 I was married to my ex-husband for 10 years and the abuse started within the first year. Whenever he would get drunk and angry, he'd either pull a knife on me, attempt to choke me, and he would do a few months in jail, do whatever the program was, and then boom, out of the clear blue, here we go again. He just grabbed me and he threw me up against the wall. He just proceeded to beat me pretty badly. First it was choking. He just kept saying, I'm going to kill you, and I believed him. But then he began to pummel my head with his closed fist. That's when I saw the hammer come down on my head and I thought, I'm bigger than this. I'm better than this, and I'm not going to live like this no more. At that point I had already found out about the Rose Andham Center. They were just so wonderful and the main thing I got was courage. I'm not going to give anyone the power to run my life anymore. I'm going to run it, and I can, and I will, and I shall, and I did, and I am.