holding our new son in our four collective hands. I remember kisses and kisses and kisses.

I loved the man who kidnapped me, and raped me, and nearly killed me more than once. It wasn’t Stockholm Syndrome — an affinity with the assailant that long-term abuse victims develop as a psychological defense. Because I didn’t start loving him after the fact. I fell in love with him with the pure intensity of someone who doesn’t know any better, the way that’s really only possible in youth. It felt like a fairy-tale, not a trick. Maybe I was manipulated into the feeling, but to me it was real. I loved him before any of the abuse happened, and I loved him for years after it began. It’s not so easy to let go of a love like that, even when it becomes obvious there will never be a “happily ever after.”

It is fair that I’ve blamed myself for the thought I had one night long ago when I went on a bike ride? Should I feel responsible for the four years of abuse I endured because in one moment of teenage joy I made a contract, the terms of which I could not possibly have fathomed? I had inklings of his real nature. There were signs — there are always signs — but “love is blind” is not a cliche for no reason. In that moment, when I lay catching my breath in the embrace of a man I knew was already cheating on me, all I wanted was for my love to be returned. I had no idea the price I would come to pay.

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I fell in love with him with the pure intensity of someone who doesn’t know any better.
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If you google “why people stay in abusive relationships,” hundreds of results pop up, in everything from Psychology Today and Ms. Magazine to small personal blogs. Our culture is obsessed with the question: Why do people stay with lovers who harm them? Though the language varies between publications, the answers generally revolve around the same themes. Control. Emotional and sometimes financial dependence. Fear. Very few articles contain a section on love.

Rena P. Elkins, a licensed clinical social worker affiliated with the University of Washington Medicine, who has worked with trauma patients for over 10 years, acknowledges that fear is a major factor in why women stay with abusive partners, but finds that love can be far stronger. “He says he’s sorry, he promised to change, he’ll never do it again, I hear that all the time,” Elkins reports, “and [abuse victims] believe it, because they want to. Love is a strong motivator.”

Control, dependence, and fear were all factors in my abusive relationship, but love was the quiet, persistent undercurrent. Like Elkins, I suspect the same is true for many abuse survivors. It is a hard truth to voice, not only because it hurts to admit, but because it’s the truth of a “bad victim.” It puts you in the same category as those girls and women who wear short skirts, drink booze, flirt at parties, stay out too late, take rides from strangers; loving your abuser makes you the kind of person who people think invited whatever bad thing happened. It makes people stop listening. It makes your hurt matter less.

Even still, it’s a harder secret to carry. And I hope that by sharing this, I help other survivors realize they are not alone. That their feelings are not wrong. Loving someone doesn’t bind you to them — you can still walk away.

What Responsibility Do We Have To Those Who Date Our Abusive Exes?

On an afternoon in midsummer, when our son was a few months old, I called the police and turned in my abusive boyfriend. Two days earlier, he had strangled me while I was holding our baby. I lost control of my limbs and dropped my son. He was okay, but just barely. The day I called the police, I sat on the steps of the cathedral down the street from my mother’s apartment, holding my cell phone in trembling hands. I considered not calling. I considered going home with my boyfriend, who had recently proposed. I imagined what it would be like for my son and I to continue our lives with him.

Either way I looked at it, there was suffering. I could turn him in, and be alone at age 20 with a child I’d been forced to conceive, struggling to finish college, alone with my harrowing memories. Or I could go home with him, and feel happy in the glow of reconciliation for a few days…until I told the wrong joke, or got a call from the wrong friend, or didn’t come to bed when he asked, or looked too long at the guy scanning my groceries, or whatever. And then the beatings would start all over again. This time, maybe I wouldn’t survive. Or maybe I would, but my son wouldn’t. So I dialed 911, and helped arrest the man I loved.

Yes, even while I gave his name and description to the police, I loved him.

Eventually, after his arrest, I would gain the distance I needed to outgrow my feelings for him. I would come to understand that he never cared about me, and that the man I loved did not truly exist. But when those sirens wailed past me on that midsummer’s day, while blue and red flashed across my face and toward where my boyfriend thought we were meeting, my heart broke. I had to break my own heart to break free.

The following letter was delivered in court in the case against Karah’s former abuser. She says it was inspired by the bravery of the Stanford rape victim. Content warning: domestic violence.

