What Abuse Looks Like, As Documented

I've never shared these here.  For months it's been 'heavy on my heart' (as we say in the church) to do so.  I have put if off and put it off.  I just kept thinking, 'Maybe if I keep waiting, that feeling that I need to do this will go away...we'll see.' 

It never went away.  It's time.

If you've wondered about more detail of what happened in our marriage, and how Joel and his family worked within that time, reading these documents will be very revealing for you.  I never really knew these people, even though I thought I did.  I thought we were so very close and a loving family, all of us.  That was very obviously not the case.  To see what they were capable of was very eye-opening and devastating to accept.

I compiled these documents for a counselor we once had, and added on a couple of times for other counselors (you will see some familiar language, personal references I mentioned within; for instance, we lived in the house that belonged to one of them and Cass was born there).  It's not at all professional writing, just compiled and copied and pasted...something I did while in the depths of great trauma, crying out desperately to be heard and helped as I tried to survive the constant tsunamis crashing against me (you will see exactly what I mean as you read through this).  I will someday go through it and clean it all up, presenting it in a more professional format.  I just can't revisit it for that amount of time yet.  It's too painful.

I will never understand why the people around me who claimed to love me wouldn't just love me (the verb).  Why they wouldn't just take care of me and help me.  Why they would have rather convinced themselves of the stories they told themselves about me, without any evidence of what they were saying (not even close).  Nothing of what they were doing and saying made sense...it still doesn't.  

For instance...why would Kristin, after being asked by Joel to try to help him to understand, report back to him that basically it was pointless to even try with me?  What had I said in my genuine and vulnerable responses to her that could even be misconstrued as me being a hopeless case?  Why would she treat me so inhumanely?  

The same with Danny's email, and Angela's comments/messages, and the involvement of EVERYONE connected...why were they all going along with such corrupt, immoral, and bullying behavior?  

It's all there in the Correspondence.

Any of Joel's friends and family...this might clear up some things for you about what was actually happening, and what actually happened to our marriage.  I know you've been told a version of what happened, but this is actually what occurred, in their own words.  

When sharing these things within counseling sessions, Joel never once refuted the things in these documents (the Timeline, nor the Correspondence).  Just fyi.  He somehow still believed he was completely innocent, even though clearly within these documents the opposite is obviously true.  Sadly, because of the beliefs that women are just supposed to follow and support their husbands, in most of the 'Christian' counseling we were under (that's just the only thing we knew at the time), he was supported in the belief that I was supposed to just quietly follow along with this abusive behavior from him and his family.

Another note:  If you're new here, our last name used to be Ebersole.  We changed it.  I will share that story here someday maybe.  But, I praise God every single day that my children and I don't have to go through life tied to the name of our abusers.  If you think that calling them abusers is language that is too strong, then you haven't learned what the term 'abuse' means.  Educate yourself, learn, grow, and become safe for the hundreds of thousands of women and children just like us.

What abuse looks like, as documented...

The Timeline - written in Spring 2014
The Correspondence - written in Spring/Fall 2015