Domestic Violence: Husband threatened to Kill

Ana’s husband threatened to kill her.

She started dating him 10 years ago. After a few weeks, he asked her to stop seeing all her male friends so, she slowly started to cut ties with them.

After a few months, they got married. After a few years, they had 2 boys. At the time, Ana was working full-time as an acupuncturist and her husband just lost his job. Soon after, he started drinking heavily.

Ana needed him to wake up early, watch their sons, feed them, and send them to school, but her husband would sleep until well after they were due to be at school and Ana had to be at work before the kids woke up.

After her kids missed school a few times, Ana finally asked her mother to help. Her mother started coming every morning. This continued for 5 years, until Ana’s mother could not help out anymore. That day Ana too decided that she couldn’t take it anymore and she told her husband, “you need to get it together because I can’t do this alone anymore.”

He got angry and hit her. Ana was too scared to do anything and continued to ask for help with her sons.

A few months passed. Both her sons developed a serious disease and one odd day they couldn’t breathe, so they were rushed to ER.

Ana doesn’t know exactly what happened here. She found out that her sons were treated with medicine, then the cops showed up along with Child Protection Service, and she was told that neither of the parents could see their sons again!

Both her sons got taken away from her in a flash. She was told that her sons lost significant weight and developed this disease due to negligent parenting.

Her husband started drinking more and beating her more.

A few weeks later, Ana found out that they had mold in their house which potentially triggered an allergic reaction in their sons. She got her house cleaned, reported it to the services, but they still didn’t return her sons.

COVID hits. Ana’s business comes to a standstill. Her husband still doesn’t have a job. Ana filed for divorce and is currently fighting for full custody of her sons.

One night on her way home, she saw a letter by her door. It read, “if you don’t give up full custody of our sons, you will die. No one will know. I have connections.”

The next day, there were dead flowers by her door.

Let's pause here for a moment and take a look at ourselves.

How many of us here have faced something similar or know someone who has?

How many of us have decided to PROACTIVELY and preemptively solve a problem before it even occurs?

More often that not, most of us wait for a disaster and then look towards fixing it. How would our lives really look like if we planned and prepared ourselves to PREVENT the disaster to being with?

In this moment of reflection, and in observation of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, I challenge us all to take a look at ourselves and our lives and see where we can improve our empowerment and safety.

Fauzia Lala is the Head Coach of Defense Ninjas, a self-defense expert, & an empowerment strategist based in Seattle. You can follow Defense Ninjas on Instagram and YouTube.