In Judith Herman’s now foundational text on trauma, she outlines the process of psychological domination. The final stage in this process is known as total surrender, where the victim becomes utterly complicit in their own abuse. Herman explains the abuser’s mindset, with an Orwellian quote:

“We are not content with negative obedience, nor even with the most abject submission. When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him. We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul.”

It is necessary for the abuser to feel justified for the continuation of the abuse cycle.

During the abuse, I thought of nothing but trying to calm you down and save you from the inevitable consequences of your actions. Calling the police was about the farthest thing from my mind except that you kept repeatedly mocking me, highlighting your knowledge of our shared convictions against the justice system and the prison industrial complex. Instead, I tried begging you to stop, being sweet and soothing, yelling or acting angry, trying to pretend to be asleep, and even playing dead at certain points in the hope, not that I wouldn’t die, but that you would not get into trouble. Back then, my devotion to you was so complete, I would have gladly died if it would lessen your distress. The many times that night that you strangled me to the point of unconsciousness, what kept me alive was knowing how much more trouble you would be in if I died. In the end, instinct and the will to protect you allowed me to fight for my life.

During the abuse, I thought of nothing but trying to calm you down and save you from the inevitable consequences of your actions.
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When the police arrived, you politely let them in and surrendered yourself. Reports described you as calm and collected. My memory of those initial moments is fuzzy, but, I clearly remember screaming and crying hysterically, terrified out of my wits of any physical contact with the officers, hiding in a corner of my bed pulling out chunks of my hair that you had ripped out and trying repeatedly to pull my ripped tank top up to avoid being exposed. Decidedly uncollected and not a bit calm. Police snapped photo after photo of my injuries — my face, neck, back and even the inside of my mouth because you had shoved your fingers so far down my throat trying to muffle my screams that it was bleeding. After about 25 minutes, I was finally allowed to put on pants and find my eyeglasses, which, as you know, I am nearly legally blind without, making the experience all the more terrifying as I could not gauge the officers reactions or facial expressions toward me. Through this process, I repeatedly defended you to the officers.

How My Abusive Father Helped Me Understand Trump Supporters

From the moment the police arrived, despite being in a state of shock, and through the days and months that followed, I went around being the rabid, loyal defender I had to become after years of lying for you, hiding and justifying your abuse to myself and others. I truly felt like my life depended on your safety and protection from the consequences of your actions. As a fellow indigenous person, I also believed, like many native women I know, it was my job to protect you from state violence.

Entirely enmeshed, entirely dependent on you for what morsels of emotional validation you allowed me, I did what anyone that far gone would do. The prosecutor can tell you that I aggressively defended you, minimized and omitted many of your actions that night and the many nights that preceded it. I investigated effective defenses, poured out enormous amounts of emotional support and labor on your behalf and even hired someone to be a support person for you since I could not be in the same ways due to the no contact order. I researched and vetted your DV treatment facility and made sure you would be allowed to continue to see your counselor because I believed him to be culturally responsive.

As a fellow indigenous person, I also believed, like many native women I know, it was my job to protect you from state violence.
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All I could feel was the unnaturally strong attachment which occurs through a process known as “trauma bonding,” which often occurs when a victim is brought to the brink of death through strangulation or other means repeatedly and then at the last moment their abuser allows them to live. The abuser simultaneously becomes assailant, and benevolent savior. Despite seeing a chiropractor 2 to 3 times a week for several months to correct the injuries to my neck and back I sustained when you thrashed me around the bed and dragged me around the apartment by my hair, trauma bonding ensured I could think of only one thing; how to get back to you.

It is difficult to describe the physical pain that a victim, that I, went through when a trauma bond is broken. Physical sensations of unmitigated impending doom, as if I had just slipped off a cliff and was falling to my certain death dominated my days and nights for months. This was, I discovered, only the beginning of my suffering.

After about 5 months, I heard vicariously that you had come back to the top of your abuse cycle, as you had time and time again. You began to blame me for your abusive behavior, paint me as the primary aggressor, exaggerate your injuries, obsess over or completely invent whatever petty offenses you believe I visited on you during the course of our relationship, become self-obsessed, lack empathy and cognitively distort events until they were unrecognizable from the original occurrence — what you had previously so vehemently apologized for had suddenly never occurred, or was my fault anyway. It was the naming and realization of this that allowed the wrongness and severity of what you did to me to sink into my body little by little. That, and the fact that after years, I was finally safe.

