Genesis The Podcast

Unveiling Domestic Violence: Breaking Myths and Empowering Survivors with Leslie Morgan Steiner

September 09, 2024 • Genesis Women's Shelter & Support • Season 4 • Episode 1

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In our season four premiere of Genesis The Podcast, we welcome New York Times bestselling author Leslie Morgan Steiner, who takes us on a deeply personal journey of understanding domestic violence. Leslie shares insights from her transformative 2012 TED Talk, debunking the myths and stereotypes that often surround victims of abuse. She reveals that abuse can affect anyone, regardless of their demographic, and stresses the importance of breaking down these harmful misconceptions to prevent victim-blaming.

Leslie’s compelling narrative continues as she recounts her own experience in an abusive relationship, illustrating how abusers can seem wonderful at times, making it incredibly challenging for victims to leave. She discusses the crucial role of research and supportive friendships in overcoming denial and ultimately making the difficult decision to escape for her safety. Leslie also touches on the significant impact of talking openly about abuse with children, stressing that they are much more resilient and perceptive than we often give them credit for. This conversation aims to shatter the silence that perpetuates cycles of violence and to offer hope and guidance for those in similar situations.

Speaker 1:

Today begins season four of Genesis the Podcast, and here to kick things off is New York Times bestselling author, leslie Morgan Steiner. I'm Maria McMullin and this is Genesis the Podcast. Leslie Morgan Steiner is an author, consultant and thought leader on women's leadership, work-life balance, inspirational parenting, overcoming adversity and surviving violence against women. Who lives in Washington DC, she is the author of four books, numerous articles and a groundbreaking TED Talk about domestic violence. It is season four kickoff day and I'm thrilled about the guests we have coming up on the show over the next few months, not the least of which is today's guest, leslie Morgan Steiner. In the next few episodes we will be dispelling myths, breaking down what underlies domestic violence and, to put it plainly, smashing the patriarchy. Be sure you subscribe to Genesis the Podcast so you never miss an episode, leslie welcome back to the podcast.

Speaker 2:

It's my pleasure to be back, Maria.

Speaker 1:

And you are my season four opener. Okay, so this has to be a good show, right? I know it's going to be a great show. It's going to be the best Okay.

Speaker 1:

Because way back in 2021, you helped us launch Genesis, the podcast. We're very grateful that you are our very first guest on our very first episode. Now, a lot has happened since then. I've seen you a couple of times over the past couple of years at the Conference on Crimes Against Women and all the work that you post on social media. Because you do so much, I mean you're so much more than a New York Times bestselling author. I mean you just you're everywhere, right.

Speaker 2:

You know, my heart is in empowering women in any way I can, and I find that social media is a really terrific tool to reach people.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think everyone should follow you at Leslie Books on Instagram, just like I do, because your posts are great and you do fun things. You do other fun things, too. We can talk about those offline, but you are prolific on so many levels. Not the least is how patriarchy influences our daily lives and continues to diminish the very existence of women. As discouraging as that sounds, it doesn't stop you or me, or Genesis, the Podcast or anyone who believes in an equitable future from working against it.

Speaker 1:

In doing so, we so often reveal troubling concepts that challenge the work. Among them are society's misconceptions regarding abusive relationships and this is an important one because it has deep roots and a long history, and there are many myths and misconceptions about domestic violence that hopefully we can dispel today. To begin with, stereotyping victims, and you called this specific thing out in your 2012 TED Talk on the topic, and if people haven't heard this TED Talk, you can go to TEDcom, you can go to YouTube or just Google Leslie Morgenstein or TED Talk and it will come up, and it is a fantastic foundation for what it is to be a survivor of domestic violence. But you talked about stereotyping victims in that TED Talk, and so tell us what you said about that in the TED Talk?

