 I'm in the ocean and then a wave comes and it crashes down and it pushes me under and it's like you can't breathe and you are just scrambling you are scrambling to try to get to the surface again but when you do pop up to the surface and you look that wave has gone and you know that that wave that's gone it's never going to come back and you're not sure how many waves are out there but what you do know is that wave is not going to push you down again not ever. It's hard to look back at how I was treated and how as they expected to exist for 40 years they will have you living in such fear you're more fearful of making a phone call than living with them and putting up with the abuse. It was only when my daughter returned home when she said to me mom this is not normal how you're living and I actually couldn't see it because I had lived it for so long that the daily abuse had actually become my normal and she said to me that she wanted to find somewhere to take me so that I could talk to someone and my attitude at the time was it's not that bad it was that bad. In the end Jess did get me in the car she did take me to a centre and when I did start to speak to a counsellor she very quickly told me that I was a victim of domestic violence. I saw this counsellor a few times and she was getting more and more concerned about my safety as his behaviour was becoming more threatening. Well most of it I couldn't describe on camera because it's distressing what he was doing. I did make the phone call to the police and they turned up. One of the officers we were just talking and he drew the will of violence and he held it up to me and he said is this what your life was like and I remember just sitting there nodding and saying yes because him drawing that out for me I could see really what I've been living through. In my life now well you know somebody had told me three or four years ago that this would be what I had. I would never have believed them not in a million years so that any woman sitting there now in the depths of despair thinking your life's over trust me it is not because I went through 40 years and if I can get up so can you. If your gut is telling you that how you're feeling it's not normal it's not right. If it's you know a month into dating a guy whether it's 20 years or like me 40 years immediately go and seek help whether it's you go to your local police station whether you go to a women's group just go and reach out and tell them what is happening to you.