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Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

I sat in on one of our inservices today, on domestic violence. As I sat in the room I found myself with many different feeling and thoughts, and as I prepared to leave I found in myself a new feeling, that perhaps I have a duty to share my story.

The speaker talked about holding people compassionately, how to hear a person’s story, and be affected by it. How sometimes carrying knowledge of another person’s experience can be a trauma in and of itself.

Perhaps for the same reasons that I failed to take my abusive situation seriously, I have chosen to mostly keep quite about it. I have moved forward quietly, and with help. I have assimilated my experience, but I reject it as having changed the person that I am, and I wonder if in that way I may be lyting to myself.

I admire the women and men who have publicized their stories of abuse. Of having their heads beaten into the ground, of being punched, of being stabbed and shot, of having their children taken from them and being brainwashed into thinkning that nobody will believe them or care about them.

My experience was no less valid because of its lack of physical component. I still find myself wrestling with this concept on a recular basis. My experience is no less valuable as a testimony of abuse, perhaps for many people who are in abusive situation that are non- physical my story will also be valuable, and valued.

I don’t have my story ready yet. But I will, soon.