Speaker 2:

about that in the TED Talk. What I said much more succinctly in the TED Talk because TED Talk has to be short is that the stereotypes about victims. They hurt every kind of victim. They hurt people who grew up with domestic violence in their family because we think it's normal, or if you grow up without domestic violence, you think it's never going to happen to you. So basically, the stereotypes try to imply that if you look a certain way, if you are poor, if you are an immigrant, if you have quote unquote too many children, or if you have no self-esteem or if you're stupid, then you're going to be in an abusive relationship and that implies that it is your fault and it's just completely not true.

Speaker 2:

Abusive relationships happen in every single community, every demographic, every religion, every neighborhood. It doesn't matter what the color of your skin or your accent or lack of accent, or what kind of education you have or your IQ. Everybody is vulnerable to being an abuse victim. And what I found over the decades that I've been doing this work is that victims have only one thing in common, and that is that we are really forgiving big hearted people, and that is that we are really forgiving big hearted people and we don't leave at the first sign of trouble because we tend to feel sympathy for the abusers and we tend to love them very much and honestly. Perpetrators look for victims like that, because it's much easier to get away with abuse, whether it's physical or emotional, if you find somebody really big hearted and forgiving. So I find that none of the stereotypes apply at all and they are very, very dangerous and destructive because at the heart of any stereotype is blaming the victim, and victims should never be blamed. It's not our fault.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's very true. I mean, the typical idea of victims is a person who is very vulnerable, but, as you call out, you didn't have those vulnerabilities at the time that you became the target of your fiance and then husband's power and control any of the stereotypes either.

Speaker 2:

We both had just graduated from Ivy League schools, we were living in New York City, I was working at 17 Magazine, he was working at a big, well-known investment bank and we had this really bright future in front of us.

Speaker 2:

And I would have told you myself, maria, that I was the last person on earth who would quote unquote let a man abuse me, because I believed all the stereotypes too and I thought I was too strong and too smart and too independent to ever be a victim of abuse. But I was a typical victim in so many ways, in large part just because of my age. You know, those of us who work in this field know that women and girls 16 to 24 are three times as likely to be victims of abuse as women of different ages. And I was 22 when I met him. I was 23 when I married him and happily I defied a lot of stereotypes and that I left him fairly quickly. I was 27 when I left him and I always say to people it was a relatively short marriage, it was a relatively short abusive relationship, but to me it felt like it lasted forever because it was so frightening and so just terrifying and I felt so trapped for so long.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm sure that felt like an eternity. And I've read the book Crazy Love, which kind of the memoir which talks about what happened to you over those four years, and I'm right there with you, talks about what happened to you over those four years. And I'm right there with you, I felt like it was much longer than four years when I, when I read the book, I was like, oh, this is you know, it felt like a lifetime right.

Speaker 2:

It was a lifetime, it really was.

Speaker 1:

Let's talk about some of the other misconceptions you've experienced, and maybe you can also elaborate on how you respond to them. When you're confronted with people's ideas, that may not be true.

Speaker 2:

So the basis of my TED Talk and the biggest misconception of all is when people say why doesn't she just leave? And that question that I have heard, I think, hundreds of times, is what motivated me to write Crazy Love and to do my TED Talk, because there's just so much ignorance and even victim blaming in that question why doesn't she just leave? It implies that leaving is easy and it implies that it is our fault for staying. And there are dozens of reasons why victims don't leave. We love the abuser, we feel sorry for him, we have children with him, we don't have enough money because he has taken financial control of our life, we have cultural pressures that tell us that you need to stay married, you need to stay with somebody for the children.

Speaker 2:

There are so many reasons why we stay and the way that I handle this when I talk to people who are naive, is, first of all, inside myself.

Speaker 2:

I try to stay very calm, I try not to get angry because it just pushes people away, and I just I try to connect with the person asking the question and I try to explain to them why I stayed and how much I loved him and how much I wanted to help him and I asked them to think about the relationships that they've been in, because just about everybody has been in some kind of emotionally abusive relationship, and sometimes physically abusive too.

Speaker 2:

Often it's a romantic partner, but sometimes it's just, you know, a best friend from sixth grade who bullied you, or a boss who is taking advantage of you and making you work too late or doing things that you shouldn't.

