There is always hope! Escaping abuse and domestic violence by author Rebecca Marie

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.