Full Circle
A personal story of domestic abuse, education and recovery — and how a Women's Centre became part of my journey.
Full Circle: When the Place You Came to Help Ends Up Helping You
There are some places that enter your life for one reason and remain part of your story for another.
For me, one of those places is My Sisters' House Women's Centre.
I first came across the charity at a point in my life when I wanted to give something back to my community.
I had recently left a relationship that I knew was unhealthy. I was unhappy; I had lost myself somewhere within it, and I knew that leaving was something I needed to do
But I didn't leave thinking: I have been in an abusive relationship.
Domestic abuse was already something close to my heart because of experiences throughout my life, and I felt drawn to the work My Sisters' House was doing. So, I applied to volunteer.
I thought I was going there to learn how to support other women.
I didn't realise I was about to learn how to understand myself.
When education changes the story you tell yourself
During my volunteer training, we learnt about domestic abuse, coercive control and the many different forms abuse can take.
And I started recognising things.
Not dramatic, isolated incidents that were easy to label.
Patterns.
Behaviours.
Dynamics.
Things from previous relationships and things from the relationship I had just left.
Experiences I had known were painful, unhealthy, or simply "not right", but which I had never understood within the framework of abuse.
I am educated. I am capable. I am independent. I thought I understood domestic abuse. And yet I had lived within it without fully recognising the extent of what was happening to me. That training session has taught me something I have carried with me ever since:
Domestic abuse does not happen to a particular type of person, and intelligence does not make somebody immune to it.
When unhealthy relationships have been normalised throughout your life, your benchmark for "normal" can become distorted.
You don't necessarily think: this is abuse
Sometimes you simply think: this is what relationships are like.
It was confronting, to say the least.
Then I became the woman who needed help
Not long after I began volunteering, the post-separation abuse began.
Suddenly, some of the behaviours I had recently been learning about were no longer part of a training course.
I was experiencing them.
But this time, I had something I hadn't had before.
Knowledge.
I recognised enough to know that I needed support. And so the organisation I had approached because I wanted to help other women became the organisation I turned to when I realised I needed help myself.
My Sisters' House Women's Centre triaged me, and I began talking openly about not only what was happening after separation, but what had happened throughout the relationship.
Having somebody knowledgeable listen and reflect my experiences back to me changed something.
I hadn't simply left an unhappy or unhealthy relationship.
I had left an abusive one.
There was a lot to unravel.
And there is something extraordinarily powerful about being given a space in which you don't have to prove that what happened was "bad enough".
I was listened to.
I was believed.
I was supported practically, including being helped to access legal advice.
But perhaps one of the greatest things I received was education. Because knowledge began returning something abuse had gradually taken from me:
trust in my own perception.
Breaking the cycle meant including my daughter
I attended a number of programmes through My Sisters' House Women's Centre, but one had a particularly profound impact on my family: DART.
My daughter was 11 when we completed the programme together.
I think we sometimes talk about "breaking the cycle" as though it simply means leaving an abusive relationship.
It doesn't.
Leaving can be the beginning.
Breaking the cycle also means examining what we have learnt about love, boundaries, conflict, control and relationships.
And crucially, it means giving our children a healthier blueprint than the one we may have been given ourselves.
Through DART, my daughter learnt something I wish I had understood at 11.
What healthy looks like.
She learnt about boundaries.
She learnt to recognise unhealthy dynamics.
She learnt what she should — and should not — expect within relationships.
She is older now, and I see that knowledge appearing in places far beyond the circumstances that originally brought us to My Sisters' House Women's Centre.
I see it in her friendships.
I see it in her boundaries.
I see it in her ability to question behaviour rather than automatically accept it.
Many things have, of course, contributed to the emotionally intelligent young woman she is becoming, but I will always acknowledge the role My Sisters' House Women's Centre has played in giving her that early education.
And this is where I think the impact of domestic-abuse services can be underestimated.
They didn't only support one woman. They helped educate her child. And that child gets to carry that knowledge into every relationship that comes afterwards.
