CW: This article discusses domestic violence.
A raised voice and one wrong move — that is how violence and I met the first time. I remember violence would always begin the same way; I would collect the patterns and piece them together like a puzzle. If I could understand the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of violence and abuse, then, perhaps, I would be able to see my world in its entirety. I believed that violence started from me and extended outwards, infiltrating my world, and breaking down its doors. It always looked the same, according to the evidence of experience, and only existed within the walls of my house. I imagined broken glass, shattered on the floor.
Growing up, violence was both a normalcy and a unique tragedy. Growing a little older — understanding the world a little better and seeing that not all families were the same — I believed violence began with my dad. I believed in fairytales, and they all existed beyond my front door. Believing violence began and ended in my own home meant a security that were I to leave, it could not follow. Yet, violence was all I had known. I was unable to imagine a future for myself which diverged from the reality I knew.
When I was a teenager, the grasp that violence had on my life reached out and finally touched the fairytale, outside world. The first time I researched domestic violence, it was for a Year Seven school project. I felt I knew what it was before I had a name to put to it — the familiarity of the signs and symptoms was blatant; it felt like going home. Domestic and family violence usually refers to threatening, coercive, dominating, controlling or abusive behaviour, between intimate or familial relationships. I was less surprised by how closely I had related to it than I was to how ‘ordinary’ the violence was, how consistently it pervaded society. An estimated 20% of Australian adults — 3.8 million people — reported experiencing physical and/or sexual family and domestic violence since the age of 15, according to results from the 2021-22 Personal Safety Survey (PSS). The same research showed that about 1 in 8 children witnessed violence towards a parent by a partner before the age of 15. I did the maths on my fingers in the middle of class and of the 31 of us in the room, at least 3 of us experienced or witnessed abuse.
Suddenly, I began to see it everywhere outside of my home — the little boys pulling pigtails and the catcalls from out of cars, the falling in and out of love during a toxic high school relationship, the aunties that still bring cha to the husbands they can no longer share a room with. I stopped laughing along to jokes that are “not that deep”, because I had seen the end of that path. I knew, exactly, and in its entirety, how deep it truly ran. Violence was no longer merely physical but encompassed all harm — the catching onto a mocking laugh, a lingering insult, a condensation in tone that did as much harm as a tight fist.
In Australia we have seen a sharp spike in domestic violence murders against women by nearly 30% in 2022-23 compared to previous years. Violence against women and children has always been prevalent, existing behind closed doors and in silence, but there can be no more ‘looking the other way’ when so far in 2024, 64 women and children have been killed by violence in Australia, according to data collated by The RED HEART Campaign. I have watched the community around me — I knew which aunties suffered, which children were unwilling to go home; I was raised hearing their stories scattered in the wind — and no one ever wanted to step in. These stories were always told, not as warning signs to protect oneself from violence, but rather reassurance that violence was a normal, yet strictly a private, family matter. Fears of what would happen to the family unit, whether that be the removal of children or the changes to the reputation of the woman and her children in the wider community, ensured that no one asked for help, and therefore, no one would offer it. No one believes anyone is capable of hurting the ones they supposedly love, no one believes it will get worse, not until someone is murdered. When a woman is killed by her partner or ex-partner we ask, “why did their friends, their family, their neighbours not do anything to stop it?” Victims themselves exist in a bubble of shame, fear and isolation, which prevents them from asking for support or guidance, and ignoring the issue of domestic violence as a society only further pushes this narrative.
It took a lot of growing up to see that violence was a tree that we have allowed to take root within our communities, our households and ourselves. Much of it is rooted in gender biases and stereotypes which do not exclusively harm women, but all people, allowing for cycles of abuse to continue seamlessly within our communities. Mothers who were once little girls who were taught to be obedient, to laugh along with inappropriate jokes, to take a backhand with a tightly shut mouth. Fathers who were once little boys who were taught to “be a man”, to meet every feeling of sadness with a closed heart and tight fist. We have all been watering the seeds of violence and parting the clouds for it to grow for generations.
Where does violence start if not the root?
Generational trauma refers to the passing down of traumatic experiences and its subsequent effects through generations. Without realising, we take on the pain of our ancestors, and hold it close to us, like an heirloom or some kind proof that the blood that flows within us is made of the same suffering. We continue cycles of abuse, because we don’t know better, because we are unsure how to do better, and the hardest to admit, because we don’t believe we can be better.
Generational trauma is a life sentence of fears and behaviours you did not ask for, a responsibility on your head to ensure that the suffering ends with you; two contradictory forces at play, begging for your attention. The tightrope between dysfunctionality and healing sways in the heavy wind and you are miles above ground.
I trace back my family tree. I follow the trails to reach the root of the anger that sits within me, inherited from my father, to see who he inherited his anger from. I lay his history out in front of me and hold it in my hands, and I see glimpses of the child my father once was. A war-torn land and an inaccessibility to safety and resources are bound to harden a man. Now, the anger that was necessary to survive lays uselessly on the floors of our home, with nowhere else to go. In his behaviours, I see his past life, his need for control, a mechanism to heal from how little control he once had, his emotions a sudden boil over of what he has always tried to repress. Understanding him does not make love or forgiveness come any easier — nor does it make it necessary — but it does save me the self-blame and shows me how to grow and heal differently than he did so not to make his mistakes.
