The Mom Who Never Ran Out of Ketchup

---

https://youtu.be/6O01EOWEGG4

---

Most of my posts are system analysis and navigation driven. I, like many survivors of all types of violence, don't like to talk about the what's and the how's of why things happened the way that they did.

Whether because it is a story we have told so many times that we ourselves are tired of hearing it, we've been told that what happened wasn't "bad" enough to warrant a reaction, or we've been conditioned to believe that if we speak out, bad things will keep happening to us.

I can barely remember the better part of a decade prior to all this happening anymore. There's a dark joke for my fellow survivors.

Spending that many years surviving domestic violence doesn't haunt my dreams anymore. That garbage is under the bridge now, or more likely stuck in a box somewhere because there are bigger scars to worry about.

I had a pause here for a second, because I realized that I was resorting to my survivor's toolkit and using dark humour to mask the root of the wound.

I will say this out loud. In writing, obviously, because it is too painful to voice.

Years of humiliation, fear, instability, confusion, being made to question myself, feeling unsafe, feeling watched, feeling powerless, feeling isolated, and trying to hold myself together while pretending everything was okay.

That is not what hurts the most.

What hurts the most is realizing how many times things happened in front of other people and I would be silently hoping someone would step in, protect me, believe me, or simply ask if I was okay.

It's asking for help from one level, then a second level, then a third. Then pivoting to another separate level, then a second and then a third and fourth. Then pivoting again and trying another separate level.

I'll save you the repetition.

The point is that I have told my story — usually in tears and with mediocre hope that someone this time will not say, "sorry, I can't help you."

Nothing humiliates me anymore. That's why I'm here.

I don't care that I don't have the educational background, or the connections. I am that girl that if you say "no, you can't," I will say "watch me."

It's not even a form of disrespect, to be honest. Quite the contrary.

When you've built a shell around your inner child to protect her, you've learned to develop your own set of values and morals. They are quite childlike in nature — in that right and wrong feels black and white.

If something is wrong, 7-year-old us says, "this is wrong and I need to tell someone to make it right."

We aren't defiant. We are merely people who cannot compute that black and white, in the real world, is often blurred by systems, fear, power, and survival. And so, if something is wrong, to those who have experienced the damage "wrong" causes, the only way to move forward is to try to make it right.

If you are a survivor, I suspect this will sound familiar.

I had something to say. But I couldn't say it without offering a way to fix it.

So, I built a framework on how to better protect people from harm while processes unfold. Something I really needed a long time ago.

Hypervigilance is super fun. She is that annoying little character on your shoulder saying, "they'll say it won't work."

So, I devised an answer to that.

As mentioned, nothing humiliates me anymore, so I admit one morning I accidentally created an app, database, and employee portal concept to answer that.

Then in the middle of the night, I awake to realize no one will understand me. So then I began building out all these navigational tools and maps and graphics to show people how it can be done.

Then that dang voice pops up and says, that's already out there. What's missing?

So then I rabbit-holed the concept that it has to be structured from the ground up and the top down — but how?

Well then in pops my 211-Ontario model plan.

I'm going to stop there because this will suddenly become a novel if I keep telling you all the nights I laid awake answering all the nay-sayers who have yet to speak.

This is one person who has decided that I cannot abandon my story anymore.

Hopefully one day I speak up more openly about the what's and the how's of it all, but for right now? All I want to do is feel heard, treated as a human being with the same rights as everyone else, and to sleep soundly.

The most important thing, though, is to start the conversation, invite in survivors, and try to stop this from happening to anyone else.

I look forward to what comes next —

Angie