Breaking the Silence of Abuse: Lynn’s Story
When I was four years old, I fell on a broken glass bottle. I ended up with a ton of stitches on my face.
That was a long time ago, and they’ve all healed. Nobody notices the scars now except me. But there’s one little spot that still hurts like hell if it gets touched the wrong way.
There are so many wounds that we get in our lives. Some heal right away. For people who have been through abuse and trauma, you can heal in a lot of ways — but there’s always that one little spot that hurts.
I want to tell you the story of how I healed.
When I first left my husband, the police didn’t escort the man out of the home like they do these days. It was me and my three kids who had to leave. It was November, about a month before the holidays.
I took the kids to a hotel and booked us into a room. Then I thought, “What am I going to do?”
It was 1988. At the time, I didn’t even know that there was a shelter for women. Nobody talked about domestic violence back then, it was all hush-hush and whispers. But somehow I thought of the YWCA. I went to their office to see if they could give me any advice, or tell me where I should go.
I had no idea that I was about to find a network of support that would not only give me the help I needed, but offered a depth and breadth that was more profound than I ever expected.
When I arrived at the YWCA, the staff realized that I was in a crisis. A supervisor brought me into a quiet room, sat me in a comfortable chair, listened to my story, and then asked me one question: “Are you afraid?”
I had never admitted to myself before that I was afraid. I was doing, but I wasn’t feeling.
Once the kids and I were settled in the safe space, I continued with supportive counselling and got help with getting a court order. In my mind, my work was done. I thought all I had to do was show up, ask for help, and they would fix me and send me on my way. But it doesn’t work that way.
Recovering and healing from domestic violence is a long process. And just like with mental health or physical health, you don’t just get better as soon as you get access to services.
That’s the beauty of the YWCA — they offer so many layers of support and help, so that women can learn to find themselves and heal. I’ll tell you more of my story in a moment, but first, I want to thank the people who have supported this organization.
Their generosity is the reason women like me have had access to life-changing resources in our community for decades. I’m so grateful to them for helping to make the YWCA’s programs possible.
Will you support the YWCA so that more women like me can heal?
I’ll always be grateful to the staff at the YWCA for helping me get through that time in my life. But to be honest, I was really resistant to the process at first.
I hadn’t yet realized how much of a role silence played in my life, especially around violence.
Before the YWCA, I’d never told anyone what was going on in our home. I’m a very private person to begin with, but I was also raised not to talk about these things — sex, money, homosexuality, abuse… there were so many things we did not talk about, and so many things that were just silenced.
My brother once asked me if I remembered the times he and our younger sibling would come and hide in my bed when our parents were fighting. And I didn’t know what he was talking about. My own memory has silenced me, saying I don’t want to remember this.
As an adult, I didn’t share personal details with family or close friends either. They lived far away so we mainly spoke on the phone, and we only talked about the pleasantries — things that were light and airy.
It wasn’t until my children and I were at the YWCA that I started to address what had happened.
We were only at the shelter for about six weeks. But we were there over Christmas, which made it a very different experience. My son was just a toddler, but my daughters were preteens — old enough to know that things were not right. Those weeks were hectic, but it wasn’t the usual holiday season chaos. I had so much to take care of, paperwork to file, arrangements to go to family court. And all the while, the shelter counsellors were encouraging me to open up about the abuse and mistreatment.
I was willing to talk to them, but I didn’t understand what we were supposed to talk about. It felt like I was already doing what I needed to do to protect my kids. I was fixing things, wasn’t I?
With the help of YWCA staff, I began to see that recovering from abuse is not just about what happened before. It’s also about the changes that happen afterwards as you learn to adapt. You take a step, you fall, you get bruised. You learn to have the courage to keep your balance, but you also have to heal from the bruises. Because you make a lot of mistakes when you’re moving forward.
It took a long time before I left my husband for good. Like many women do, I kept going back. Finally I realized that my kids deserved better than the way he treated us — and so did I. We packed our things and he came home from work that day to an empty house. And I never looked back.
If it hadn’t been for the YWCA, I wouldn’t have had the courage to finally break free — to realize that I deserve respect and a life of dignity. And I’m sharing my story with you now, because it’s critical for everyone in our community to understand just how much we need the YWCA’s services.
Please make your holiday gift today. You’ll be helping more women break the silence of abuse and move forward on their healing journey.
With my gratitude,
Lynn M. Teatro
P.S. Did you know that the YWCA relies on donor support to fund up to 1/3 of the costs of their programs and services? With violence against women becoming even more common in Peterborough and Haliburton, it has never been more important to support our safe spaces. Thank you for your generosity!