In honor of my birthday, I would like to give a gift. I would like to dedicate this story to any person who is being abused. Whether that abuse takes the form of physical attacks (throwing things, grabbing roughly, shoving, hitting, kicking – whatever) or verbal ones (constant demeaning and insulting language, words spoken to intimidate and terrorize) please read my story.

I’ve already posted parts of this story on other people’s blogs, but I’d like to post it in its entirety now. My great grandparents emigrated from Poland in the early 20th century. My grandfather had been a wealthy landowner who wanted to make it even bigger in America.

Instead, he was treated as a “dumb Polack” and only offered menial jobs. He responded to this treatment by becoming an abusive alcoholic who may likely have given my great-grandma a venereal disease from his frequent visits to prostitutes (she died from cervical cancer, which my Ob-Gyn said was caused mainly from either VD or chemical exposure at that time).

My great grandma spoke little English, she was across the world from anyone she knew, in a strange country. She was Catholic, which meant divorce was highly discouraged. She had 5 children to think of.

She kicked his sorry ass to the curb.

Surprisingly for that time, her parish priest (Italian; they lived in an Italian neighborhood at the time) not only supported her decision, but helped her out. He gave my grandma and her siblings a free education, and informed all the nice Italian ladies in the neighborhood, who proceeded to drop off food baskets. (I bet they were damn good, too!)

He also told her to go to court, with my grandma serving as interpreter (she was the oldest child). She not only obtained a divorce, but a restraining order when my drunken great grandfather showed up with his drinking buddies.

Although from a wealthy family herself, my great grandma swallowed her pride and scrubbed floors at fancy hotels to support her children. During prohibition, she also made vodka in the bathtub and sold it.

Meanwhile, my grandma kept asking for her father. Great grandfather would approach her when she was playing outside, manipulating her into thinking the divorce was “all (my great-grandmother’s) fault.”

My great-grandma marched my grandma to the end of the block, where the whorehouse was. On the front porch, my great-grandfather sat in a chair with one of the prostitute’s daughters in his lap.

“Look. When did he ever hold YOU on his lap like that?“ My grandma never spoke to him or asked for him again.

If you have an abusive spouse, do not stay for any reason. My great-grandma overcame every obstacle bravely. She did not give in to fear or doubt. She knew she had a duty to protect herself and her children, and she did it despite everything stacked against her.

And she also knew that SHE wasn’t the one “keeping her children from their father”; HE did that by his own choices and actions.