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Without this I would not have been able to leave the abuser. I could not have been approved for an apartment with no income. We would have been forced into more long-term abuse. When we moved home we entered our own hurricane Katrina. We did not receive any news coverage for the category 5 storm approaching us. A visit from the Red Cross sure would have been welcome. We moved back home in March 2006; Olivia was just six months old. Of all of my life accomplishments, this will always be the one that I am most proud of. I moved home with a 3-½ year old and six-month-old. I did not have a job; I had no way to support my family until I went back to work in August with a September 30 paycheck. Enter Citi bank, which saved our family from direct abuse by allowing the girls and I to move home. I would have never said I was a victim


of domestic violence because I was never hit. If I had been mercifully hit on a pleasant day soon after we were married in June of 1997, my life would have taken a much more positive turn. How can one say getting physically assaulted would make life go in a positive direction? It is easy. Had I been hit, I would have known


without a shadow of a doubt that I was a victim and needed to escape, and my family would have rallied around to support me and get me reorganized in an apartment. I would not have had two children with the abuser that sentenced me into an additional 18 years of unwanted abuse. I would have walked freely into a satisfying life. I would have built a life with man who loved me; I would have had children with a man who loved me. Oh, how I long for this. How I wish that I would have been hit, escaped, and rebuilt. No, I was never hit, but I did escape.


“If you or some you love is living with emotional abuse,


please understand it is abuse.”


I am still rebuilding. I have been emotionally abused for now almost 20 years; this is where the expert title comes from unfortunately. If you or some you love is living with emotional abuse, please understand it is abuse. It is abuse that is much more damaging than physical abuse because it does not present like abuse. Look deeper and you will see all of the signs of domestic violence without the physical aspect. Please seek help, please get to higher ground before it is too late and you have two children with your abuser. 18 years is too long to live in the haunting shadow of court ordered visits with a man who should be put into jail rather than receive custody of his children. Julie Federico is a Domestic Violence expert and a children's author. You can find her at juliefederico.com


PHF Magazine April 2017 10


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