One of the reasons for me creating this blog was for it to represent a turning point in my life. For the past 13 years I had been a victim of emotional abuse within my marriage. In 2011 I confronted the fact that I was being abused when I saw the same tactics being carried out on our daughter. It was this last straw which was sufficiently the kick up the backside I needed to prompt me to seek help.

For the longest I didn’t think I was being abused because I wasn’t being hit. I was in denial because he wasn’t breaking things, screaming at me, swearing at me. But what he did was somewhat worse than that. He constantly put me down, he was extremely jealous, he (in the past) took away my self confidence, he intimidated me so that he could control me even when he was thousands of miles away. It was subtle, but very effective.

The effects of such abuse are subtle also – I’d suffered from anxiety and stress, and went through a bout of depression about 6 years ago. Each time I managed to separate myself from him, I would recover but I would always return because I thought, “it wasn’t domestic abuse”.

And so to now – the first thing I wanted to share is taken from the Women’s Aid website. It’s a definition of what the government classes as Domestic abuse: What is Domestic Violence? Women’s Aid

Praise God I am beginning to feel as though I’m a survivor. My daughter has gotten her sparkle back which nearly disappeared in the short time she was with her dad. This is going to be a new year and a new year for our little family.

I can’t wait!

Wow! I’m finally going down the route of having a proper blog online. This has been years coming, I value my privacy but at the same time have an ego big enough to share just about most things online. So why am I starting this blog, you may ask?… In part it will be a platform for me to post items of news that may affect others who are in a similar circumstance as my own. In another part it is an opportunity for me to learn from my permanent previous mistakes when I look back on what I’ve written. There will be a degree of formality as I share some software design tips, mixed with an air of stupidity as I share my crazy life. Here will be a public showcase of what I can achieve when I apply myself (which is not very often, but a gem when I do). I have called my blog “The Talking Pet” as a platform to maintain relative anonymity. My poor pet cat is plastered all over the internet and now his image will also be attached to a blog. But hey! At least he’ll be famous *smiles*