By Sammie Rose
After a brief hiatus from Break the Silence Against Domestic Violence, I stepped back to prioritize, recollect, and regroup the quiet but essential work of healing.
Caring for my children, tending to my inner world, and making space to process my current day reality.
As I grappled with life and dealt with the constant tale of being told to be strong in a world that stresses strength and values “strong-willed” women like me; I fell into the abyss of deep thought and reflection.
I Allow Epiphanies to Come
The epiphany that arose through the fire called out to be heard.
There is a hidden cost of peace.
An expense so incredibly heavy it often goes unnoticed. Paid in silent sacrifices, unseen struggles, and the relentless burden of carrying what others refuse to acknowledge or even comprehend. To move forward on our healing journey, I am compelled to break through the imposed silence. To give voice to the parts of my story erased or ignored within the margins of performative acting and dialogues masked as truths.
Today I reclaim my story and refuse to be confined by polite boundaries or overlooked in whispered conversations laced with trivialization, and attempts to diminish our experience.
I Reclaim My Story
As a mother who wholly believes in mindfulness and focuses on the present; I’ve realized that sometimes I visit the past. That I ruminate on certain life experiences within topics that represent domestic violence during a time that seems ions away.
I am expected to keep my peace, stay silent or be quiet, bite my tongue. To appease the courts and discredit myself and my children by being an actress in a false narrative of civility.
The unspoken truth is this: there is a cost of ending a relationship with your abuser.
The cost is even higher with children. There are less visible threads of abuse that continue to shape the lives of survivors like me. But yet, this chapter of my story remains on the outskirts of silence, or put into a box. Far away from mainstream conversations.
I Am Grounded
As a mother grounded in mindfulness and committed to living in the present, I periodically visit parts of my life experiences. Dwelling on phases that once defined textbook versions of domestic violence that ultimately shifted into chapters not often read.
Today, I am expected to maintain a facade of peace: to stay silent, to bite my tongue, to perform civility in courtrooms that too often discredit both me and our children.
This performance is demanded as part of a false narrative designed to uphold appearances rather than truth.
Yet the unspoken reality remains: ending a relationship with an abuser carries a profound cost. One exponentially heavier when children are involved.
I Am Fighting Still
There exist subtle, less visible threads of abuse that continue to intertwine through the lives of survivors like myself.
And still, these stories linger on the periphery. Confined to the tapestry of silence, kept away from the broader conversations that demand urgent attention.
No one talks about how power and control evolve after the relationship ends. How abuse doesn’t always stop when the bruises fade, or when the court orders are put into place.
When children are involved, obligatory contact continues through shared custody cases like mine. And with that, the abuse continues. Emotional, psychological, and mental manipulation become embedded in the daily exchanges, the scheduling conflicts, the subtle digs masked as co- parenting.
Coercion hides behind custody.
Silence becomes a currency.
These very tactics have lost their grip years ago, but what remains a constant is: financial control and abuse. It has become the current stronghold.
I Am a Mother First
I am first and foremost a mother. Our children will always come first.
I take charge and absorb the cost for their stability, their peace, their safety.
It is a devastating reality: that in order to protect them, I must tolerate the economic strain my abuser callously and purposely imposes onto me.
Alone.
I Am Taking Charge
I pay the full price—figuratively and literally. The refusal to parent fully, for my abuser’s orchestrated illusions to create a scene of no dissonance while I carry the real weight – that is an injustice to everyone involved!
This is the part no one sees.
Taking charge of my voice, I decided to finally break my silence once again. This time in a different realm, and shamelessly at that.
I am a woman of solutions.
But financial control is its own kind of cage, an invisible threshold that tightens with every obligation I’m forced to meet alone. If I waver, even slightly, if I step away from the crushing weight of what is supposed to be shared financial responsibilities, it is our children who will go without.
And that is not how I choose to take a stand.
It is deeply unfair to bear the full cost of parenting, while someone else retains the power to withhold. To evade, and perform just enough to avoid accountability.
I will no longer be silent about the price of this so-called peace. Because is it truly peace if I’m quietly drowning in debt?
I Am No Longer Silent
If I’m staying up at night trying to figure out how to stretch one week’s groceries into two? If the only thing that keeps me grounded is a mental spreadsheet of survival, recalculated daily?
This is survival masquerading as co-parenting. I’m done pretending it’s enough. In order to shift the narrative, I am choosing to open the door. Wide, unapologetically—for change, for truth, and yes, even for backlash.
Because silence has never served me, and civility should never come at the cost of invisibility. I will no longer reduce our story to make others comfortable. I speak so that survivors and children like ours are not only heard; but truly seen, valued, and protected.
Change does not come through whispers. It begins when we stop asking for permission to be honest.
This is one of the most difficult, challenging and extremely painful dynamics in post- separation abuse, when shared custody allows the abusive parent to weaponize neglect, while the protective parent is forced to overcompensate for the sake of the children.
I Am the Solution
The solution?
If I don’t carry my children, they will pay the price and that is a non-negotiable. The real solution is demanding systems to recognize this form of abuse and changing how a negligent parent hides behind shared custody.
Beginning today, I stand for parents, for survivors, for families and their children like ours. As quoted,
“Financial abuse doesn’t always end with the relationship. It often mutates—disguised in custody agreements, hidden in legal gray areas, and perpetuated through the illusion of shared responsibility. It is control without contact, punishment masked as parenting.
To change this, we must name it, legislate it, and center survivor voices in family court reform. Accountability must not end at separation, because abuse doesn’t either.”
Let’s be the change!
Check These Resources:
- Therapeutic Interventions for Healing From Domestic Violence
- The Hidden Impact of Teen Dating Violence
- Find Support with BTSADV
Support Line
Other Resources and Information:
