Thank you for courageously sharing your agonizing, and freeing, experience. So many (mostly) women are trapped in this kind of relationship. Reading your thoughtful and painful reflections will help many.

The other day I interviewed a woman for a film project I'm working on--a look at families doubled up or self-paying in motels because they lost housing and have no options. They're homeless, but invisibly so, and are outside the qualifications for housing assistance. We are trying to change that.

The woman I interviewed has 5 children, age 10-infant, by the same father. She expressed, multiple times, that she wants to leave him. But she can't. Among the barriers--she can't afford to support her children on her very minimal income.

We've made this hard, impossibly so, for so many women who struggle in abusive relationships.

In my new book, Dismazed and Driven - My Look at Family Homelessness in America, I share several of these stories. We need to expand our perspective on what families are going through when things go bad in relationships. The mothers and children should not be made to suffer because of a lack of resources. No one wins.

https://www.hearus.us/understand-homelessness/books/dismazed-driven.html