This year I watched some public meetings during the legislative session. At the meetings I attended, I wished that more people from Utah and my community would watch the meetings too.

FROM H.N. IN SALT LAKE COUNTY

CONTENT WARNING: I accidentally shared with my teenage daughter that I had decided to get divorced. Then, because I believed it wasn't fair for her to have to keep a secret like that, I told my husband before I had planned to. He threatened to attack me "if I backed him into a corner," and the verbal abuse escalated for a week until I asked him not to kill me while I was sleeping. After I heard myself say those words, I wasn't able to stay there anymore, and I stayed with a friend.

CONTENT WARNING:

I’ve sold a company. Sit on boards you’d recognize. Handle mergers and acquisitions, get paid to help other people do the same.

I also struggle to have access to my own money, despite enlisting attorneys to help. Go days without being acknowledged. Live under a microscope of judgement, isolated from people who care about me.

I’m your fun neighbor. I’m on PTA and other boards with you. My kids play at your home and on teams with your kids. I attend church weekly with you. My husband is very prominent in his career and we have a well-known name. We have a large home, vacation all over, and are highly respected. However, for the past 25 years, our marriage has been filled with abusive episodes both physical and emotional.

CONTENT WARNING: All my life I have been a rescuer. I was groomed to be that way as I was a victim of childhood molestation at a very young age, along with severe physical and mental abuse.

I am a case manager at the YWCA I support survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault.

I am a lifetime survivor of multi-generational domestic violence and interpersonal violence, and this lived experience is what drove me to reach my career goal of becoming a victim services social worker.

My name is Nicki Nielsen and I've worked as YWCA Utah's Housing Coordinator for over two years. I help survivors access safe and stable housing while offering temporary financial housing assistance.

I’m a professor at the University of Utah in the Eccles School of Business. I teach professional and business communication, but my research focus is on how language and gender and violence intersect in organizations.

I work in direct services for victims of crime, as a victim advocate. I have been doing this for 3 years now. I have helped many survivors through Domestic Violence situations at all levels of "participation."

I am a survivor of domestic abuse. As a well-educated, upper middle class woman, who was not financially dependent on my abuser, I felt a lot of shame around my experience which meant that I suffered in silence for over 10 years.

My name is Aynaelyssya and I am a child that grew up in domestic violence. My family wasn’t a family people would assume were experiencing domestic violence in their home, which only made it harder to talk about and get out of.

Dear Utah, Learning to Live Again: Effects and Impact of Domestic Violence. I have been a victim and I am a survivor of intimate partner violence.

I was fourteen when I met my abuser. He was eighteen. He became controlling and possessive, and by fifteen I was pregnant.