For two months now, the full weight of what my body and brain endured that night has hit me full force. I can still feel what you did to me that night; not like it’s emotionally “distressful” but like right now, standing here in my body I can feel the acute sensations of being strangled, drowned and a sharp pain in my neck that never goes away. I never told the police that as you strangled me on the living room floor while you simultaneously poured soda water onto my face; that was the single most terrifying moment for me because, as I discovered, while being strangled slowly to unconsciousness actually isn’t that painful, drowning is incredibly painful.

I am unsure if the police got pictures of the living room that night, but if they had, they would have seen a squished up 42 ounce bottle of Crystal Geyser Berry flavored water at the entrance to the living room — that was why that was there. When I have flashbacks, which are frequent, that is the moment I most often return to. I am not sure how you water board someone in self-defense.

Because my job provides no paid time off or sick leave, I find myself feeling like I am drowning or cannot breathe in the middle of running groups, also going to the gym, seeing friends, or literally whatever I am doing. What you did to me is never not with me. Your hands around my throat are never not with me. The pain from being punched in the vulva and vagina repeatedly while you screamed “this is mine” is never. Not. With me.

Each day I endure the full gambit of trauma symptoms. Hypervigilance, anxiety, agitation, sensations of dread and impending doom, sleep disturbances, lack of a baseline of calm and comfort, tension, neck pain, headaches, flashbacks, nightmares, gastrointestinal disturbances, trust difficulties, fear of betrayal, relational issues, irrational fears and intolerance for change among other things. All of this suffering because in your words to the officers that night, “you needed to prove a point.”

What you did to me is never not with me.
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I know this phase won’t last forever, though I am told it can last for many years. But I will never be the same. You have caused me irreparable harm. We are here together today because each of us knows the truth about who you are and what you’ve done, no matter what you claim to the judge. There is another woman, who could not be here today, your ex-wife, who was able to detail her own horrendous story of the physical and emotional abuse she AND your pre-school aged son endured at your hands. You are a serial abuser of women and children. Women are sacred. You have violated and betrayed me, your tribe, and the beliefs of the people. Take responsibility and end your suffering. Find peace in honesty.

All I ever wanted was your healing and happiness. I listened to you, protected you. I thought if I could give you the pure love and kindness you lacked growing up, if I could be good to you long enough, you would stop hurting me and realize that I wasn’t worthless, as you insisted time and time again.

But I am free now. After years of prioritizing your every emotional, spiritual, and physical need, I refuse to give you any more of me. I won’t protect you anymore. I will leave you with some of the words you used to terrorize me the night of your arrest:

“No one is coming to save you, this time.”

This letter originally appeared on Wear Your Voice

It’s a problem of epidemic proportions because it has an impact on all of us. What makes it “silent” is our inability or unwillingness to talk openly about shame and explore the ways in which it affects our individual lives, our families, our communities and society. Our silence has actually forced shame underground, where it now permeates our personal and public lives in destructive and insidious ways.

Four years ago I graduated from Rutgers University with a Master’s degree in art history. I was surrounded on that sunny day by my family, including my fiancé and my soon-to-be stepdaughter. I was one of the first kids in my family to go to college, and this felt like my greatest accomplishment yet. But when I look at photos from that day — my fiancé’s daughter grinning and wearing my mortarboard, my father standing gravely with a bouquet of flowers — I feel not pride or nostalgia, but shame.

Several months later, I would shove as many things as I could carry into large plastic trash bags, grab my cat, and get into a car with my mother, only returning to that house once, briefly, in order to pick up the rest of my things. But even though I got out, the shame lingers, poisoning even my happy memories. Like many survivors of abuse, I wonder: did I put up with it for too long? Was it somehow my fault?

In her book I Thought It Was Just Me (but it isn’t), author and speaker Brené Brown calls shame a “silent epidemic”:

Brown says that shame needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence, and judgment. It’s no wonder, then, that people who have endured abuse at the hands of an intimate partner are so likely to feel ashamed about it. Abusers thrive on secrecy, silence, and judgment, too. They rely on planting the very feelings that nourish shame.

My ex-fiance was a master gaslighter, which is to say that he thoroughly manipulated me into questioning my own sanity and perception of reality in the course of our relationship. He was adept at making me believe the problems in our relationship were my fault. He went to great lengths to distance me from family and friends so that the only support that I perceived for myself was him. He made me feel small. He made me feel useless. This, in turn, made me feel ashamed — and that shame did his work for him. Shame made me doubt myself; it tricked me into believing that everything he said about me was true. Once he began nurturing an environment that encouraged shame, I was less likely to put up a fight.

