Inside the Mind of a Traumatized Mother
When Abuse is Normalized Beyond Recognition
I knew my marriage wasn’t healthy, but I didn’t know how much. I thought all marriages had domestic violence, and if I wanted to be married, I’d need to accept my husband’s abuse.
I thought people were okay with men occasionally losing their temper on their wives. Still, a coworker suspected me of being a domestic violence survivor, so she suggested I read “Why Does He Do That?”
It took me six months to follow her advice. I didn’t want to be “brainwashed” by some anti-men book. I didn’t want to find some excuse to turn against my husband and to want to break the sacred vow of marriage.
One night, my ex-husband turned his abuse onto our son. My son wasn’t eating his food fast enough. Who could blame him? We presented him with my cooking, and I am a terrible cook.
My husband at the time had a thing about food and control. So he set the timer for ten minutes and told our son, who was three years old then, that if he didn’t eat his food by the time the timer went off, he would get a spanking with a belt.
My son didn’t eat his food the first time the timer went off, so his dad took a belt to him.
