“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars” - Khalil Gibran I was introduced to Khalil Gibran by my mother when I was a teenager, but it wasn't until I left my ex, that his beautiful words meant something different after I had experienced 11 years of abuse. I knew nothing when I started my relationship with my ex at the age of 20. He wooed me with flowers, chocolates, we went on dates, movies and it was beautiful. I should have thought there was something wrong with some of the stories he told. He was a widower already (he was 26 and I was 20 when we met) and he lost his wife in an accident, that he didn't drive as a result and not to tell anyone or talk about it. Seems like an unreal story, but I had already grown up in a household where we kept secrets from outsiders. I discovered he had lied to me about him being a smoker. He hid in a shower and smoked when he was there or smoke in the loo. He told me he would give up and I believed him. On one date, he told me he didn't love me, just to see the look on my face - I started crying straight away, but then he said no, he was only joking and that he did love me and that's when I realised I had fallen for him. Then over the next few months, he'd start turning up late to dates, up to an hour. Back then, there was no way of contacting each other as mobiles weren't a thing. Sex was awkward and I didn't enjoy it. I say, didn't enjoy it, because I never had an orgasm. I was forced to do anal, I felt pressured to use toys on him and penetrate him with those toys. He'd buy me sex toys - but end up using them on himself. He bought lingerie for me (even though it never fit) and then he'd wear it and get me to have sex with him. I felt pressured and didn't want to do the things he wanted me to do. I didn't feel like I could say no. I was taught as a child not to say no, or my parents would get angry with me. He would ignore me, give me the silent treatment or have huge tantrums and this forced me to be compliant. He would frequently toss knives around me, near my face, he would regularly do kata with broom sticks or practice his high kicks near my face. He broke my windscreen of my car when we had a fight in the car once by kicking it from the inside. He groomed me to try and become a lesbian or bisexual. I found tranny porn on his computer, and he didn't want me in our office, so he kicked me out of the office, and I was stuck in our bedroom instead. I was left alone most nights; he went to bed after me. He took my key cards off me; he took away my front door key and wouldn't let me in unless I called him to tell him I was coming home. I would have to knock on the door to be let in. He made me work, he stayed at home and didn't work. He couldn't keep jobs because he kept having massive mood swings and not get out of bed. I know he was mentally ill, on top of his AGP tendencies. I tried so many times to leave him, but he would say he couldn't live without me. I broke off our engagement though. I started finding female clothes in our washing, but our housemate was his brother and he always brought random girls home, so he told me their washing was mixed in with ours. I bought it, hook line and sinker. I got fat, over 170kg, so he'd stop touching me. I was used, like a masturbation tool. I don't remember a lot, I'm now in counselling, but I can safely say, I didn't want to have sex much of the time when he wanted me to penetrate him or have sex with lingerie on. He did things to me with his hands that resulted in damage to my uterus which resulted in over 20 years of fertility issues. I'm still trying to understand if I was sexually assaulted, because I don't understand what happened to me. I put together a 2 year exit plan when my gran died, I realised if I didn’t leave him, I would be dead soon too. When I found work, and lost some of the weight, I left him. In doing so, he revealed his truth. He was jealous because I had a uterus. He wanted to be female, he had gender dysphoria, he had hoped we could stay together, I could take a lover if I wanted to. He planned to transition and he thought I was having an affair. I told him that he was selfish, women didn't treat other women the way he treated me and what kind of person was I if he thought I could have someone on the side? I hate the word Love. It’s used to manipulate. I have issues with boundaries, I can’t say no. I've allowed myself to be pressured into sex I haven't wanted, because I don't want to upset my partner at the time. I've said yes when I wanted to say no. After I fell in love with my husband and married him (long distance relationship was great for me because it allowed me to heal/hide my issues more) I still behave like my husband is an abuser when he's done nothing wrong. I am frightened of him when he is quiet because I learned silence = anger (he’s just tired). So, I am married 10 years and have a child, 2yrs old. After the birth, I lost my identity that I had created around the shell of a person I had become with my ex. I need constant re-assurance; I suffer from anxiety attacks. Having a bad 2019 resulted in a break down, I realised that I needed to heal so I could be a better mother. It's working. I don't know who I could have been, but I know who I am now. If you have also been affected by any of the issues in this story, please view our Resources page.

