The Path to Surrender: A Guide to Surviving and Recovering from Domestic and Family Violence and Abuse

By Marie de Berenger

Being a victim of violence and abuse will destroy your sense of self-worth, and I am here to tell you that you do matter! Your safety matters, your happiness matters, and you do not deserve to be treated badly ever.

Take this journey with me, and remember how to tap into self-love and acceptance, which will make it impossible for you to allow others to abuse you in future. If you’ve ever been victimized, abused, disrespected, and undervalued, then this is a journey you must undertake to reach that place where you only experience love, support, and most important of all, self-love.

This is a practical guide that gives you steps and suggestions to remove yourself from harmful and abusive situations and work toward a life of peace, serenity, and loving kindness. It is suitable for all victims of abuse and also as a tool to help and guide someone you know to safety and a brighter new future.

It starts with a simple decision and has measurable steps and processes, and if you are brave enough, the reward will be a lifetime of love, respect, inner peace, and supportive and nurturing relationships. Let me show you the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Oct 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781504315197

Marie de Berenger

Marie lives in the north western mining region of Western Australia with her beloved husband, 3 children, their partners and 2 precious grandchildren. She is a writer, Interior designer, artist and student of life. Once a victim of violence, now a survivor and passionate advocate for those still suffering.

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Copyright © 2018 Marie De Berenger.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-5043-1518-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5043-1519-7 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 10/08/2018

CONTENTS

Introduction    Why?

Chapter 1   At The Begining

Chapter 2   The Bad Dream

Chapter 3   The Excuses

Chapter 4   The Cost Of Staying

Chapter 5   What Waits For You On The Other Side

Chapter 6   Are You Worth Saving?

Chapter 7   Making Plans

Chapter 8   When Kids Are Involved

Chapter 9   Your Exit Strategy

Chapter 10  Short Term Needs

Chapter 11  Working Through To Long Term Solutions

Chapter 12  What Ifs

Chapter 13  The Aftermath

Chapter 14  The Healing Begins

Chapter 15  The Healing Continues

Chapter 16  Charting Your Future

Chapter 17  The Reckoning

Chapter 18  To Forgive And Forget

Chapter 19  Sharing The Lessons Learnt

Chapter 20  Paying It Forward

Conclusion  The End Of The Journey

Notes

Afterword

T his is a heartfelt and honest account of my recovery from Domestic and Family Violence and a lifetime of dealing with bullies and abusers. How I went from being a victim to a survivor and finally came to a place of self-love and acceptance where I no longer allow others to treat me this way. I am sharing my story so that Victims can see that there is hope for a better future once they face and overcome their acceptance of violence and abuse in their lives. It is also a practical guide to leave behind violent situations and is my gift to Victims and their support teams so that they can be better prepared for a new and happier future life where fear and violence plays no part.

DEDICATION

I would like to pay tribute here to my wonderful and ever supportive husband Matt, he is and always has been my guiding light on my journey to self-discovery and love. His unwavering faith in me has given me wings and allowed me to reach heights I never believed I deserved. I love you now and forever more.

To my sister of choice, Ellie who has agreed to help me edit this work, your input is valued and appreciated as are you, always.

To my family and friends who have helped me become the person I am today. Thanks for being you and for participating in the lessons I’ve needed to learn. I love you all.

To my friends whom I value and enjoy every day. Your ears and eyes and your opinions have helped me to complete these words.

To my abusers and those who have helped me overcome my patterns of abuse, I say thanks for playing your part.

To my children who have also played their part. I love you regardless of everything. None of it matters in the end.

And last but definitely not least, I say thank you to the Universal power that rules our physical world. My faith has wavered at times but you have still rewarded me in ways I could never have imagined. Your guidance and wisdom is unbounded and I am grateful every day of my life for the grace you have given me.

INTRODUCTION

There is life after this and if you are willing to bet on yourself, then you can move on from where you are now. I know this to be true. I have made that journey and I want to show you the way. Please come with me, you are so worth saving but you must be willing to move on from where you are now

WHY?

T he title of this book is indicative of where I am in my life at this time. It points to my willingness to give up the fight, to literally stop warring with everything and everyone. I do not feel the need to struggle and fight anymore. I have finally surrendered and it is to this end that I record these words. I also recognize the need to surrender to a situation in order to assess and then overcome it and it is here that I offer to shed some light on your own surrender from whatever situation you are in that has led you here to these pages. I mean to share with you the burdens I have carried, the battles I have fought and won and those I have fought and lost. Those who have entered my life and those who have left it. The joys, the pains and the lessons learnt along the way. It is a journey of shame, vulnerability and self-loathing but also one of strength and a quiet acceptance of what is and always has been.

I have thankfully reached the end of this major life lesson but have, to date, selfishly guarded my secret shame – that I was / am a victim of Domestic Violence and abuse. I choose instead to focus on the Survivor aspect but I have never mourned the Victim that still resides inside me, until now. It is her story I will tell and I do this, not to shame her for being so loathsome that someone would abuse and violate her but so that she may find vindication and release. She deserves that at the very least.

