I Left Home at 16
My story begins at 16, leaving a dysfunctional home, navigating two difficult pregnancies by 19 without any support from my partner or family, and for years, I felt isolated and so lonely inside a marriage that was mentally and physically abusive.
Through all of it, I carried this deep inner knowing I couldn’t explain, that this was not how my life was going to end up.
I Left. The Fear Didn’t.
I finally escaped my marriage after 23 years. I was out, yet the feeling of being free and safe was short lived. It was only 3 days until he found me. He bashed on the doors and windows, threatening to smash them in, amplifying my fear to a whole new level. I was scared for my life once again.
The fear I had felt for years didn’t leave me even though I had left him. For three years after leaving, I still lived under the control of my ex-husband. I lived as though he was still around, still watching, still controlling, even though he was no longer physically in my life.
He was gone, yet mentally and emotionally he was still shaping how I showed up, how I reacted and how I felt about myself.
It was time to invest in me, I attended personal development courses, mindset programs and plenty of self-improvement workshops spending thousands of dollars. I worked on myself, right?
Sure, small pieces within began to shift yet that fear and lack of self-value stayed so deeply with me.
I really didn’t know why, especially because I had left my volatile marriage and had done some serious work on myself, or so I thought.
Why did I still feel the way I did?
The Moment Everything Changed
Then came the moment that changed everything, it wasn’t after years of therapy, nor after a breakthrough from a workshop or a structured process.
It came in the middle of an ordinary workday, this defining single awareness, I felt through me, some call it an epiphany:
“While I still fear him, he still controls me and he controls me because I’m allowing him and in turn, I’m handing him my power.”
Wow, why had none of the experts ever shared this perspective, with me.
What Accountability Actually Felt Like
I became accountable, not for his behaviour, yet for the way I was allowing my past to flow into my present.
My past emotional wounds, the ones that had never truly been heard, felt, nurtured, and released, were defining how I was showing up in my new relationship, in work, and in my life. It was time to nurture then release my younger self’s emotional wounds.
Until I became aware of that, nothing was going to change. I would only continue to repeat the patterns that kept me keeping the way I feel.
In that moment, anger took over and I used that anger for courage and strength, I took my power back and chose differently.
This Is Not a Story of Recovery
This is not a story about leaving or a story of recovery.
For many people in abusive relationships, leaving is not simple and the fear of what follows is so deeply real.
What I am speaking to is what became possible for me once I became aware that emotionally, I was still living as though I hadn’t left him.
This is a story of a single moment of accountability. The awareness that the emotional wounds of my younger self, when she was left unheard and unnurtured, it was shaping my life until I choose otherwise.
That one moment of awareness changed how I showed up moving forward.
What emotional wound from your past is still shaping how you show up today?
By Caterina Smillie
Empowering People
About the Author
Caterina Smillie is the founder of Empowering People, a global emotional wellness business and upcoming emotional wellness movement. Having walked her own path from fear and survival to accountability and freedom, Caterina has spent 13 years working with individuals and couples at the emotional root of their behaviours and relationships, guiding people back to their younger self through a process of trust, connection, nurturing, and emotional release.
She lives in Western Australia with her husband, has five adult children and seven grandchildren.