I was in a hospital bed. There were dozens of people present. Doctors, nurses, friends, family, “Can I just get my abortion now?” I asked the doctor. “What’s the delay?” Like many dreams, this one seemed to go on forever. Things were surreal. I felt sick and feverish. “We’re just running some more tests,” a nurse responded. “But why?” I demanded. “I just want my abortion.” I couldn’t understand why anything further should stand in my way. I got up to pee. “There’s nothing more lovely than the silhouette of a pregnant woman,” said a bystander, with admiration. I looked at my belly with horror. “You mean I’m showing?” I had thought I was less far along. “Then we’ve really waited too long. Let’s get the abortion underway. Please.” I was back in the bed. “You’re experiencing some complications,” the doctor said. “Let’s not be too hasty,” someone added. There was a general murmur of agreement in the room. “I’ve been in this hospital bed forever!” I yelled. “I’ve waited long enough! I’m sick. I’m exhausted. I want out. I want to leave this room and move on with my life.” I reached a desperate note. “When will this end? Why can’t I terminate this pregnancy!” I pondered the dream for half the next morning before I realized that the pregnancy was my marriage. That I had tried and tried, had done my due diligence, had become sick and exhausted with trying. That I had tried long enough. I lived happily — blissfully unaware how happily – for 14 years with a man who seemed sensitive, kind, intelligent, liberal, and feminist. We were deeply in love and the kind of couple people looked up to. My marriage was permanent; it defined my future. Two years before my marriage imploded, I would have told you we were unshakable. I couldn’t imagine a scenario that could break us up. My husband was also, to all outward appearances, happy. He enjoyed life and was uniquely easygoing and content. Those qualities made him a joy to chat with, to vacation with, and to live with. Then my husband woke up one day feeling a little “gender-fluid.” Within months he developed the conviction that he was a woman and he “came out” to everyone he knew. He left his job and he dropped out of life. While I worked outside the home, did all the housework, ran all the errands, and even moved us from the city we lived in back to the hometown we missed — from the planning to the packing to the coordination with realtors and financers to selling the old house and completing the final paperwork to buy the new one — my husband laid on the sofa and cried. He cried because someone “misgendered” him. He cried because his shoulders were too broad for his new dress. He cried because he couldn’t completely eradicate the stubble on his face. He cried because his new habit of flipping his hair back with a limp wrist had gotten him mistaken for a gay man. My formerly easygoing partner became incredibly uptight. What if someone thought he looked manly? What if he had to get the mail in jeans and a t-shirt? Could he enjoy camping anymore, if it meant that make-up and dresses were impractical? Were strangers laughing at him? Were his friends and family talking about him? He got counseling and joined support groups, where he “learned” that he was “literally” a woman, and not just someone who identified as one. He announced to all comers that he’d found his “true self” and had become “happy” for the first time in his life. His alleged happiness didn’t stop him from spiraling into an even deeper despair. He became suicidal. He was prescribed antidepressants. He adopted bizarre beliefs and became hysterical if anyone questioned them. All interests were abandoned for endless monologues about transgender rights and his “gender identity.” One by one, his friends and family began to tell him that they didn’t recognize him anymore. This made him angry. He became unavailable to the marriage. He lost his capacity for empathy. He couldn’t explain, couldn’t compromise, wouldn’t even slow down. I had been the primary focus of his life, but now I was secondary, or worse. I lost him. We all lost him. I became a “trans widow” long before I admitted defeat. I tried to get him back, an embarrassing number of times, before I reluctantly initiated the divorce. He wasn’t coming back. I loved him, but staying with him meant completely losing myself. “Men should think twice before making widowhood women’s only path to power,” said Gloria Steinem. She surely speaks of an oppression, and perhaps a solution, more sinister than mine. But perhaps I had to lose him to really find myself. Trans Widows Voices have republished this article, with permission, which can also be found on the author’s substack. For Shannon’s full story, see her recent book: “18 Months, A Memoir of a Marriage Lost to Gender Identity”