If you are or ever have been a victim of someone else’s rage then please stay with me through this. Not because I want you to share in my pain, and so increase your own but because there is a way out for you. I know because I found it. I turn back now only to offer you my hand, to shine the light so that you can find your way out of the darkness because I know that place where you dwell. I have lived there. I know the shadow that you live under and I know how much it hurts you, I too have felt this pain in intimate detail. I know how it can destroy your soul but I also know how to fix it, to move on from this place and to build a life that you can shine in. Where the sun lights your soul and you breathe free and easy and flow with the best that life has to offer. All that and more is waiting for you, if only you will look up and see even the faintest glimmer of light and hope. You are not alone. You are not worthless. You are not meant to suffer and hurt. You do not deserve to be treated this way. Do you get it? Are you listening?

I want to reach out to you. I want to hold your hand and show you a way to the light. To show you that with a little courage and encouragement, you can be your own white knight, leading the charge to save you from all the demons that shadow your existence. It doesn’t have to be like this, there is hope. There is life after this and if you are willing to bet on yourself, then you can move on from where you are now. I know this to be true. I have made that journey and I want to show you the way. Please come with me, you are so worth saving but you must be willing to move on from where you are now, as scary as that may seem.

I have a disclaimer to add here: due to Liable Laws in Publishing I have had to rewrite parts of my story to exclude other key players in incidences that I am relaying to you. This has been difficult and so some of the accounts are now watered down and no longer have the same you as the observer quality to them. I would like to categorically state here some facts that I hope will aid in your deciphering the unfolding events without causing a libelous infringement with my Publishers.

1. I have been married twice.

2. My first marriage was extremely traumatic, full of violence, abuse, degradation and pain. It was the worst two and a half years of my life and still affects me thirty years later.

3. In my second marriage of over twenty-eight years I have not had one single incident of violence, abuse, trauma or emotionally scarring pain. We have had a total of three arguments in our life together and disagreements have been solved by talking them out.

4. I have two children from my first marriage and two children from my second. My second child was six months old when I left the first marriage.

With this information, I am hoping you will be able to fill in the deliberate blanks in the accounts to follow.

Chapter

ONE

I have a deep and enduring abhorrence of violence in all its forms. I cannot fathom how someone can willingly take a life or harm another so deeply, so you can imagine my shock, years later, when I became ensnared in a web of violence that still affects me thirty plus years later.

AT THE BEGINING

W hen I was a teenager there was a song that had a profound influence on me called The Power and the Passion by Australian band Midnight Oil. In this song the words it’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees spoke to me of a passionate heart dedicated to courageous acts of heroism that could even save the world. I was a passionate and emotional child with deep empathy for any who fell victim to harm or death caused by others. I felt strongly, the futility of war and the destruction of our environment and spent my hard-earned pocket money on causes like the Save the Franklin River campaign in 1970s Tasmania, the save the whales campaign against commercial whaling in Western Australia, the early Greenpeace war on Canadian fur sealers who clubbed baby seals to death and saving the old growth forests in Tasmania and The Amazon. I ached for the African children starving in Botswana and the massacre of 300,000+ Hutu people in Burundi in 1972. By the late 1970’s when the world was just coming to understand the extent of the Khmer Rouge’s systematic slaughter of their own Khmer people, I had started to become overloaded with grief for how cruel we humans could be to one another. I tuned out (because it was overwhelming) the Jewish holocaust of WWII in high school and the black and white image of the young girl in Vietnam screaming, arms outstretched as she ran from the American bombs with her clothes burnt off, just haunted me (google it and you’ll see what I mean if you’ve not seen it). I hav e a deep and enduring abhorrence of violence in all its forms. I cannot fathom how someone can willingly take a life or harm another so deeply, so you can imagine my shock years later, when I became ensnared in a web of violence that still affects me thirty plus years later. Not so much for what I went through but for the poor young woman who struggled to understand such loathing from someone who instead professed love and it shocked me to my core and I basically had no tools to deal with it. I am still amazed at my naiveté and how I was not able to read someone’s personality and penchant for control and violence. At eighteen I met a man who would rock my world forever and not in a good way and I married him at twenty. I was old enough to hope for the best but too young to see what was coming.

In hindsight, thinking about my childhood, my home life was loving and the four most important adults to me did their best to give me the guidance I needed but they were damaged in their own way and this led me to believe that I somehow deserved the occasional ill will or treatment by others and more importantly, that I did not deserve to be cherished and valued as I should have been. I also never learnt the tools needed to protect myself from those in my future who would abuse, degrade and victimize me. My beloved Mother, who passed when I was only twenty-eight, was very conscious of public appearance and believed expressing anger was unladylike. She was such a beautiful lady who always wore at least foundation make up, dressed appropriately and always had her hair done. After her death, I learned she had suffered her own abuse in younger years and perhaps this was why she was not able to pass on the skills all children must learn to deal with bullying and violence that is directed at them. Sadly, I did not learn them myself until it was too late to teach my own children.

Religion played a very big role in our household growing up, with one parent being devoutly religious and the other not at all. This was the basis of our family trauma and led to a long and bitter tug of war and the opposing views lead to loud and nasty fights, separate lives and a huge divide when it came to