Speaker 2:

Your job descriptions does not entail. We've all been on the receiving end of somebody who took advantage of us, and so I try to connect with people and get them to think about that so that they can have sympathy for the victim instead of jumping to blaming the victim, because part of the patriarchy is that in any crime that is highly gendered so I'm talking about domestic violence, sexual assault, trafficking, sexual harassment our instinct and it is an instinct is to blame the victim right away, because it's so much easier to blame a woman for being the victim of a crime than to blame a man for perpetrating it, because if we blame the man and we hold men responsible, we have to upset the whole entire societal system, and that's really hard for us and it takes a lot of courage. So that's what I try to do and I try to get people to see this from the victim's standpoint, and almost always the victim is a woman, in this case.

Speaker 1:

That's great, that's great advice and you know, I guess the misconception there is that a woman would allow herself to be abused and then stay in it, and it causes people to ask the question why didn't she just leave?

Speaker 2:

causes people to ask the question why didn't she just leave? It implies almost that we like it, that we like being abused, or that we did this on purpose, that we purposefully fell in love with somebody abusive, and I just promise everybody listening out there that is not how it happens. Every single abusive relationship starts like a fairy tale. Perpetrators are brilliant at seeing what we want and what we need, and they're very insightful people. I, my abusive ex-husband. He made me feel like he was the first person on earth who ever really saw me, who understood me, who, who knew my hopes and dreams, and I'll give you a couple of examples of things that he said to me when we were first dating, you know when.

Speaker 2:

I was starting out, I just graduated from Harvard. I was a writer and editor at Seventeen Magazine. I was 22 years old. He told me that he knew I was going to be a great writer one day. He told me that he also knew writer one day. He told me that he also knew that I was going to be a great mother one day which, trust me, no one, not even my own mother, had ever said that to me and he just believed in me in a way that made me feel like I could leap tall buildings in a single bound. I mean, I felt like he made me feel so safe and protected and like he was the biggest cheerleader on earth, and that is really intoxicating. I didn't see any red flags. I don't think there were any red flags at the beginning and I didn't.

Speaker 2:

When he started abusing me. I didn't enjoy it. It was terrifying to me. It broke my heart into a million pieces that this man who I loved so much was turning on me. It made me feel unsafe and it also made me feel like I couldn't tell anybody, because I wanted to protect him, because I loved him, and I thought that was what true love was all about, and he had been terribly abused as a small child and I knew it wasn't his fault that he was abusing me. You know, I it was all so complicated and there's not a victim on earth who enjoys being abused, and the fact that anybody still thinks that in this day and age is so unfair and enraging to me, and it just shows that people really need to learn about abuse before they have any opinion about it whatsoever about abuse before they have any opinion about it whatsoever.

Speaker 1:

Well said, that is so well said, and I thank you for offering that wisdom to us. One of the best responses I think I've ever heard to the idea of why doesn't she just leave came from Rachel Louise Snyder. She was abused as a child and so this really wasn't domestic violence per se, but it's a lot more complicated than that, right, and so we were talking about her, her personal experience with abuse, and she said you know, it's not that we want the relationship to end, we just want the abuse to stop, because we do often love this person.

Speaker 2:

It's exactly true.

Speaker 2:

I felt that way every day of my abusive marriage that I wanted to go back to the beginning, when he was that wonderful person I loved every day. And what happened during the abuse cycle is that sometimes he was this enraged monster who strangled me and pushed me downstairs and pulled out the keys in the car as I was driving down the highway and held loaded guns to my head. Sometimes he was that crazy person, but then the next day he would be that man who loved me and made me laugh and told me again and again how talented I was and how smart I was and how beautiful I was. And that's what's so hard about this is that in my particular case, my abuser was 49% the most wonderful person I'd ever met, and I really mean that. It wasn't like I had Stockholm syndrome or he was snookering me. He really was wonderful 49%, but 51% he was the most damaged, the most damaged and destructive and fortunately, over time, my denial broke down. I had two friends who knew about the abuse and they helped break down my denial.