For the last nine months of our relationship I thought daily about leaving, but was held in place by the paralyzing fear of what other people would think of me should I break off the engagement. Coupled with the bond that I had formed with my stepdaughter, that fear kept me nailed in place throughout the summer that followed our engagement.

After I left my fiancé and his daughter, I did not stay at my parents’ house; I preferred to couch-surf rather than grapple with the fallout of that relationship in front of the people who loved me. Eventually, shame drove me into a shell of a home that a friend had purchased with the intent of renovating it for his family. I would live out the winter there without heat or most basic amenities. I chose to be alone and miserable rather than show myself to others. I was sick more times that winter than I had ever been in my life. Not once did I consider reaching out for safe housing or a place to land.

Shame carves deep scars in people who have endured psychological abuse, myself included. In fact, I didn’t even acknowledge that what happened to me was abuse. That word in itself is filled with shame. Using it feels like you are invoking something bigger than yourself. Calling it abuse felt like I was making a big deal out of the situation, making excuses for myself, asking for attention I didn’t deserve. I told myself other people had endured so much worse than I had. I told myself it wasn’t that bad. I was ashamed of the abuse, but I was also ashamed to think of myself as a victim.

Shame is not easily shaken off. In fact, it can affect the core perception of ourselves and our identity. People who have experienced traumatic events may rewrite their self-perception to include feelings of disgust and humiliation, as well as negative comparisons of themselves with other people. Acute, chronic shame can erode self-esteem in ongoing and destructive ways.

Even now, I cannot banish the shame. As survivors of emotional abuse, the language of shame perfectly echoes the language used by our abusers. It tells us what they told us: that no one will believe us. That we aren’t worthy of support and compassion. That we aren’t just people who make mistakes, but rather that we are, at our very core, mistakes in and of ourselves. Shame tells you that, if you are truly seen, the world will judge you as harshly as you judge yourself. It tells you that you are unworthy of acceptance and belonging. It tells you lies. And even knowing what a liar shame is, I still fear the effects of allowing this part of myself to be seen.

The research done on intimate partner abuse has touched on shame in various ways over the years. An Australian study into shame in the context of trauma concluded that shame is “an effective tool for perpetrators to exploit the vulnerability of their victim and enhance their own power over the relationship dynamic.”

The researchers found that abusive partners deployed shame in different ways at various points in an abusive dynamic. During the relationship, shame worked to erode victims’ self-esteem, in order to keep them compliant with the will of their abuser. Shame worked both within and outside the abusive dynamic by rooting itself in social cues surrounding sex and gender, relegating intimate partner abuse to the private realm and discouraged victims from disclosing. As if all that wasn’t traumatic enough, the shame had the added effect of isolating victims post-trauma. Shame is relentless, not only keeping victims locked into their abusive relationships, but also ensuring that survivors do not feel comfortable speaking out or seeking support after they have left an abusive situation.

Shame tells the victim of psychological abuse that the degradation, putdowns, and judgements of their abuser are all true and thus threatening to the social self. Survivors are ashamed of the terrible people they believe they are. And even after they escape, lingering shame tells the victim of psychological abuse that people will think less of them if they tell the truth about what they have endured. That their peers will not accept them. That they will be rejected and outcast if they choose to speak their truth openly.

Shame, of course, is lying.

So how do we find our way back from shame? One word: empathy. In her influential 2012 TED talk about shame, Brown stated that:

If we’re going to find our way back to each other, we have to understand and know empathy, because empathy’s the antidote to shame. If you put shame in a Petri dish, it needs three things to grow exponentially: secrecy, silence and judgment. If you put the same amount in a Petri dish and douse it with empathy, it can’t survive. The two most powerful words when we’re in struggle: “me too.”

And I’m here to tell you that it’s true. The more I have spoken openly among my peers about the truth of my relationship with my ex-fiance, the more acceptance and warmth I have experienced. The louder I shout, the more people have come forward to support me.

The empathy that others have shared with me has allowed me to be more gentle and empathetic with myself. And even though there have been some who have chosen not to believe me, or who have turned their backs on me because of what my openness has made them feel, the majority have applauded my courage in speaking out. Those kind, compassionate listeners have swaddled me in empathy, insulating me from my own shame as well as the judgment of others. When someone rejects me, I no longer feel the sting.

I have been a prisoner of shame for many years. In many ways, if I’m honest, I still am. But if shame needs my secrecy and silence to grow, speaking openly about the most shameful time in my life is a big step toward healing myself.

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