Exposing Invisible Abuse

If you’ve found your way to my page, chances are that you, too, are a victim of invisible abuses—emotional, verbal, narcissistic, psychological, and sexual abuses. I’m here to tell you that you are not alone. And you CAN heal and move forward.

I am here to share my own personal journey of recovery from these abuses. This is my story, but it is YOUR Safe Place! I will share my thoughts, my knowledge, and even some educational resources related to healing from these invisible abuses. I will do this through art, my own poetry, and my blog.

I do this to show that you, a Survivor, can heal too. This is your Safe Zone, and you can rise above.

Ok, so let me give you a little background so you can understand why I started this blog—and why it will help you too.

I was taken away from my mother as a baby, and not returned to her until I was three years old. I know this because she used to repeat it to me over and over again, telling me that “if she didn’t love me, she wouldn’t have fought so hard to get me back.” So let’s just gloss over the other abuse, because she “loved me.” I spent time in two different foster homes, where both foster fathers sexually molested me.

When I was returned to my mother, I went to live with her, my half-sister, and my stepfather. He did not like me since I was another man’s child, and so he beat me, repeatedly. One time my mother came home from work to find reporters there taking pictures of me because my body was covered in bruises and welts. Shortly after that incident, my stepfather was found stabbed to death in a nearby restaurant. My mother moved us in with her friend Sally (names have been changed to maintain anonymity and protection—namely, mine). Both were physically, emotionally, and verbally abusive. I suffered many a bloody nose, followed by admonishment about how I made a mess, and they had to clean me up. Sally would yank my hair every time she walked past me. Every. Single. Time. One time I left wet mittens on the counter in the basement and Sally yanked me out of bed in the middle of the night, dragged me down to the basement, all the while yelling at me for leaving wet mittens on the counter, then proceeded to spank me with a wooden paddle she had made. She would subsequently write my name on the paddle in red marker every time she used it, then leave it hanging out in the open for all to see. I complained once about this treatment of me, and they brought home a magazine and showed me pictures of children who had been beaten, covered in black and blue bruises. They told me that since I didn’t look like that, then I was not being abused. My first experience in Gaslighting.

At the age of 13, I learned that my mother was in a lesbian relationship with Sally. Unfortunately for me and my baby sister, we learned this the hard way. I’ll let you use your own imagination here. As I got older, Sally would tell me that if I thought I had it so badly at home, why didn’t I just leave? She would lock me out of the house all day and ignore me. When I told my mother, she said she wasn’t there to see any of that transpire, so it mustn’t have happened.

Things got worse and they kicked me out at age 17. They told me that I would turn into a little slut and wind up knocked up soon. I ended up moving in with a friend so I could finish high school but became uncomfortable when her father told me that I shouldn’t wear any clothes to bed—so my “body could breathe.” I told my sister, who subsequently told my mother. She wouldn’t let me come home but told me that if I continued to live there, then “I must like it.”

By age 20, I married the first man whom I thought seemed to genuinely love me for me, and not what I had in my pants. But he turned out to be very controlling. He didn’t want me talking to other men, because he said they “only had one thing on their mind” when they talked to me.

After the divorce, I still chose relationships that turned out to be chock-full of invisible abuses. It took me 14 years to remarry, and he turned out to be a cruel narcissist who nearly broke me. I had no choice but to leave or end up in the hospital. My therapist feared the latter.

This blog is my journey of healing. Let me show you how to recognize invisible abuse and the permanent scars it leaves behind.

Let me show you how I’ve gone from broken to soaring!

If you have questions or reflections about an article, feel free to leave a comment. I would like to keep this website interactive and will do my best to respond.

In addition, if you have a question about your own struggles and would like advice, please comment or send me a private email here. I will be answering some of those questions in my weekly newsletter, with your permission of course. Please let me know in your email if you wish to remain anonymous.