Speaker 2:

Friends who knew about the abuse and they helped break down my denial and I did a lot of research about domestic violence, even as I, when I was in denial and I would have I wouldn't have been able to tell you that I was being abused, but I still was researching it and learning about it, and that broke down. My own denial and that's how I was able to leave myself is that I realized that he was going to kill me if I stayed, and I didn't. I did not want that and I knew the abuse was never going to end. One of the biggest misconceptions is that abuse won't happen to you, and that's what I thought when I was 22 years old and it happened to me, and in some ways, it's something that I still need to remember today that even though I'm an abuse survivor, it could still happen to me, because abuse is so common and perpetrators are so good at convincing us to love them. So I'm not telling people to be paranoid or to never trust, but to just know that it could happen to anybody. That's one thing.

Speaker 2:

Another misconception is that you shouldn't talk to children about abusive relationships, that somehow they're too fragile or too tender, and what we know is that over 15 million children are abused every year just in our country, and so what we need to understand is that abuse is already happening to children and that if we don't talk about it, all we're communicating to children is that this is a taboo subject that they should never talk about. And I talk to my children about it. I've talked to their friends about it. I try to demystify and de-stigmatize abuse around children by talking about it in very simple, appropriate ways that they can understand that hitting somebody is never okay and that being hit is never okay. Because I want children, I want to break the cycle of abuse by reaching as many children as I can and explain to them that abuse, any kind of abuse, is never okay and that they should always talk about it. They should break the silence if it happens to them.

Speaker 1:

That's wonderful advice, because definitely silence, especially by children, will only perpetuate more violence.

Speaker 2:

It helps no one. Abuse thrives only in silence. It's true.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. That's really powerful. Thank you for sharing all of that with us. And yet you know domestic violence like what you experienced not all that long ago, right? What were the years that you were there?

Speaker 2:

You know, it actually was so long ago and I think about this often, especially on the anniversary of our wedding date. It was I mean, it was about it was 30 years ago that I, that I, left him.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

And so it was the nineties. We met in 1988. We married in in 89. And I was divorced from him by 93. Okay.

Speaker 2:

So, the late eighties and early nineties. Yeah, yeah, very, very different time, maria, because that was that was before VAWA, the violence against women act, passed in um in 1992, I believe. And it was a very, very different time Like, for instance, the police did not arrest him. Then, when they came after the final beating and I was, I was horribly beaten and they could have arrested him. They had plenty of evidence to do that, but they didn't know. They knew a lot about domestic violence but they hadn't gone through all of the police training and all the education awareness that helps victims so much. Now, I mean this is sort of a funny thing to say, but it's a much better time to be a victim now than it was when I was a victim.

Speaker 1:

Oh, there are so many, so many more laws and resources for people who are victims of domestic violence. Now You're right. So wait a minute. They didn't arrest him, and why? Why didn't they arrest him?

Speaker 2:

You know, I wish I could go and interview those police officers and ask them why they didn't. The truth is I don't know. I think that what they were focused on was helping me, and thank goodness they were focused on me. I was very fortunate that, because sometimes the police can't tell exactly who the victim is, they don't know enough about abuse to suss that out, or they blame the victim, especially if they've been to the same residence multiple times, or especially if the victim is a minority and she has children, because they see that she's endangering the children. So I was, you know, a white, 26 year old Wharton business school student. Like I couldn't have been more sympathetic. And the police officers were also Caucasian and they knew so much about abuse and they focused all their energies on breaking through to me. And they did break through. They told me that if I let him come back, that he would kill me and that they would find me dead on my own living room floor. They told me what I needed to do, which was that I needed to go file a temporary restraining order at city hall, that I needed to come to their police station the next day. Their police station was only six blocks away, but I had no idea where it was. You know, I just had no idea. I didn't know that it was a crime. They told me that it was a crime what he was doing and that I could press charges.

