Healing Your Life: Recovery from Domestic Abuse: Healing from Abuse, #1

By Candace Hennekens

This book has been in print since 1991 and has sold continually in every state of the U.S. and internationally. Includes the author's Bill of Rights for Survivors of Domestic Abuse. The book helps women move beyond being victims to triumphant survivors. Chapters cover what is abuse, the author's story, shame and how it enables abuse, how feelings can be used as guides, how to affirm yourself, how to plan a career, how to set goals, and how to build healthy relationships. The book is written in an easy to understand style and is down to earth and accessible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Candace Hennekens
• Release date: Mar 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9781466127791

Candace Hennekens

Candace Hennekens was born in Wisconsin, U.S.A. and always knew she wanted to be a writer. She earned her B.S. degree in Journalism from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, U.S.A., and went on to a career in employee communications, public relations, training and development and human resources management. She has continued her writing throughout her life, working with the personal essay, poetry, and fiction genres. She has authored three self-help books for women. Healing Your Life: Recovery from Domestic Abuse has been sold in every state of the United States, and internationally. Twenty-one years later the book continues to help women who have been abused heal and lead happy, satisfying lives. Her second book dealing with career planning is available in print only. Her third self-help book, There's a Rainbow in my Glass of Lemonade, is available in print or as a bonus book to Healing Your Life. Ms. Hennekens' current writing focus is poetry. In addition to writing, Ms. Hennekens is an accomplished painter.

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What readers have said about Healing Your Life: Recovery from Domestic Abuse

I have read several books on the subject and found yours to be most enlightening.

This is such a wonderful book, it’s helped me live again.

Your book is the best. Thank you.

... a gold mine of valuable information and inspiration.

Healing Your Life:

Recovery from Domestic Abuse

by Candace A. Hennekens

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.  Published by

ProWriting Services and Press, E14585 Lincoln Drive, Fall Creek, WI 54742,

Smashwords Edition

First printing, soft cover.

Second printing, soft cover, 1994.

Combined with Rainbow, Electronic version, 2010.

Copyright 2012, Candace A. Hennekens

Dedicated to all the women who have lost

their lives trying to leave

Table of Contents

Bill of Rights for Survivors of Domestic Abuse

Chapter 1: Purpose of This Book

Chapter 2: My Story

Chapter 3: Shame: The Enabler for Abuse

Chapter 4: Feelings Are Guide Posts

Chapter 5: Affirm Yourself

Chapter 6: Career Planning Gives You Control

Chapter 7: Goals: A Powerful Tool

Chapter 8: You Can Build Healthy Relationships

Chapter 9: You Are On the Path

Biography

About the Author

BILL OF RIGHTS

FOR

SURVIVORS OF DOMESTIC ABUSE

1. I will not be blamed or shamed for having been a victim.

2. I have the right to be happy.

3. I have the right to be free of all forms of abuse: physical, mental, emotional, psychological, or sexual.

4. I have the right to feel my feelings.

5. I have the right to take care of myself.

6. I have the right to have my needs met .

7. I have the right to make choices.

8. I have the right to be loved in a healthy way.

9. I have the right to live without fear.

10. I have the right to express myself.

11. I have the right to forgive myself for things in the past.

12. I have the right to make a better life for myself.

CHAPTER ONE: PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK

I have written this book for women who have left abusive relationships. Drawing on my life’s experiences, my reading of shame-based therapy books, drug and alcohol recovery literature, and my experience as a human resources practitioner, I have written a book for the woman who wants a better life. Although men are abused as well, statistics show that far fewer men are victims than women. I therefore have chosen to write as if I were speaking to women. I welcome male readers and hope the style does not distract from the content of the message.

If you are abused now, or are recovering from an abusive relationship, you can break the pattern. This book is about the steps that I took to do just that. I believe learning about them will help you do the same. I believe it is possible to change, to break former dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors and move on and become happy, whole human beings who reach their potential.

