Our actions and inactions as women can often be traced to our childhoods and the occurrences in them.
From having a poor sense of boundaries due to being beaten for saying no, to being able to speak your mind courtesy of parents who encouraged you to ask questions, to be a self aware woman means to grapple with questions from your childhood.
That said, being self aware also means coming to terms with the effects of childhood issues like domestic violence and how they show up in adulthood.
In our latest piece, Urban Woman Magazine asked some women to share how growing up and witnessing domestic violence affects them as adult women.
Read their responses below.
AE
My dad is an abuser. My earliest memory of abuse was when I fainted from seeing the amount of blood from my mother’s eye that my father stabbed. I was 3. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve heard the story multiple times so it formed a memory but somehow, I remember.
I had just returned from school and my parents had a huge fight. In that fight, my mum left with a battered eye brow(thank God she didn’t get blind) and an injured left leg from a hot pressing iron he used on her. She still has these scars 23 years later. That was the last day they lived in the same house. She ran away with us.
When I turned 9, he got married and my sister and I lived with him and his wife. We watched the cycle continue. My stepmother will hide scars and lie that she fell on other days just so she could avoid being questioned but everyone in the compound knew the truth.
Sometimes, when we could, we hid her children from watching her get beaten so it won’t scar them.
This violence extended to us (my sister and I) in ways like flogging and intense punishment but one day, he BEAT my sister. I mean, he threw literal punches at her. She was 18 in 100level and he heard she moved out of the school hostel to become a prostitute. The last bit was a lie but he didn’t care. He beat her so badly that she passed out. Guess what? He used a cane and continued beating her bloody, unconscious body on the floor. See ehn! He later called my mum that night to come and “fix her daughter’s teeth.” How cruel!
Well, this is a snippet of everything that happened in that house and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.
Now, I don’t entertain ANY form of violence from men. If you shout at me, I raise an alarm. Men do not “jokingly” hit me, it’s my boundary. And I always make it clear to my partners that even if you slap/hit me once, I’ll leave that relationship or marriage. I don’t care how long, because I’ve seen what the long-term effect can be.
I’m a firm advocate for female empowerment because if my mum didn’t have a job at the time, she wouldn’t have been able to leave him and she’d have broken down from his intimidation and oppression even after the separation.
I don’t have tips for healing because I still have my scars and I never forget. But if I were to say something, I’ll say this, I know it’s not easy but LEAVE. It gets worse.
IN
My earliest memory was when I was 4 years. My dad was furious over whatever it was and he pounced on my mum. I tried to split them up and broke the plate on his head and he flung me away like a piece of paper and I chipped my tooth.
Well one day when I was 5/6 I was in school when my uncle came to pick me up. Getting home, my mum had packed all our things and was ready to leave and boy did she leave the house EMPTY. Took all the property she bought with her money including the bed and dipped.
He found us eventually and after a series of family meetings my mum stood her ground on leaving. Till date he never signed the divorce papers. Her brothers had no choice but to support her. Lived with my uncle for 8 years and now we live in our own house.
How has this affected me and my relationship with men? I don’t like them generally but I’m attracted to them too😭. Which is exhausting but anyways, I don’t take rubbish, I detest DV and don’t even want to hear it. It brings out my murder instincts.
I think the key thing for me was having a mother who left and never went back. She says this thing “2nd missionary journey is always dangerous. You might not survive it”. It teaches you that you can do whatever you want and to always choose you and love yourself. A lot of things she has accomplished wouldn’t have been possible if my dad was in the picture. Happy he is not in my life. Good riddance.
Angel Nduka-Nwosu is a writer, journalist and editor. She moonlights occasionally as a podcaster on As Angel Was Sayin’. Catch her on all socials @asangelwassayin.