Homeless, Hurt and Still Here

Chapter 1: Leaving Wasn’t Safe But Staying Was Deadly

When I packed up the house, it wasn’t a fresh start, it was a survival sprint. There were no farewell boxes, no closure, no last look at the walls we once called home. Just urgency. Just a mother clutching her children, racing toward anything that felt safer than staying one more second. Protecting my children was my biggest concern

We didn’t relocate, we escaped.

We landed in a friend’s home. One room. One double bed. Me and my two boys, squeezed into a space meant for one,

We didn’t sleep much. But we were together in a safe place, We didn’t relax. But we breathed. That was enough for now.

There were no routines, no rhythms just the quiet rebellion of still being alive.

And every breath, every morning we opened our eyes together, felt like a victory. Because when survival is the only thing you have left, breathing becomes sacred.

We had nothing, but we had each other. And that was the beginning of something new, even if it didn’t feel like it yet.

Chapter 2: When My Son Finally Spoke the Truth

It was in that cramped, shared room, small and crowded with exhaustion. This was the point that my son finally felt safe enough to start tell me everything. Everything he had been too afraid to say when we were still in the house that broke us.

The truth started with a trickle, then it poured out of him in waves. Nightmares, flashback memories and triggers. Not just the things I had already witnessed, the verbal assaults, the name-calling, the cruelty toward his neurodivergence, that I had already tried to stop and would intervene with but something darker.

“He nearly killed me, Mum.”

Hearing him say those words shattered something in me. My heart. My spirit. My last thread of hope that maybe it hadn’t been as bad as I feared.

He described how he was thrown across a room, nearly missing the head of the bed, saving himself at the last second with his hand against the wall. He walked me through every moment he was grabbed, every time he begged for it to stop. The fear. The shame. The confusion.

He spoke of moments that could have ended in tragedy. Of threats that paralysed him. Of words that bruised his soul:

“Don’t go crying to your mother.”
“You’re stupid.”
“No one will believe you.”

And then, with trembling honesty, he told me about his little brother.

My husband didn’t just hurt me. He hurt my boys.

All that I had feared been confirmed.
All that I hadn’t known been exposed.
All that I’d tried to survive been multiplied in their innocent bodies.

And in that moment, the final pieces of truth settled in. My children weren’t just witnesses.

They were survivors too.

Chapter 3: When the Walls Started Closing In

It wasn’t long before our temporary “safe place” started to crack.

Word got back to him, my husband knew I had left. The real estate agency, the very ones who should have protected our information, failed us. And just like that, he started showing up in our lives again.

First at my friend’s husband’s workplace, the same family who had taken us in. He arrived with a smirk and a story, acting as if he were the wounded one, spinning lies with the ease of someone who had rehearsed them a hundred times.

He played the victim. He performed with charm. And slowly, some of the people around us, good people, started to question what they thought they knew.

But I didn’t fight. I didn’t beg to be believed. I didn’t spiral into despair.

Instead, I looked them in the eye and said, “Be there for him. He needs someone.”

Because I refused to drop to his level. Because I knew the truth would stand, even if no one stood with me.

But in time, that changed, he was caught out in a lie, his masked slipped and then he ran again, watching on knowing this would happened I could only feel bad for people being fooled by him, even after I was questioned. 

Chapter 4: Safety Was Slipping Away Again

The next challenge, he figured out where we were staying. And suddenly, it wasn’t safe anymore. Someone slipped up or we were being watched. After knowing who he is involved with it wouldn’t surprise me if I was being tracked.

People couldn’t understand how dangerous he truly was. They couldn’t grasp who he became in private. They looked at his clean record and kind smile and simply couldn’t comprehend what I was running to protect my children from.

But I had seen it. I had met the people he was connected to, the ones with long histories, dark eyes, and quiet threats.

They didn’t believe he had access to people capable of real harm. But I knew better. I had felt it. Lived it.

So, I didn’t argue. I didn’t try to explain it anymore.

Because I wasn’t running this time, I was planning our next escape.

Chapter 5: The Refuge and the Reckoning

Three weeks in a double bed with two children and an avalanche of trauma finally pushed me to take the next step.

I gathered what little we had. Held my sons’ hands. And walked into a women’s refuge.

No keys.
No stability.
No clear idea of what came next.

But we were alive. We were safe. And we were no longer pretending that everything was okay.

We were homeless.
But we were no longer hidden.

Chapter 6: Hurt, But Still Here

Life in the refuge wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t healing in a spa robe.

It was healing in pyjamas stained with tears, with reheated meals and whispered nighttime comfort. But something began to shift. I began to feel again. To be again.

I laughed with my children. We danced to music in shared rooms. We took deep breaths. We told hard stories. We survived one hour at a time and through it all, God stayed. He didn’t rescue us with fireworks. He sat with us in the mess. And He whispered:

“You are not forgotten. I am with you in the wilderness.”

Affirmation

“I am not a failure because I lost everything — I am a warrior because I refused to lose my soul. My safety matters. My children matter. And my story is not over.”

Prayer

Lord, help me start again even when I have nothing.
Give me strength when all I have left is breath.
Remind me that home is more than walls — it’s peace.

Thank You for giving me the courage to walk away.
For sitting with me in the darkness.
For whispering truth when the world shouted lies.

Help me raise my children in safety.
Help me rebuild in wholeness.
Help me remember — I don’t need perfection. I need presence.
And You are still here.

Amen.