Domestic Violence, Silence, and Healing.
There is a kind of pain that doesn’t always show on the outside. It hides behind smiles, gets covered up with excuses, and lives in the silence of women who have learned how to survive without letting the world know what they’re going through.
Domestic violence is more than a black eye or a bruised body. Sometimes, it’s the constant criticism that makes a woman question her worth. It’s the control disguised as love. It’s the isolation that slowly separates her from the people who care about her and love her. It’s being told that nobody else will love her, that she’s the problem, or that everything would be fine if she would just do things differently, follow his lead and do as he say.
And sometimes, it’s a woman lying beside someone who claims to love her while he is silently destroying the very core of her.
But a lot of people don’t want to talk about that kind of pain for fear of judgement and shame.
Keep in mind that domestic violence doesn’t always begin with a raised hand. Sometimes, it begins with manipulation. It begins with jealousy that gets mistaken for affection, possessiveness that gets called protection, and control that gets dressed up as commitment. Little by little, a woman may begin to lose pieces of herself trying to hold together a relationship that is breaking her down, diminishing her spirit, decreasing her self-esteem and self-worth.
And before she realizes how far things have gone, she may no longer recognize the woman looking back at her in the mirror.
See sometimes women carry domestic violence silently because if you haven’t been there, you can’t understand why she stays and why it is hard to walk away.
I couldn’t understand why my mother stayed, not at first but I understand now.
One of the hardest things about domestic violence is understanding why someone stays.
From the outside, people may ask, “Why doesn’t she just leave?”
But from the inside, the situation may look completely different.
There may be children involved, financial struggles, fear of retaliation, emotional attachment, or the hope that the person she fell in love with will return to being who they were in the beginning. She may have been threatened. She may have nowhere safe to go. She may have spent so much time being told she is worthless that she has started believing it herself.
And sometimes, she is simply trying to survive another day.
Maybe she has been beaten down so much that she doesn’t have the strength to “just leave.”
We have to stop making assumptions about women’s situations when we haven’t lived their experiences. Leaving an abusive relationship is not always simple, and it can be dangerous. A woman may need time, resources, support, and a safety plan before she can make that move.
What she doesn’t need is another person making her feel ashamed. She is already holding herself to that shame, mad and hurt that she is where she’s at.
She needs someone willing to listen without judgment. Someone who understands that her circumstances do not define her worth. Someone who can remind her that being abused is not her fault.
She needs to know that she is still a woman worthy of love, respect, safety, and peace.
Someone that’s going to check on her when she goes quiet.
That’s going to listen although it is difficult to hear. Not demand perfection but honesty, vulnerability, and pain.
Although she deserves grace and compassion, she also needs someone that’s going to hold her accountable to do what’s best for her and let her know that she can’t heal from what she is hiding.
My mother always said it’s not what you do but how you do it.
Domestic violence is a topic that needs to continue to be addressed and we have to be willing to examine what we have been taught about love, relationships, boundaries, and self-worth. We have to ask ourselves whether we are choosing relationships that nurture us or relationships that require us to abandon ourselves to keep someone else happy.
And we have to give ourselves permission to learn something different.
Our past may explain some of the things we accept, but it does not mean we have to accept them forever.
We can learn that love does not require fear.
We can learn that disagreement does not justify intimidation.
We can learn that accountability is not abuse, but humiliation and control are not healthy ways to resolve conflict.
We can learn that setting boundaries does not make us selfish.
And we can learn that walking away from harm does not mean we failed at love.
Sometimes, breaking a cycle begins with one woman deciding that what she experienced will not be what she continues to normalize.
And sometimes, it begins when another woman reminds her that she deserves the opportunity to choose differently.
There is something we need to understand about the way we celebrate strong women.
We praise women for surviving. We admire their ability to keep going. We applaud them for raising children, working, supporting families, and showing up for everyone else despite what they are carrying.
But how often do we ask the strong woman if she is okay?
How often do we give her permission to fall apart without making her feel weak?
How often do we remind her that she deserves support, too?
A woman should not have to reach her breaking point before someone recognizes that she needs help.
Strength does not mean tolerating mistreatment. It does not mean staying quiet to protect someone else’s reputation. It does not mean carrying every burden alone because people expect you to be the one who always figures things out.
Sometimes, strength means admitting that something is wrong.
Sometimes, it means asking for help.
Sometimes, it means telling the truth about what is happening behind closed doors.
And sometimes, strength means allowing other women to stand beside you while you figure out your next step.
We must create spaces where women do not have to perform strength to receive love.
Spaces where tears are welcome. Where difficult conversations can happen. Where women can speak without fear of being blamed for what someone else chose to do to them.
Spaces where healing is not a competition and nobody has to pretend that they have it all together.
That is the kind of sisterhood we should be building.
Before you judge her, remember this.
You may know a woman who keeps going back.
You may know a woman who defends the person hurting her.
You may know a woman who suddenly stopped attending family gatherings, answering calls, or spending time with friends.
You may know a woman who seems different from the person she used to be.
Before you judge her, consider what you may not know.
She may be afraid. She may be emotionally exhausted. She may be trying to protect her children. She may be struggling to understand how the person who once made her feel loved has become the person she fears.
Before you judge her know that you may not know what she is holding.
Ask yourself this. Are you willing to help her carry it.
That’s what real sisters do. Not talk about you behind your back, not walk over you while you down, but offer a hand to lift you up, not watch you cry but wipe your tears away, not tell you to leave but come help you pack your bags. I don’t know about you but that’s what I’m doing for mine.
I’m offering support not judgement!
And we have to be mindful that healing takes time.
She deserves patience during that process, not pressure to recover on someone else’s timeline.
Domestic violence is not just an individual issue. It is something our families, communities, and support systems must be willing to confront.
We cannot end the silence by telling women to speak up while giving them no safe place to speak.
We cannot tell women to leave abusive relationships without helping them access the resources and support they may need.
And we cannot claim to support survivors while questioning their choices, minimizing their experiences, or measuring their worth by how quickly they recover.
We have to do better.
We have to listen more carefully, educate ourselves, challenge harmful beliefs about relationships, and make room for conversations that are honest
At Hear Her Voice, the importance of community, connection, and healing is at the heart of the work we do. Creating space for women to be heard is about more than gathering people together. It is about recognizing the humanity in one another and understanding that every woman deserves to be treated with dignity.
Because when one woman finds her voice, she may discover the courage to speak about something she once carried in silence.
When another woman listens without judgment, that voice has room to grow.
And when a community chooses compassion over shame, we begin creating the conditions for real change.
Sisterhood is not about promising that we will never struggle. It is about making sure that when we do, we don’t have to face our struggles feeling invisible and alone.
Let’s be the women who stand beside one another without judgment.
Let’s create safe spaces where truth can be spoken, boundaries are respected, and healing is welcomed.
Because no woman should have to lose herself to keep a relationship, and no woman should have to walk through the pain of domestic violence believing she has nobody in her corner.
If you are in a domestic violence relationship Hear Her Voice is here for you. And here are some other resources.
National Domestic Violence Hotline: Call 800-799-SAFE (7233), text START to 88788, or visit The National Domestic Violence Hotline. If someone is in immediate danger, they should call 911when it is safe to do so.