My husband Bill and I have been together eleven wonderful years. We live in upstate South Carolina with our two beautiful daughters Emma Grace and Haili Louise and our pit-bull, Bruno. Deep down, I always wanted to be a writer. I always thought I would write about my personal life and my own troubled past, but there was another story brewing inside of me.

When I was 17, I had a friend who was in an abusive relationship and couldn’t see how bad the situation was for her. I put a similar story on paper and let her read it with other people’s names attached to it. I played it off like I wanted her opinion. First off, she thought I was nuts for wanting to write a book. If you knew me, you would understand I am the most southern-slang, illiterate person you will ever meet, but that’s what editors are for, right?

I asked her what she thought of it and she was appalled at the female’s behavior. She couldn’t believe how she was so easily manipulated into doing things she wouldn’t normally do, and how the man treated the woman. So I asked her, “How is that different from your situation?” Her face lit up as she had an ‘aha’ moment. Then she realized what I was doing and got really pissed.

She didn’t talk to me for a month, which was the longest we had gone without speaking in the year we had been friends. One day she called me and insisted that we go to lunch. I was not prepared for what I saw when I arrived and sat across from her in a booth.

She looked up at me and I immediately noticed her black eye and busted lip. We talked about what had happened and what her options were. She left him, but went back to him several weeks later.

My friend died two weeks after she left my home. He had come home drunk and for reasons only he knew, he beat her until she was dead and then killed himself. A beautiful person was lost in an act of violence and I wrote this story for her.

If you are like my friend, please get help while you can. You are precious and mean something to someone. There is someone out there that loves you and needs you. There is someone out there that smiles every time they think of you. If you feel like you have no one, then please know you have me. I may be a stranger and live on the other side of the world from you but your life means something to me. I will do whatever I can to ensure that someone else doesn’t suffer my friend’s fate. Email me and I will help you find the appropriate resources needed to help you.