I was only 17.
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. 💜
October 2, 2007, was the day I became his girlfriend. I was just 13 years old.
January 6, 2012, was the day he walked away. I was 17, and thank God he did, because I wasn’t strong enough to leave on my own.
The charm, the sweet words, the moments that made you believe you were the luckiest girl alive. But behind that smile was a teenage girl slowly losing herself in a relationship she didn’t even realize was abusive.
When it was good, it was so good. But when it was bad, it was beyond bad.
At 13, I thought I knew what love was. By 14, I was learning what fear, manipulation, jealousy, and control felt like. But nobody had taught me how to recognize those things as abuse. I thought because I loved him, because I had given him so much of myself, I had to stay.
And that’s exactly why I’ve started a petition calling for age-appropriate education about healthy relationships, boundaries, consent, emotional abuse, and teen dating violence in our schools.
We teach teenagers about the physical consequences of relationships, but we need to do a better job teaching them about the emotional consequences, too.
We need to teach our daughters that jealousy isn’t proof of love, control isn’t protection, and giving someone your heart or your body doesn’t mean you owe them the rest of your life.
We need to teach our sons that love doesn’t involve intimidation, manipulation, humiliation, or making someone afraid to walk away.
I can’t change what happened to that 13-year-old girl in 2007. I can’t erase the years of trauma or the healing it took to become the woman I am today.
But maybe I can help keep another little girl from becoming her.
This petition isn’t about revenge or publicly tearing someone down. It’s about prevention. It’s about giving teenagers the knowledge I wish someone had given me before I ever entered that relationship.
January 6, 2012, I thought my world was ending.
In reality, God was giving me my life back.
Please take a moment to sign and share my petition. Even if you’ve never experienced domestic violence yourself, you probably know someone who has.
Let’s stop waiting until our children become survivors to teach them what abuse looks like. 💜