Title: One Month Week Day Hour Minute Second
Author: Rebecca Marie
Publisher: iUniverse
Pages: 113
Genre: Self Help/Personal Growth
Format: Ebook
Purchase at
AMAZON
Abuse knows no boundaries. It doesn’t care if you are rich or poor, old or young. It can enter your life at any time and stay as long as you let it. In One Month Week Day Hour Minute Second, author Rebecca Marie discusses that the key is to release the secrets, talk about the abuse, and take the power away from the abusers. In this memoir, she shares her personal journey surviving sexual and physical abuse, describing how abusive patterns started at a young age, how negative self-esteem continued to grow, and how it ended in her falling in love with a psychopath. One Month Week Day Hour Minute Second narrates how Marie was victimized and lived in daily fear and despair, but discusses how she chose not to remain a victim and took power over her own life. Hoping to break the cycle of domestic abuse one victim at a time, Marie tells her emotional story to call attention to the problem of domestic violence. Her story shows there is hope for others.
There is always hope! Escaping abuse
and domestic violence.
Hoping to
break the cycle of domestic abuse one victim at a time, I tell my emotional
story to call attention to the problem of domestic violence.
I am a person just
like you, as a matter of fact this could very well be your story or someone you
know. I have experienced every emotion in my life from extreme happiness to
deep sadness. I have made mistakes and I have had success. I believe that as
long as we learn from our life experiences and keep growing from them, that we
become the people we are meant to be.
There is a
myth out there surrounding “Domestic Violence” that only certain social classes
suffer from this epidemic. Abuse knows no boundaries. It doesn’t care if you
are rich or poor, old or young. It can enter your life at any time and stay as
long as you let it. In One Month Week Day
Hour Minute Second, I discuss that the key is to release the secrets, talk
about the abuse, and take the power away from the abusers. In this memoir, I
share my personal journey of surviving sexual and physical abuse. I describe
how abusive patterns started at a young age, how negative self-esteem continued
to grow, and how it ended in me falling in love with a psychopath. One Month Week Day Hour Minute Second narrates
how Rebecca was victimized and lived in daily fear and despair and discusses
how I chose not to remain a victim and took power back over my own life.
I had tried
leaving my husband before, but each time I would return back to him. I felt
like he was becoming much more violent, much more unpredictable, and to
continue on like that, I couldn’t do it anymore. I had to face the reality that
if I stayed in the situation, I was going to die.
One weekend,
my son and I went away to my mother’s house. I had no intention of leaving my husband
at that time, but after he kept calling and arguing with me, accusing me of
leaving him, I soon realized that he might be right. I got the courage to say,
“You’re right, I’ve left you.” I reached out to a distress line, which in turn
put me in contact with a shelter within my area. The turning point was
realizing I could not do this alone, and I turned it over to those social
workers and the people who deal with domestic violence on a regular basis. We
can’t do this alone. That’s a really important message in this book. Anybody
who’s survived abusive situations has a lot of strength. That’s what gets us
through. There’s a time though when you have to let somebody else have that
strength and you have to trust in the professionals. Anybody who believes no
matter how small your children are, and no matter how well you think you’re
sheltering them, every child knows what’s going on. The shelters are
instrumental in helping the children. There’s counseling available for the
children because it’s not just about you, it has an impact on everybody.
Receiving
that help from the staff at the shelter ironically was another reason I decided
to write my book. Although the counselors were amazing and the available
resources were helpful, I still needed assistance surrounding the sexual abuse
within my marriage. The counsellor said to me, “That’s one point where we don’t
have a lot of resources.” They suggested a rape crisis center. I went to the
rape crisis center and the counselor that I spoke to said, “I am so sorry, all
I have is a two page article,” and she recommended one book which wasn’t even
specific to what I had gone through. The counselor explained that it’s hard to
find assistance for someone who is or has experienced rape or sexual abuse
within their marriage because nobody wants to talk about it and there are
little to no statistics on it. It was during this time, of my recovery that I decided
to write my book. I wanted there to be another resource. Finally about two
years ago, I said to myself, “You know what, this is it. This is the time
you’re going to write this book, you’re going to help others, and become an
advocate.”
Writing this
book was very therapeutic, I was able to relive some of those unfortunate moments
by writing about them. I’ve done a lot of therapy around it, and of course when
you’re going to therapy one of the biggest things they tell you is write about
it, journal it…when I was writing the book, it brought those feelings back
again. There are some graphic details in the book, and I wanted to make sure I
did it that way. Put it out there because I’m not the only one who has gone
through this or is going to go through this. Again, it was hard to do, but what
kept me going was it was important to be 100 percent upfront. The only way that
this book would hold the power I truly wanted it to hold was to make sure I
held nothing back, and I’m proud of that.
What I want
people to take away from my story is that there is hope and resources
available. Stop feeling ashamed. The abuser wants you to be ashamed and to
isolate you. The other thing I want to make clear is if you know of someone
going through this, be there for them, don’t be judgmental.
I want
society to not turn a blind eye; if you witness abuse, or know of someone
suffering, please reach out to get the victim help.
Let me and
my book be added to your list of resources. I can speak to your organization as
a way to educate your staff, volunteers, victims, as well as fundraising events
and corporate sponsors. The issue of domestic violence is ongoing. We all need
to be advocates to stop the cycle. Please purchase my book or contact me by
going to my website: www.rebeccamariehopes.org,
Rebecca Marie enjoys being a mentor and her goal in sharing her story is to help others see there is hope.