I look back and think, why didn’t I just leave? I was trapped... I had literally nobody left in my life to help me. I always knew, deep down, that I was a lesbian. I was sexually abused over a period of years during my childhood, and people sometimes ask me did that make me a lesbian. No, it might have put me off men, but it couldn’t make me feel the way I always have about women. What the abuse did was teach me that I wasn’t allowed to say no to men. By the time I was eighteen, I had a policy that if I didn’t say no to a man, he couldn’t rape me. I was also completely desperate for any kind of attention, affection, anything, I had grown up in a neglectful, abusive home, where there wasn’t much love to be had. Even negative attention felt good to me. Sex with men for me became like cutting, or starving yourself is to some people. I did it because it both hurt me, and really, I also just wanted to be held, to be paid attention to. I felt that I deserved to be hurt, but I wanted to feel nothing, and also to be held. Sexual abuse messes you up. I met my ex, George, when I was eighteen. I had just left my parents’ house to go to university. They rented out my room and made it clear that I was no longer able to go back to their house. I had no coping skills whatsoever. I sat in my room in halls for a term having an elaborate breakdown. I didn’t get any help for it, it wouldn’t have occurred to me. When I met George, I was very lonely. I would have done anything, really, for a hug and somebody to talk to. I felt like sex was all I had to offer anybody. And then there was my “don’t say no” policy. And there was the self-harm element – the same sort of dissociative relief that some people get from cutting. I was just 18, he was a couple of years older, and he could see the absolute mess my room and my life were in. If I met an 18 year old in that state, I would be giving her advice about how to seek help, not buying her presents and moving in with her. He preyed on me when I was vulnerable. I should have seen the red flags from space, but I was falling to pieces. A couple of months later, we both dropped out of our uni courses, and moved in together. We both needed a way out. He found a job, I didn’t. I was too mentally unwell to work. My days consisted of getting drunk in the morning, falling asleep 'til he came home, then having increasingly weird sex with him. He was very tall, well over six foot, and he was nominally bisexual. Or at least, he was so lacking in boundaries that he would try anything – I don’t believe he would ever have a relationship with a man, but he wanted to try everything. Every single friend of mine who came to the house, male or female, he tried to orchestrate a threesome, or a foursome, or whatever. He sometimes succeeded, sometimes didn’t, but either way it always soured things with my friends. I became increasingly isolated and alone, and started to spiral again. I look back and think, why didn’t I just leave? I was trapped. I couldn’t go back to my parents, they had rented out my room. I couldn’t go back to university. I couldn’t go to a “shelter” or whatever, because there wasn’t any violence. I had literally nobody left in my life to help me. Then I started to notice weird things happening. My favourite shoes, that were fine when I put them in the wardrobe, were broken. My dress, that had been tight, felt looser under the arms and around the shoulders. Somebody had left the top off my lipstick. My zip was broken. He was always closing his computer when I came around the door. My underwear was going missing. I came home one day to find that one half of the front of the dress that I wanted to wear that night was soaking wet. I confronted him about it. He confessed, and said that he had been wearing my dress, and had condoms filled with water in my bra, to make it feel like he had breasts. I broke down at that point and told him that I couldn’t carry on with him, that my life was out of control, that I am a lesbian, that I was so sorry for getting him involved in all this, that I would just have to find somewhere to stay and see if I could work something out. I had tears streaming down my face, and snot in my hair from crying that hard. He said that he was a lesbian too. It pulled me up short. I was only eighteen at the time. I didn’t say no to men, that wasn’t in my vocabulary. I can still hear the way a sob caught in my throat and I just stopped crying, like turning off a tap. Abruptly. He took that as consent, rather than horror, and somehow the evening ended up with him excitedly going to get dressed up, as a “lesbian.” He came downstairs in fishnets, a short, tight red dress, my heels (several sizes too small for him), red lipstick, water filled condoms in my bra, and his penis tucked up between his legs. “See, it looks like I have a vagina,” he said. “And feel my boobs, they feel like real boobs, they even have realistic nipples!”. He was feigning this whole coquettish, girlish thing, that looked like a parody of me. It felt like he was trying to be me, like he was mocking me, taking what was mine. He even affected my mannerisms, my laugh, the way I walk. I felt in shock, really. I knew that he didn’t look like any lesbian I had ever seen. He was hairy, and wiry, and over six feet tall. He hadn’t even shaved, so had a day’s beard growth. He hadn’t showered, so he smelt like a man. It was like he was purposefully showing me that he was “really” male, and enjoying my discomfort with the whole thing. Under the coquette act, there was very male entitlement and rage. I knew, I knew that he wasn’t a lesbian and that I couldn’t carry on with this, but I also knew that I couldn’t tell him that, and that I had nowhere else to go. I was frightened of what he would do if I said no. I had only said yes up to that point, and he had already managed to isolate me from all my friends and make me dependent on him for even somewhere to stay. I just went along with it. I swallowed all my feelings and went along with it. I knew what sex with women was like, the aching tenderness, the deep passion, the desperate longing to be closer, closer, the way the soul comes in at the eyes and leaves in little gasps, the way the whole of my body turned to rushing water then rested at peace. I knew that I couldn’t have that with him, because I didn’t feel that way about men, and there was no imagining that this person in front of me