That is prevention.
That is generational change.
What happens after survival?
Eventually, my time as a client came to an end. Life continued. And over the next several years, something slowly shifted.
My world became less about what had happened to me and increasingly about what I wanted to do with what I had learnt.
I rebuilt.
I went to university.
I began training as a counsellor.
I wrote.
Words that had once been a private way of processing my experiences eventually became my first book.
I created this author website. I have had poems and articles published
And gradually, something I had once struggled even to name became something I could speak about openly.
Not because domestic abuse became my identity.
Quite the opposite.
It stopped being my identity.
It became something I had experienced rather than something that defined the limits of who I could become.
And then my story with My Sisters' House Women's Centre took one more turn.
The full-circle moment...
As part of my counselling training, I needed to undertake a placement. When the opportunity came to choose where I wanted to practise, one place meant something different to me.
My Sisters' House Women's Centre.
Years earlier, I had walked through their doors wanting to volunteer.
Then I had walked through them as a client.
Then I walked back through them as a trainee counsellor and subsequently stayed with them once qualified.
Same doors. Different woman.
I have the privilege of sitting beside women who are beginning to make sense of experiences of their own. Their stories are never mine. But I understand something about the courage it can take to tell those stiries.
I know what it feels like to need somebody to listen without judgement. I know the power of being believed. And I know what can happen when somebody gives you information and space rather than telling you how you should live your life.
Because once, I had been sitting on the other side.
Sometimes I think about the woman who first arrived wanting to volunteer. She had absolutely no idea what was coming. She certainly didn't know that the organisation she hoped to give something to would become part of rebuilding her own life. And she couldn't possibly have imagined that one day she would return with the skills to sit beside somebody else.
Perhaps that's what full circle really means.
Not just returning to where you started. Returning to the same place, but as somebody different.
Why places like My Sisters' House Women's Centre matter.
Statistics cannot always capture the impact of a community organisation. Of course, numbers matter. Funding matters. The number of women supported matters.
But behind every number is a story whose ending may not be visible when that person first walks through the door.
Sometimes you support a woman, and she begins to understand what has happened to her.
Sometimes you give her and her children the knowledge that changes what they accept in their own future relationships.
Sometimes that woman goes back into education.
Sometimes she finds her voice.
Sometimes she writes.
Sometimes she becomes the person sitting beside another woman who hasn't found her voice yet.
And sometimes you never get to see just how far the ripple travels.
My Sisters' House Women's Centre did not "save" me. I think it is important that I say that.
They helped give me the knowledge, support, and space I needed while I learnt how to save myself.
There is an enormous difference.
Survivors do not need somebody else to take ownership of their lives.
They need safety.
They need information.
They need to be believed.
They need practical support.
They need access to specialist services.
And sometimes they simply need somebody knowledgeable beside them while they begin trusting themselves again.
That is why community domestic-abuse organisations matter.
And it is why they need our support.
My journey with My Sisters' House Women's Centre began because I wanted to give something back.
For a while, I became the person who needed to receive.
Years later, I finally got to give something back after all.
Volunteer.
Client.
Counsellor.
But somewhere between those three words sits an entire story of rebuilding. And perhaps the most important part of that story is the one that continues beyond me.
My daughter knows what healthy looks like.
I know what healthy looks like.
And the women who walk through those doors today have somewhere to begin discovering it too.
Surviving was part of my story.
What became possible afterwards is the part I want people to see.
Thriving is possible.
Love Molly x
Supporting My Sisters' House Women's Centre
My Sisters' House Women's Centre provides specialist support to women affected by domestic abuse and other difficulties within our community (Arun & Chichester District, West Sussex, UK).
The support my daughter and I received became an important part of our own journey, which is why I am proud to acknowledge their work here.
If our story has shown you anything, I hope it is that the impact of supporting a domestic-abuse organisation can travel much further than one appointment, one programme or one person.
If you would like to learn more about My Sisters' House Women's Centre, access support, or help them continue supporting women and families, you can visit their website or make a donation below.