When I made the decision to separate from my abuser, I was a 100% atheist. I was a caregiver to my three-year-old daughter battling cancer, mother to two boys under the age of 12 while being abused daily. Surely a loving God wouldn’t have allowed such things to happen. Therefore I decided there must not be a God. Or even if there was a God, He obviously wasn’t concerned about a dysfunctional person like me.

​Nearly half of all women in the United States have experienced psychological aggression (emotional abuse) by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

For me, the emotional abuse – the name calling, derogatory comments, relentless criticism, and constant blame for all the problems in my abuser’s world – started slowly in my 18-year marriage to my abuser. Initially, his bad moods and flaring temper seemed justified. I figured as long as he wasn’t hitting me I should accept his actions as his attempt at making me a better wife. We were both learning this marriage thing; chances are I was making mistakes that needed to be worked on.