Voices of DWC: One Voice At A Time

Anonymous

Reading the piece by Julie Hayes made me feel seen. It was as if someone had finally spoken the words I’ve been carrying in my chest for a lifetime.

I was six the first time it happened, twelve the second. Two different men. Two different worlds. The same crushing silence that followed. One was my brother. The other, a man from church who would later become a priest.

Both times, I told my family — the so-called persons of trust. I believed love meant protection. Instead, I was met with disbelief and that heavy, familiar quiet — the kind that says, we don’t talk about that here. I swear that growing up, my mother hated me. She always made it seem like it was my fault that things happened the way they did.

I learned quickly that truth makes people uncomfortable.

At eighteen, I fell in love and thought honesty was the right thing. I told him. He recoiled. Called me dirty. Almost left. When I began to speak about what had happened, friends disappeared — not out of cruelty, but because silence was easier than compassion. Some turned away. Others told me to move on, as though forgetting was a simple choice. My first marriage carried the same shadow — love strained under the weight of everything known but unspoken.

For years, I tried to live a normal life. I worked hard to belong. I told myself I was fine. But the rejection cut deeper than the assaults ever did. It made me believe that maybe I truly was the problem.

When I finally began to face my addiction, the questions changed everything: Why am I still loyal to the people who broke me? Why am I protecting those who never protected me?

That was the beginning of freedom — not the loud kind, but the quiet, trembling kind that comes when you decide your pain deserves to be seen.

It took me years to understand that silence doesn’t heal you. It keeps you small. That’s why spaces like this magazine matter — because they hold what the world refuses to. They remind us that we are not alone, that our pain is real, and that our voices, no matter how faint, still carry power.

As a society, we still don’t know how to face this. If we challenge the abuser, someone always asks, what if it isn’t true? If we stand with the survivor, the question becomes, but what about the abuser’s future?

We want to appear good — balanced, fair, reasonable. But in doing so, we forget what goodness truly demands: action, truth, and courage. Meanwhile, survivors spend decades trying to mend what they never broke, piecing together lives shattered by other people’s choices while the world looks away.

Reading the stories here doesn’t always bring joy. It brings recognition. Visibility. And that, somehow, feels like the beginning of healing.

To every woman who has found her voice after years of being silenced — I see you. Even if I don’t yet have the strength to stand beside you in the open, know this: your story matters. Our stories matter. This is how we reclaim what was taken from us — one voice at a time.