Sometimes even the strongest of women accept to stay back in a toxic relationship just for the sake of her kids’ better future. She believes the lies that society tells her about how kids from broken homes are also broken or how incapable she is of taking care of the kids.
Finding herself alone to stand against the abuse, she accepts and agrees to suffer in silence. But sadly, no one tells her how her kids get affected if she chooses to stay in a toxic marriage. No one tells her the misery and the suffering that kids go through when they see one parent abusing the other. One such story is of this mother, whose daughter raised her voice to save her from a toxic husband.
While sharing with HoB about her parent’s toxic marriage and how she saw her mother suffer for years, this brave daughter shared:
“I was 14 when my mother and I left the house in the middle of the night with nothing but our clothes — we couldn’t live with my father anymore. My parents never had a good relationship. Within 3 days of marriage, my father started screaming at my mom for the tiniest of things.
He would even scream at her because I would cry as a 6 month old baby. His parents would check her phone, pass taunts on her ‘character’ and make up stories that she used to come home at midnight after ‘having fun’ and my father would go along with it.
They would also control mom — they wouldn’t let her visit her parents and say things like, ‘You’ve come from a beggar’s house.’ They would also teach me that Nani’s house was a bad place and that I should never go there because ‘they’re garbage’ and ‘there’s lice there.’
Because I was always surrounded with negativity, I became very aggressive. At 2, I would hit my mother and scream for hours on end. I also became fearful — I was scared to to invite my friends over, to take the tv remote or even eat dinner in another room lest my dad began shouting.
But mom always protected me and eventually, I started fighting for her. Mum would hardly ever shout back, but I rebelled.
It got so toxic that mum took the plunge and left the house — for me. Dad couldn’t care less. All he said as we left was, ‘Give me your set of the house keys and leave’. So we did, and haven’t looked back since.It was rough at first — mom slipped into depression for 2 years. All the while, I was also fighting my own battle — I was very aggressive and I had told my father that regardless of what I became in life, I would not become him. So I had to actively work to become less short tempered. It wasn’t easy but I had mum and we became each other’s support system.
It’s been 7 years that we’ve been living by ourselves — our small family of 2 is perfect. We couldn’t be happier. Today, we’ve both come out of this stronger — we have everything that we could ever want for. We’ve made a life for ourselves and I’m so proud of mum — for taking that brave step, standing up for herself and not thinking about ‘log kya kahenge’.”
At IFORHER, we celebrate this daughter-mother duo’s courage to move out of a toxic relationship. It’s inspiring how they became the courage and strength of each other and saved themselves from suffering. We hope their story will inspire more women to speak up against the abuser even if the abuser is their own family.
