I agreed to meet her.  Not real sure where she had gotten my name.  Based on her application and her past employment, things were not adding up.

How did she get here on my doorstep? Her address is an affluent neighborhood in Williamson County.  She has a degree and yet she now finds her belongings in the backseat of a vehicle and she prays  every night she gets back to Nashville to get a bed for the evening.

As we meet and I listen to the last 3 decades of her life, I realize we have a silent killer epidemic going on, it’s called “act as if nothing bad is happening and everything is going great”.

It’s a masquerade we all like to play so that we don’t need to add anymore shame and guilt on our plate. The problem is though it is killing people and it seems that no one even cares.

You see there are women living in fear every day right here in our own town. But because of shame and guilt they continue living with the controlling, manipulative, abusive spouse.  You start to believe the words that are being spoken by the abuser “no one will ever believe you”; and especially when the person being abused has no black eye or broken bone, there seems to be little help, so they begin to believe the abuser that no one will believe them and help them escape.

So where do they turn: to suicide.  Failed attempts to rid themselves of the pain; they then find themselves institutionalized for an attempted suicide. Now the abuser comes to the “rescue” at the hospital and becomes the “savior”.  Now with more shame and guilt; no one to believe their story they end up back under the same roof as the manipulating, controlling abuser.

Until one day, enough is enough, and she says there has got to be more. She then finds herself living with her belongings in the backseat and praying for a bed every night.