There is a common saying: the abused becomes the abuser. Children that are raised in or have witnessed domestic violence are more likely to find themselves repeating the relationships of their parents, with studies from the late 1980s “[indicating] that about one-third of people who are abused in childhood will become abusers themselves.” The familiarity of abuser/victim dynamics and chaos, a lack of belief that they are deserving of healthy and happy relationships, and an in-built inability to trust are all fostered in a violent household. Continuing to exist within the cycle will always feel more familiar. However, the statement is too black and white, and much too vilifying of victims to accurately represent the nuances that exist in cycles of abuse — it takes a lifetime to unlearn the behaviours used to survive, to learn you are deserving of healthier love and relationships, to even realise that what was done to you was wrong and understand, truely, how to not repeat the same mistakes.
There is a misconception that once a child leaves their dysfunctional household, they are free and safe from its violence. The truth is that abuse makes a home of your body. The truth is that you allow it. Catherine Lacey said “If you are raised with an angry man in your house / there will always be an angry man in your house.”
Violence permeates your life when you survive a household of violence. Living, and growing, within an environment where violence is blatant, with its broken doors and broken glass and broken family — it’s no wonder if that ‘brokenness’ infiltrates into you and settles. A person who survives such violence finds themselves in a constant state of survival mode for much of, if not the rest of, their lives — even with the assistance of support and therapy. The option of leaving abuse feels near improbable for many victims and children of abuse. The fairytale always feels just slightly out of reach.
Beyond the mental and emotional incapacity hindering victims, primarily female victims, from leaving abusive situations, our society tends to place the onus, and the blame, of all forms of violence on women. Outside of domestic violence situations we see it in the questions of what we were wearing when catcalled or sexually assaulted, in the slutshaming remarks and constant circulation of gossip for the same acts men are celebrated for, in the lessons we teach little girls about how a boy who is mean to you is a boy who likes you.
And within domestic violence situations, the constant question remains: “well, why didn’t she just leave?” In 2021, 25% of National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women Survey respondents believed that “women who do not leave their abusive partners are partly responsible for violence continuing”. 40% of respondents born in non-main English-speaking countries shared this attitude. However, this does not account for factors such as the safety of the victim and their children, cultural and societal attitudes, risks of isolation from community, and the complexity of emotions and attachments regarding the abuser or the relationship itself.
In the community I am a part of, divorce for many aunties is not a viable option, as it risks isolation from the community, whilst the same excommunication would not be practised on the uncles who perpetrate violence or harm. To no longer have a community in a country where your only family and support is your husband and the community you have built together — and to be mercilessly neglected and ridiculed by said community — is the risk many women who have immigrated to Australia with their partners must endure to leave abuse. It is not a fair or easy ultimatum to ask of them, even in exchange for their freedom or safety. This is especially considering many of their mindsets and values ingrained in committing to their vows to be the ‘good, sensible wife’, the kind who would not leave their husband in any of their lives, in the afterlife, or until death do them part. The accountability that we try to hold women to regarding their own safety isn’t reflected in our attitudes towards the men in our society, who are excused for their violence against other people, reflected in the same data which states that 19% of respondents believed that “sometimes a woman can make a man so angry he hits her without meaning to.”
Even after leaving, the path to healing is difficult, tumultuous and near inaccessible. A person who survives such violence often only knows how to survive in violence. Psychologically, to live ‘normally’ is a greater obstacle than to live in abuse. This is because your body and mind become so accustomed to the chaos that the unfamiliarity of peace can often be jarring. Our fears and flaws are brought to the surface when there is no longer any need to ‘survive’, and we begin a lifetime of dealing with the consequences of someone else’s mistakes. The first few weeks of moving out of my family home saw me experience a peace that would send me spiralling. I would lay static in my bed in a quiet home, unsure of what to do with such newfound safety. I did not think I could survive the peace the way I survived the violence. You still live with an angry man in your home. His existence may not be palpable anymore, but he’s punching in all the walls of the life you are building for yourself from within you.
I think back in hindsight at my fears throughout the years: closed spaces and loud bangs of doors when I was younger, and then, more recently, the inability to leave toxic cycles of abuse. The fear felt almost irrational — it was not as easily explainable as claustrophobia, for example — however, I knew that it takes victims of abusive relationships, on average, seven attempts before they finally leave. My fear was that my love would overpower my regard for my safety, wellbeing, and my happiness, and I would not leave the abuse that has always felt inevitable. Exposure to violence in the home “increases the risk of [individuals entering] an abusive relationship in adulthood, as either a perpetrator or victim” as we “model the behaviours and attitudes” we have been exposed to. I felt that the anger I inherited from my father, or the faith I inherited from my mother, sealed me to my fate. The fear was, if I loved too closely, I would one day allow into my home an angry man the way my mother let in my father.
You remember before, when you were a child, the mornings after a fight, when the quiet early hours of the day were used for grieving. The quiet always followed the storm — surreal how loud silence sounded when compared to screaming. Grievances for the night before, of the words that shouldn’t have been said, of actions that could not be taken back. Grievances for the family that could have been if they all learned to heal their traumas and live up to the potential of their love. There are no more ‘morning afters’, but you are still grieving. This is the loudest silence. You sit with your un-broken mug, stare out of your un-broken window, and life does move forward around you with some sort of fragile peace. You wait for the other shoe to drop — but you need to let yourself believe that this time, it won’t.
The path to healing is difficult, tumultuous, and ultimately, terrifying. With your future ahead of you, you lay out your history in front of you and hold it in your hands. All the statistics suggest that abuse is the destiny for any of us raised in it, that there is no space without violence. But understanding violence, and its roots, is the only way to stop it. Learning how to be better than those who came before us, and those who came before them. Letting go of the legacy of suffering. Letting the cycle end with you. Allowing yourself healthy love, without anger, without fear.
When you are born into a house of violence, abuse begins to feel like a birthright. Sacrifice is your rite of passage.
I’m telling you it doesn’t have to be.
