When Survivors Lose Control of Their Story Again

By M. E. Avila

I thought I had healed. Not in the simplistic way people often imagine healing, nor in a way that erased what happened or made the memories disappear. I knew those experiences would always be a part of me. But I believed I had reached a place where my story belonged to me. I thought I would decide when to tell it, who to tell it to, and how much of it I chose to share. That choice mattered because, for much of my life, I did not have many choices.

I am a survivor of domestic violence. Over the years, I experienced physical, emotional, psychological, financial, and coercive abuse. I experienced stalking and threats. My life was threatened, and my children's lives were threatened. I lived through years of fear, uncertainty, and control. Some of the damage is visible. I have limited vision in my right eye because of abuse. Some of the damage is invisible. It lives in the hypervigilance, the grief, the guilt, and the fear that follows survivors long after the bruises fade. My children lived through it too. They witnessed violence, instability, family crises, overdoses, and trauma that no child should ever experience.

People often ask why survivors stay. What they rarely ask is what survivors are expected to leave behind. When I was living through abuse, I was not making decisions from a place of safety, privilege, or financial security. I was a high school dropout raising four children and trying to survive. Every decision carried consequences, and every choice felt impossible. I often found myself weighing my personal safety against basic survival. Would we have a roof over our heads? Would there be food on the table? Could I afford to leave? Could I afford not to? For many survivors, leaving is not simply an act of courage. It is an act of risk. The choice is often not between danger and safety but between different forms of danger.

I made the best decisions I could with the resources, knowledge, and support I had at the time. For much of that time, I was doing what so many survivors do. I was showing up every day and functioning. I was working, serving my community, volunteering, helping other people, and building a career. From the outside, I looked resilient. I looked capable. I looked successful. What most people did not see was that I was carrying the weight of abuse behind the scenes.

I became very good at compartmentalizing. I learned how to attend meetings while struggling privately. I learned how to help others while trying to survive myself. I learned how to smile, perform, and produce while carrying fear, uncertainty, and trauma that few people knew existed. Like many survivors, I spent years hiding what I was experiencing because I was focused on keeping my children safe, maintaining employment, and putting a roof over our heads. Survival often leaves little room for vulnerability. There were times when simply making it through the day felt like an accomplishment. Looking back, I realize that while I was serving my community, I was also fighting a private battle that very few people ever saw.

Over the years, my children and I worked to rebuild our lives. We invested in therapy, reflected, learned healthier ways of communicating, confronted painful truths, and worked to break cycles that had existed for generations. Healing became a family project. It was not easy, but we did the work and continue to do so. I earned my doctoral degree, built a career in public service, and dedicated myself to helping others navigate challenges similar to those my family had experienced. I found my voice and reached a place where I believed my story belonged to me.

That commitment to healing eventually led me to a career helping others. I dedicated my professional life to public service, community health, violence prevention, and supporting vulnerable populations. I believed deeply in the importance of trauma informed care. I believed survivors deserved dignity, compassion, privacy, and safety. I still believe that.

What I never expected was to feel retraumatized by the very systems that claim to understand trauma. I never imagined that working in a violence prevention program could leave me questioning whether my own privacy was protected. I believed that my experiences as a survivor would help me better serve others. I believed that working in this field meant understanding the importance of confidentiality, trust, and survivor autonomy. I never expected to find myself wondering who had access to information about me or my family. I never expected to question whether deeply personal experiences that took years to process and heal from could become known to others without my knowledge or consent.

Recently, circumstances involving my family forced me to confront a painful reality. I no longer feel in control of my own story. Questions emerged regarding private aspects of my life and my family's experiences. Information that I never voluntarily shared appeared to be known by people I did not expect to know it. Discussions appeared to have occurred without my knowledge. Assumptions were made. Narratives were created. I found myself asking questions that no survivor should ever have to ask. Who knows? How do they know? Who has access? Who has discussed it? Who is telling my story?

Perhaps the most difficult part is that I do not know the answers. What I do know is how it feels. It feels violating. It feels humiliating. It feels frightening. It feels like I have lost control of something that took years to reclaim.

People often misunderstand what survivors lose. We lose safety. We lose trust. We lose confidence. But perhaps most importantly, we lose control. Abuse is about power and control. It is about someone else deciding what you can do, where you can go, who you can talk to, what you can say, and how you are allowed to exist. Healing is about reclaiming those things. Healing is about finding your voice again. Healing is about deciding that your life belongs to you. Healing is about becoming the author of your own story.

That is why this experience has been so painful. For years, I believed I had reached a place where my experiences belonged to me. If I wanted to share them, I could. If I wanted to keep them private, I could. If I wanted to discuss my past, it would be my decision. Now I find myself feeling emotions I have not felt in years. I have cried. I have felt scared. I have felt embarrassed. I have felt exposed. I have felt powerless. I have felt emotionally exhausted trying to balance my professional responsibilities, my daughter's healing journey, my grandchildren's stability, and my own unanswered questions.

Perhaps most surprising of all, I have experienced familiar feelings that I believed I had left behind. Not because I am being physically harmed and not because I have forgotten everything I learned through years of healing, but because I recognize the feeling of having my autonomy taken away. I recognize the feeling of someone else holding power over information about my life. I recognize the feeling of being unable to control a narrative that directly affects me and my family. That feeling is deeply unsettling for any survivor.

What makes this even more difficult is that my daughter is now navigating her own journey as a survivor. It took her nearly nine years to leave her abuser. Anyone who works with survivors knows that leaving is rarely simple. It is a painful, complicated process involving fear, hope, setbacks, financial realities, children, family dynamics, and the constant question of whether safety is truly possible. When she finally left, our family focused on healing, stability, her children, and building a future. Now she finds herself asking many of the same questions I am asking. Who has access to my information? Who knows my story? Can I trust the people who are supposed to help me? Should I continue seeking support? Should I continue pursuing accountability?

No survivor should have to question whether seeking help will cost them their privacy. No survivor should have to question whether sharing their story will cost them their dignity. No survivor should have to question whether helping other victims will cost them their livelihood. Yet that is where I find myself today.

Trust is the foundation of every victim service program. Without trust, people do not disclose abuse, seek services, report crimes, or feel safe enough to ask for help. As someone who has spent years supporting survivors, I understand that systems are imperfect. Mistakes happen. Communication breaks down. Policies are not always clear. What matters is whether organizations understand the impact. Privacy is not simply an administrative issue, and confidentiality is not simply a policy issue. For survivors, these are safety issues, dignity issues, trauma issues, and trust issues. Every interaction matters. Every disclosure matters. Every conversation matters. Every decision matters because survivors remember. We remember what it felt like when we had no control. We remember what it felt like when decisions were made for us. We remember what it felt like when our voices were ignored. When those feelings resurface, even years later, they can reopen wounds we believed had finally healed.

I still believe in helping survivors. I still believe in trauma informed care. I still believe that systems can do better. But trauma informed care requires more than training. It requires humility, accountability, transparency, and an understanding that survivors are not cases. We are people. We are parents. We are employees. We are community members. We are human beings carrying stories that took years to survive. Those stories belong to us, and we should have the right to tell them on our own terms.

After everything my family has survived, that is all we are asking for. The right to heal. The right to feel safe. The right to decide when and how we share our experiences. And the right to own our own story.