'There is a second closed door.' The truth about leaving an abusive relationship.

This post deals with domestic violence and might be triggering for some readers. If you or someone you know is impacted by domestic violence, call 1800RESPECTon 1800 737 732. In an emergency, call 000.

In the wake of Hannah Clarke’s murder, many of us have been left shell-shocked.

For victim-survivors of family violence there has been a palpable response that seems different to that of the other seven women already gone this year.

Shockingly, as I sit to write this the count is now at nine, and by the time this gets to you, there might be more.

Watch: The hidden numbers in women and violence. Post continues below. 

What happened to Hannah and her beautiful children was horrifically brutal, and then came the media reporting. It lumped on us bucket loads of words full of victim-blaming and the good bloke narrative. Ones we thought we’d started to leave behind.

For those of us who survived leaving a violent man, and the families left behind from previous murders, we’re struggling to digest the recent horror of it all.

A horror that echoes our own pasts. Painfully bringing back to the surface what we’ve tried to forget, but deep down we know we can’t.

I’ve had conversations with other survivors where we’ve reflected on how we got out but others didn’t. How we didn’t do anything special or different, we just got lucky.

This is where I wanted to share with you what the aftermath of leaving and surviving family violence looks like. While it’s been said that family violence happens behind closed doors, this aftermath is what I refer to as life behind the second closed door.

To start with there is the depression and anxiety that can come and go for no real reason.

Then there are panics that surface out of nowhere, or off the back of a memory that’s been triggered. These triggers can be varied. It could be something as little as a smell, a sound, or something major such as witnessing yelling or violence, or worse still, when another woman is murdered by her current or former partner.

Families remember their own loved one lost, the injustice of it all and survivors relive the horror of when we faced what could have easily been our last moment but somehow we managed to live.

These triggers can last a few hours, a few days, or it can last indefinitely with brief moments of relief. This relief can be dependent on how well we can distract ourselves by filling every waking moment with something, anything that keeps our minds and bodies occupied.

This is what people don’t see or talk about when we discuss family violence. This is far too often the aftermath that comes from living for many years in fear and isolation, or losing someone due to another’s actions.

These are the long term effects of family violence that many of us face, and rarely discuss.

I’m not surprised that as friends, society, survivors, and advocates we don’t discuss this. How do you even begin? “Hey, how was your weekend?”.

If I’m being honest the response would be: “Not great. I forgot who I was. My home and partner became strangers. I felt this intense desire to end my life to make it all stop. All because the memories became too much, the triggers were too intense”. It all feels a little to heavy to simply lump on the first person who enquires about your weekend.

This is where I’d like to lift the veil of silence surrounding the long-term impact of family violence in a safe and respectful way. To make room for opening up that second door. It’s something we currently don’t do very well.

We don’t make space for discussion around the impacts on the rest of a person’s life, or their families. This door still remains shamefully closed.

And I haven’t even really touched on the families left behind due to murder. But that’s not my experience, that’s not my story to tell.

Listen: Mia Freedman sits down with the author, Nicole Lee to discuss her experience with family violence. Post continues below.

To begin with, we know we have to be careful not to impact others with information that may be distressing for them. That’s the first hurdle, as what can or will be distressing to another is, at times, indeterminable. But remember we live with that distressing information every day.

The second is fear of being judged. While most of us are not ashamed of our trauma or the stigma from mental health, we are for the most part conscious that others may not fully understand.

This leaves us in a position where we never end up talking about it to anyone (outside of therapy). The fact that we don’t talk about it, means that it never becomes OK to talk about it.

The long term mental health impacts from the trauma of family violence continue on in silence. Just like in the past when women were shamed and remained silent in regards to violence in the home. That cycle is repeating itself. While now we can talk about the violence, stigma surrounding mental health and the shame of living with the trauma from someone else’s actions means we continue to remain silent in a different way.

We’ve opened one door, but shut another.

We all have varying degrees of mental health, good, bad, or somewhere in-between.

For some, it’s “normal” (for want of a better word, defining normal is a whole other rabbit hole for another time).

For others, it’s so debilitating that it impacts their ability to function fully within a society that is not accommodating. We have all come across the words “trauma and triggers” in relation to family violence.

We understand people are affected by them, but we don’t openly discuss the impact on us as individuals.

To be honest, I don’t really know why this is. I wish the dialogue flowed better between those of us who have been through similar experiences.

All I can do is not be silent about how it affects myself and the flow-on effect it has on those around me. To gradually open the door and shed some light on the dark and isolated world of depression and anxiety, brought about from the trauma inflicted by another.