When I was twenty-two years old, I was like any other young woman -- full of life, expectations, and excitement for life. I wrote an entry in my journal:

My life is a kaleidoscope. Each day the scene is changed into another variety of an infinite set of events. Of course, I do not always think like this. I become disgusted and frustrated, frightened and yearn to run. But as I learned long ago, life will not hand us perfection. It is up to each person to make out of the best of life, the life of the best. I’m doing it in a fumbling, mistake-ridden way. I do not always do what I should, but I do my best, and always optimistically hope I may someday.

I am forty-two years old. I have been married twice, and both marriages were abusive relationships. The first marriage contained physical abuse; the second contained emotional abuse. I learned something from my first marriage and knew that physical violence was wrong, but I did not know enough to make the connection that physical abuse is only one form. In fact, in an abusive relationship, it is likely that several forms of abuse exist.

Abuse Defined

I know now that abuse comes in many different forms. There is emotional abuse, putting the woman down or making her feel bad about herself, name-calling, telling her she’s crazy, and playing mind games with her.

Physical abuse can be displayed as pushing, shoving, hitting, slapping, choking, pulling hair, punching, kicking, grabbing, twisting her arms, tripping, biting, beating, throwing the woman down, and using a weapon against her. In some cases, physical abuse goes as far as serious injury or death.

There is sexual abuse, making her do sexual things against her will, and physically attacking the sexual parts of her body and treating her like a sex object.

Other techniques used to control the woman include isolating her so that the man controls what she does, who she sees and talks to and where she goes. Intimidation is also a power tool, putting her into a state of fear by using looks, actions, gestures, loud voices, smashing things, and destroying property.

Economic abuse is another control tool, including trying to prevent the woman from getting or keeping a job, making her ask for money, giving her an allowance, or taking money away from the woman.

Men also use the power of threats, making and/or carrying out threats to do something to hurt her emotionally. The man may threaten to take the children away, commit suicide, or report her to authorities.

Men can also use male privilege, treating her like a servant, making all the big decisions and acting like the master of the castle. This is also a form of abuse.

All these forms of abuse involve the man maintaining power and control over the woman. The continuum of abuse varies with each situation; the abuse might include elements of all the types, or just one type. The severity might vary. The bottom line is that none of these abusive behaviors is acceptable. Mild or severe, you have the right to better treatment.

After my second divorce, I was determined to break the pattern that had created so much pain for me. I began counselling, and over a period of years worked on developing a love for myself to attain higher self-esteem. It was only when I had made significant progress in this area that I realized why it had been so hard to break the pattern, the cycle of abuse. I had married my first husband at the age of 22. When we divorced, I was 31. Those nine years accounted for about one-third of my life. Starting a second marriage almost immediately after my first marriage and staying in that marriage six years accounted for another fifteen percent. By the time I had left that marriage, forty percent of my life and eighty percent of my adult life had been spent interacting with a husband in a dysfunctional way. No wonder the years I have spent free of dysfunctional intimate relationships seem like baby steps. They account for only ten percent of my life. To be free of those patterns has taken tremendous work and conscious effort.

I have learned a lot about self-esteem: what it is, how it feels, how to nurture it in yourself and others. Those changes and my learning are what I have to share with you. The journey I have taken over these twenty years has been painful, and hard. But I have learned and my life is at last a happy fulfilling life. You too have it in your power to shape the life you want. This book is for you to gain some ideas on how to do that. It is not the only way, but it is the way I did it.

This saying appeared in a church newsletter. I think it is appropriate to you: There are no paths in life except the ones we make by walking on them.

CHAPTER TWO: MY STORY

I will begin my story with Mother’s Day, 1978. It was on that day that my husband chose to batter and beat me viciously. He didn’t give me a Mother’s Day present. I cried to him that he should have remembered. He vented his anger by attacking me after I had gone to bed. He came into the bedroom where I was sleeping, and woke me by sitting on my chest, putting his hands around my throat, and squeezing while repeating over and over, I could kill you. I could kill you.

The fear I felt then is still real to me. I knew he could kill me at that moment, and thought he would. I fought