Voice & Choice

He hit me for the very last time

He hit me for the very last time.

I was born into an extremist evangelical cult in Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada. As a woman, I was seen and unheard for thirty years, uneducated, unaware of body autonomy and kept within the confines of abuse.

Raised to reach the isolated destination of marriage and motherhood, I walked that cult chapel aisle and vowed my human rights over to a cult boy at the tender age of nineteen.

With doomsday looming, and after dedicating my life to living a good, godly, Christian one, I would not be ready for the rapture if I didn't grow, birth and raise at least one child. Three months after pronouncing, “I do,” I broke down in a mental breakdown, begging and pleading with my husband to impregnate me.

“What if I can’t get pregnant? Perhaps I have fertility issues? Maybe it will take us months, even years, to fall pregnant.” - I cried.

“We’ve been married for three months, Bre.” - he quipped sharply.

“The rapture could happen tomorrow, though.” - I screamed.

On that first week of August 2011, the pregnant piss stick blinked ‘Pregnant 2-3 weeks.’ That “Pregnant 2-3 weeks” will turn thirteen years old on April 14th, 2025.

In the following seven years, I gave up my body to grow, give birth, and raise four more babies

My ex-husband was void of any joyous response to my every positive pregnant piss stick. Instead, they planted seeds of resentment and anger within him toward me. As he seethed, he uttered, “Those things lie,” as he read the urine-stained pregnancy test answer.

It comes as no surprise that the first time he would physically assault me would occur after announcing my third pregnancy, four months post-birth of our second son—those seeds of resentment and anger in bloom.

The escalation of his assaults toward me coincided with the awakening of my “seen and unheard” voice and the understanding of having a choice as a woman.

August 5th, 2021, seven years after his first physical offence upon me, I endured ten hours of heightened physical and emotional abuse by his hands in front of our children.

He hit me for the very last time.

Trembling shit-less and with self-mumbled whispers full of fear, I drove myself to the local RCMP office and found the strength, for the very first time, to choose myself first as I charged my husband with domestic assault.

Silence and obligation keep humans, and speaking statistically, more women in places and relationships of abuse. I was one of those women.

Since uttering those whispers of fear to the RCMP officer, I have been a single mother with sole custody of five children. My life did a 180. Raised to be a wife, controlled and submissive to the man of the house, I was now, for the first time in twenty-nine years, standing isolated from every indoctrinated belief and forging new with five children in tow.

Had I not whispered in fear to the RCMP, I know for a fact that my children and I would not be alive to see today. Had I not whispered in fear, I would not be an Educational Assistant Intern for Edmonton Public Schools. Had I not spoken in fear, I wouldn't be the social media manager for the Federal Liberal Candidate in my riding. I wouldn’t be a successful blogger without whispering in fear. Had I not whispered in fear, I would not be in a supportive, honest, gentle, and love-filled relationship today. Had I not whispered in fear, I wouldn't be modelling body autonomy, consent, choice and voice to my children and other victims and survivors of religious abuse and domestic violence.

Voice and choice save lives.

Using yours could, too, just like mine saved my children and me.