Like many women, I lived through and made it out the other side of a violent relationship.

Although none of us would call it living. We simply got through another day. For me, I’ve been on the other side of this for 5 and a bit years now.

There’s all the overwhelming stuff at the beginning, desperately struggling with services, courts, money and debts, and worrying if you’re safe or not. Basically surviving.

You don’t feel like you will get through it. But somehow you do.

I’d like to point out those of us who made it out are no better than the ones who sadly didn’t. We’re neither braver nor especially gifted with an abundance of resilience. We only ever really had two choices in these moments, “leave or stay” and both are hard.

The choice to leave doesn’t guarantee safety as its dependent upon the choices he makes and how much protection is available.

I know from my own experience of navigating the other side of violence I questioned everything I did, in an attempt to understand every aspect of my actions and reactions. Some days I got tied up in knots trying to untangle it all.

The irrational fears and completely random triggers that turned a good day into disaster.

I had days when I hid from the world. Times when my resilience was down and I crumbled in public.

Of course, there were days when I was on top of the world. This is what most people saw and still do see, as this is what I felt I had to show.

Whether that be in person or on social media. Because of this, I’ve found it difficult to form close friends out of fear of them seeing how damaged I am.

This is where things start to get more uncomfortable. I struggle with dissociation caused by the trauma. Many other survivors also experience this.

Some days I disconnect from my thoughts, feelings, memories and sense of identity. My new partner bears witness to this.

He’s held me through some really rough moments. He’s there with me, or on the phone talking me through it when I don’t know who I am, or who he is, or even where I am.

There are other times where my mind has regressed back to a previous age. The long term effects of stress and trauma on the brain are many. They are not limited to just during the moments of the abuse and I wish more people knew this.

Many of us have a voice in this space. We advocate and speak out. We’re survivors. We’re fierce, we’re tough, we’re happy, but we’re also scared.

I’m scared. This last part is what you don’t see when you see me, or when you talk to a survivor of family violence. You don’t see what’s behind that other door. You don’t see that we’re still afraid of shadows in the dark. You don’t see the distress we feel when another woman is killed.

Or how we hold our children tighter when a father does what most of us deem as unthinkable. So again we suffer in silence, but this time we are surrounded by people. I know I can be in a room full of people and feel completely isolated.

In the wake of last week, I’ve felt this more acutely. I’ve felt the urge to shut myself off from others. It’s a silent shock, a disconnected empty response. The one you feel in the pit of your stomach. Normally I’d take a Xanax to help myself cope. But this time I did something different. I opened up about it, reaching out to other survivors, and found I was not alone. To all those people (you know who you are), thank you.

This is why I wanted to share with you a glimpse of what’s behind that second closed door of family violence and the ongoing impact.

That yes, everything gets better with time but to move from recovery into healing it would be nice if we made space for survivors to be able to open up.

Not just the space to share with you what it was like to live with violence (that’s still a vital part of the reforms in order to understand violent men and it can’t be underestimated). But to also share the ongoing impacts so we can understand them and develop collective strategies for individuals and communities to heal.

Healing, recovering, moving on, trying to forget, learning to live with the memories. Whatever you call it, however, you label it.

Everyone has a different way they deal with what’s behind that second door. As survivors, we feel under pressure to conform and fit the mould society dictates.

People expect us to get better and be ok now the violence is over. But it’s not like that, and people don’t understand this because we don’t allocate space for survivors to talk about the aftermath of family violence. We keep that second door closed.

As a community, we have collectively struggled with shock and grief over the sheer brutality of Hannah and her three young children’s senseless murder by an entitled ex-partner.

For those of us who’ve been touched by it within our own lives it’s been visceral. I’m not telling you all this so you will feel sorry, or change the way you interact with me or others. We also don’t want to be defined by it either.

I’m trying to open up the conversation on the rarely talked about after effects of family violence. Bringing all of us out of the isolation of post-family violence, and to create collective healing for all survivors of violence, including the families and communities that surround them.

It’s time to reach out to others in the hope that they too can feel less alone in a room full of people.

In the 10 years I endured another person’s choice to enact violence against me, I did it in silence.

Today, I refuse to endure the ongoing impact of that violence in silence. That old saying, “a problem shared is a problem halved”. So let’s share it, talk about it and most of all let’s find ways to support people through it better than we have so far.

If this post brings up any issues for you, or if you just feel like you need to speak to someone, please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service. It doesn’t matter where you live, they will take your call and, if need be, refer you to a service closer to home.