It's Your Turn To Cook

"Look what you made me do!" "I had to hit you to teach you a lesson!" "You're married to me: you have to have sex with me when I say so!" Has your partner or spouse ever used "cultural differences" to justify their abuse? Basic human rights are the same for everyone, no matter where we're from. No one has the right to abuse you just because they tell you their abusive behaviour is normal for them. "In my culture, a woman has to do what the man tells her!" Wrong. A partnership does not involve one person being the other's servant.  A partnership does not involve one partner having a higher status than the other. A partnership does not involve one person forcing the other to have unwanted sex. No one should be afraid of their partner. No one "makes" their partner hurt them. In the early days, when my abusive relationship was still in the "love bombing" stages, there were red flags I should have noticed. But...

  Over a decade ago, my son quickly filled a small bag of his and his little brother's favourite things, grabbed me by the arm and his brother by the hand as I grabbed the car keys. Making sure we were alone, we snook away as quickly and quietly as we could, leaving everything behind. We are survivors of domestic violence who actually managed to escape. We had nothing with us: no clothes, no documents. Just the clothes on our backs, the shoes on our feet and a couple of teddy bears. We didn't have time to hang around. It was my third escape attempt and this time, I had help. And we never looked back. We made it out alive. Not unscathed, but alive. We survived. This isn't about how easy it was thereafter. It's not about about triumph over adversity. It doesn't have an exciting warm, fuzzy feeling. Surviving trauma isn't easy: it doesn't magically disappear and at times, it's debilitating. It's a slow healing process. I still sometimes w...