was anything other than a man. But I didn’t know what else to do. The sex started getting more and more bizarre. He wanted me to tie him up. He wanted me to tie him up and fuck him with a strap on. He wanted me to call him names whilst he licked my boots. He wanted me to whip him. He wanted me to tell him he was a naughty little girl. Then, when we had done the weird stuff, he would switch like magic back to “being a man” and would want straight up rough/ kinky sex, and he expected me to “submit” to that (his words). It was all controlled and orchestrated by him, he never asked me what I wanted. I had to keep all this a secret from everybody, because he didn’t want to be a woman full time, only when he was with me. Some nights were bizarre; watching TV with this man, wearing my clothes, pretending he was a lesbian, and knowing what was coming later. I didn’t know how to say no. This went on for months. Every night. I switched myself off. I felt completely trapped, I felt like I didn’t have any other option but to do what he wanted. I was completely dependent on him for everything. And then I found out I was pregnant. None of the demands for sex changed, if anything, they got more extreme. I wanted to keep the baby. To cut a long story short, George manipulated me into getting an abortion that I did not want. I tried to jump off the trolley on the way to the operating theatre, but they wouldn’t let me. George wasn’t there when I woke up. He promised he would be. I lay there, in shock and alone. Eventually, they brought a commode, and helped me onto it. There was a grey paper dish in the bottom of it, and when I stood up, it was full of blood. My baby’s blood. I can still see that bowl, the end of all my hope. I collapsed to the floor and howled with grief. It’s difficult to explain, but that was my baby. That was my little girl. I loved her. I had imagined holding her, I had imagined putting her to my breast. I imagined my life with her, and now she was dead, she was a bowl full of blood, and it was my fault, I didn’t protect her, and I was supposed to protect her. I loved her, and I had killed her, and right then I wanted to die too. Eventually, I got myself together and got a taxi back to the house. George had put all my things in bin bags and put them outside the front door. He had changed the locks. He wasn’t home. I was bleeding, I think possibly haemorrhaging. I howled on the ground outside the house again, and then got in my car and drove to a deserted layby. I was technically homeless for the next five years. I look back now and it seems almost incredible to me that I got from there to here. I did my entire undergraduate degree whilst vulnerably housed – I was living in the squat in the holidays. I was still floored by grief and guilt, but I was starting to heal. Then I met my wife, Ash, shortly after that. There’s something so genuine, grounded, boundaried, reassuring, solid about her. I had never had any ground to stand on, any place to stay, anywhere safe in my whole life. Not even as a child. One translation of the Hebrew word for Salvation is to “come home,” and so when I say that she is my salvation, I say it with my whole heart. She is the only home I have ever known. We have had our struggles. It took us a long time to work things out between us, to work out how we worked. We both brought our own trauma to the relationship. But, unusually for two broken people, we rescued each other. Nearly twenty years later, she is still my connection to the earth, my “rocks beneath,” my harbour, my safe and sound. I’m still her light, her inspiration, her passion, her joy. With George, everything was always about him – what he wanted. It felt like I just existed as a kind of prop in his increasingly misogynist fantasies, more like a masturbation aid than an actual human being. With Ash, I feel as if she sees me, at the very centre of who I am, and loves me, there, with her whole self. I feel like that connection is everything, it is healing, and beautiful and it is everything to me. It has healed my broken heart, and “she who heals her heart, heals the hearts of her children’s children”. Children. My little girl. I dreamed about her for eighteen years after the abortion. I have found peace with the choices I made. I no longer feel that I tried to murder my child; I was in a desperate situation, and I did what I could to save her. I failed. That’s not the same thing as murder. One last thing. I believed that I was evil, and that I would be punished for the abortion by a miscarriage, or a still birth, or something like that. I didn’t believe I would ever be able to hold my living child, as punishment for what I had done to my daughter. When they held up my son, a little squalling scrap, and wrapped him up, and put him in my arms, it was indescribable. I have never experienced such a shift in my emotional landscape, so quickly, as I did when I held my child in my arms. Where there were deserts, now there were seas. All that guilt, pain, grief, desperate sadness all got washed away, by this tiny child, who came into the world with his arms open. His little brother came along a few years later, and between them, they are the absolute joy of my life. They are smart, gentle, loving children, who love each other, are almost ridiculously tall and handsome, and bring joy to the lives of everybody around them. They’ve had their struggles, and so have I, but my broken heart is healed, and I’m happy, and whole, and well beloved. I have friends and family around me, I have work that matters. I have a sense of purpose and I am at peace.