“It’s so hard to believe that I’ve allowed this to happen once again.
I believed him when he said that I meant everything to him and that he loved me more than anything. Why
then does he treat me like this? I can’t stand the name-calling, and hateful things that he says.
How can I be such a terrible person, not worthy of someone to love me and not abuse me at the same time?
Why is he so nasty and then so nice? I try to do it all right, and I know now that it doesn’t
even matter. He will find some reason to put me down, and come after me in his rage. I
can’t take another day of this. I need to get out, now.”
-
Journal entry of August 1987
That was August 1987. And today, 19 years
later – the memories are still very vivid in my mind
and very much alive in the
occasional nightmares I still have. Being a survivor of domestic abuse has forever changed me, and helped
shape the person I am today. And the physical trauma that I experienced did not compare to the years
of mental abuse. I had no self-esteem, or self-worth. I did not see myself as a worthy
person or someone that was capable of any good. This was by far the lowest point in my life.
I suffered from severe anxiety that paralyzed me at times. I would lie awake most nights unable
to sleep because if I did I would relive the abuse in the nightmares that I had. Few, if any friends and
no family members knew what I was going through, because the shame was so great. I couldn’t let anyone
know that I could be so desperate as to put up with so much from someone who said they loved me. But I
had two children who relied on me to protect them, and I know that is why I am standing here today. The
thought of them coming home from school and finding me dead is the reason I had the strength to leave. I ended that relationship
with no job, no financial support, and no car. My abuser was someone I had turned to, to help
me get out of my first marriage to a man who had also abused me.
I will never forget
the morning of October 16, 2001, when the phone rang at 7:30 am. My friend told me that
something terrible had happened, that Jan was dead.
How could that be ~~ we had just been together the evening before,
having gone to the gym and shopping at Home Depot. She was helping me decorate a room in my home!
She had just worked her first day at our store. We had just declared each other “Best
Friends” the evening before. How could this be? My world would never be
the same. How could this wonderful woman be dead? Then to find out that it wasn’t an accident, that
her 18-year-old son had shot her from close range while she sat working at her computer in her own home.
Jan had just ended an abusive 22-year marriage; the divorce was final just 2 months before. I would
later learn that her son had felt much resentment towards her for leaving his father. But could he have
killed his mother as a birthday gift to his father? How could a son kill his own mother? The
shock and grief overwhelmed me.
It has been just over 4 ½ years since Jan’s murder,
and in some ways it still feels like it was just yesterday. The tears are fewer, but the pain of that day
has never gone away. Today when I think of her I try to keep my focus on her positive energy, and the great
times we had as friends. I also know today, that the short time that I spent as her friend helped to prepare
me for a personal mission that would not take shape until 3 years later. Liza Warner was killed by her husband on October
1, 2004. Liza was an exceptional
29- year old young woman. She was beautiful, sweet, talented, and loved by everyone who knew her.
Liza was a customer in our store and had become our friends. The impact of Liza’s
death deeply affected me. I was angry that this could happen again to another beautiful woman, someone
that I knew personally and someone who had every reason to live. Why? We all ask that,
I know. For months after Liza’s death, I could not sleep. The connection I felt
I had with her ran much deeper than our association through my business or hers, or through our families. We
had shared the same experiences, but she did not survive. She along with my friend Jan, Nicole Simpson,
Lacy Peterson, as well as thousands of others couldn’t escape their abusers, and I couldn’t help but feel totally
hopeless and once again defeated by abuse.
The need to do something ran deep within me. I knew that I could not allow her
to become just another statistic, and her memory forgotten. That is how Liza’s Legacy was born.
Liza’s Legacy was introduced to the public on October 1, 2005 on the one-year anniversary of Liza’s death….
This is an excerpt from the speech Linda Singer gave on April 23, 2006
and as read at the 2008 LLF Annual Gala
