Patty Sherman says that she "escaped" her abusive marriage in 2000.  In June of this year, 2010, she passed the ninth anniversary of her freedom, healing process and the recovery of her self.  Patty speaks out to educate the public because she knows that it’s hard, if not impossible, to understand how it happens and how hard it is to leave an abusive marriage unless you have either lived through it or you have done intentional research about the pathologies that drive husbands to control and berate their wives.

In this interview we discuss how it’s possible for an educated and skilled woman to fear her husband, to lose her confidence or the right to discuss dysfunctional dynamics in their marriage and to develop Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  In hindsight, Patty has come to understand some of the warning signs of the cycle of abuse and the traps victims can fall into, such as believing that "I had let it happen to me."  Through therapy and self-education, she now knows she didn’t deserve the abuse she received.  Patty hopes that by speaking out she can help other victims realize that there is nothing they did to bring abuse upon themselves, nothing they can do to mollify a husband’s need to control them, keeping them fearful and dehumanized, why it’s hard to leave and how it’s possible to get help.

Go to Pickle Player or CyberEars to listen (41:50 min.).

Cross-posted with permission from Interview4Obama.