In the dark hours of a snowy winter night in my early childhood, I remember my father and mother bundling me into the car to drive to the home of a very old man who was trying to beat his very old wife to death. Again. In the fifty years since then, I became more aware that the pleasantness of public spaces are sanctuaries from the private wars that take place in small homes and in mansions in this country and around the world. If you wish to be aware, you can see people walking along transparent minefields of prescribed behavior and habits. If you wish to listen, you can hear scathing verbal salvos against the ego. If you don’t turn away too quickly, you can see the bruises, the shell-shocked gait, and the calloused patches of faces where fists have landed habitually. What you may not be able to avoid is the loud silence that follows news of the death of someone you know who lost their life in their own domestic violence war. Five times, I have heard that grating silence.The first was a deaconess of a church who was taught to pray for her husband while he beat her. He shot her. In the last fifty years, in more than 35 states and nearly 20 countries, I have heard so many justifications of domestic violence as custom, ordinary, even legal by religious tradition. When I heard a preacher shout from a Sunday morning pulpit that wife abuse is a wife’s fault and I saw his wife’s head bow down, I determined to write this book for abused spouses and partners. The Ten Commandments are a social code common to many cultures. In the Ten Commandments are guidelines for harmonious, non-violent relationships. In the Old and New Testaments of the Bible are escape clauses for leaving abusive marriages. If you are abused, a child or friend of an abused person, and especially a religious leader and teacher, this book is written for you. I am not a trained professional. I am one person who is tired of the violence. If you are being abused, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE. You deserve to live and there are people who care. I hope this book will help you realize that you are important and you do not have to sacrifice your self-esteem or body as a sign of religious piety. The Ten Commandments are a guide against abuse and a path to love without war.
