By Dr. Margaret RutherfordClinical Psychologist, Mental Health/Midlife Blogger Follow Dr. Margaret Rutherford on Twitter: www.twitter.com/doctor_margaret


How did a jingle singer become a therapist? It took years. I began the journey by volunteering at the Battered Women’s Shelter in Dallas. I was singing jazz at the Fairmont Hotel bar, where my night would end at 1:00 am. The shelter needed someone for the 2:00 - 6:00 am crisis intervention line on the Sunday morning shift. I was up. I had experienced abuse myself. So it seemed like a great fit. I began what would change my life forever. I ended not only manning the crisis line, but training other volunteers. I got to know the women.


I watched as one smart, insightful young girl went back to her husband, children in tow. He had thrown her out of a pickup truck, going full speed down the highway. I listened, while men screamed over the phone, “Quit protecting that whore of a wife and tell me where the damn shelter is. I’m coming to get her.” That wife would stay a few days, get a sweet call from the same man, and return home. I heard the shelter director talk to countless women who were going back about how to protect themselves from the worst of what could happen to them.


There were others that swore this was it.


I have now worked with many women, who have been screamed at and belittled, knocked around, pushed, shoved, slapped, even forced to have sex. They quietly go about getting things in order. They develop an exit plan. And they leave.


I have worked with men, who have had terrible words spit at them, or have endured hours of violent raging, have had meaningful things destroyed, or been lied about and depicted as violent them- selves. They can finally come to a place, after years of this abuse, of having had it. And they leave.


It seems like common sense. You’re getting hurt. You leave. But it’s not that simple.


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