Speaker 2:

And I couldn't press charges. I couldn't possibly press charges. I didn't even want to go to the hospital. I didn't want to admit that any. I didn't want to admit the truth to myself that this had happened, which is the heart, I think, of denial. But the police officers really broke through and scared I was. I was scared anyway. I was terrified because he had almost killed me, ripped off all my clothes and strangled me into unconsciousness and broken my favorite wedding picture over my head. You know I was covered in blood and I was bruised and bloodied and you know it was a horrific thing. But the police used that moment to break through to my denial and to convince me that I had to save myself. And they did that and I wish that they had gone in and arrested him that night. They could have.

Speaker 2:

Um, I couldn't press charges cause I was in too much shock. But the reason that I wish that they had they had arrested him was that it would have helped me a lot. It would have helped my divorce a lot, but also it would have helped him. It would have helped break through his denial and to my knowledge, 30 years later, he's never gotten any help for it. I believe that he's gone on to abuse other people. It's a tragedy. My story is not a tragedy. My story has a really happy ending. I'm not so sure. His has a happy ending.

Speaker 1:

That's remarkable. So when we look at your story and we, you know, we fast forward 30 years to here we are, in 2024, there are still a lot of stories that sound just like yours.

Speaker 2:

Exactly like mine. I mean, you know, maria, it's almost like abusers have all taken the same class or read the same script, because they say the exact same things. It doesn't matter if you're gay, straight, you know what your ethnicity is, how old you are, how many kids you have with them. They all say the same thing and it happens all the time, and it's one reason why I'm so involved with Conference on Crimes Against Women In Dallas every May. That is the best conference that I go to, because there's an endless supply of victims. There's always somebody just like me who is trustworthy and big hearted and who believes that we can help this poor guy to you know, learn what love really is and to feel safe. And we can't help them. They must learn to help themselves, and we have to put a lot more resources into helping perpetrators to break the cycle. We always need to help victims. That's the first task and that's why I speak out, because I think it helps victims a lot to know that somebody like me was a victim too. It has nothing to do with being stupid, it has nothing to do with self-esteem, and that also that you can get out and live a great life.

Speaker 2:

You know, it was a relatively short and horrible and transformative time in my life. But it was short and at 27, I was able to pick myself up, leave the geographic area where he was, get a new job, start over. I remarried a couple of years later. I had three kids with my second husband. I've had an incredible career. I've had a life entirely free of violence. Since then. My kids have had a life free of violence. I've put everything that happened to me. I've used it as a force for good to raise awareness about abuse and also to heal myself and to make sure that I broke the cycle of violence in my own family.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you're amazing and I'm so glad that you made it through and took care of yourself and we got to meet and work together on the conference on crimes against women and lots of other things. But you really hit on something about talking about. You know, abusers are all the same. They say all the same things, they do the same things. The underpinning there is patriarchal social conditioning, and so we've never actually stopped as a society allowing people to get away with being abusive, teaching boys that in order to be considered a man, you have to be aggressive, you have to show your strength, and all the other stereotypes, if you will, that kind of go along with that, which are actually myths about what manhood is. I know you want to comment on this, so go ahead.

Speaker 2:

There's just so much to say about this. The fundamental reason why men hurt women is because they can, because our society lets them, and if you commit sexual assault or sexual harassment or domestic violence or trafficking, there is a single digit chance that you're going to go to jail. We just don't take crimes against women as seriously as we should. We don't believe victims when they come forward. Family court judges don't believe victims, police officers don't, detectives don't. It is still a knee-jerk reaction to believe men more than to believe women. So when you have a gendered crime which all of these are the victim is a woman, the perpetrator is a man and he has an advantage from the very beginning. We also are very good as a society at shaming victims into staying silent, convincing us that no one will believe us or that we'll be damaged goods. If we admit that we were sexually assaulted or a victim of domestic violence or sexual. If we're a victim of sexual harassment, we're not going to get another job. If we're a victim of trafficking, people are going to think that we're sullied and that we're we're no good anymore. I mean, there's so much that goes into blaming victims and shaming them and silencing us, and there's also so much that goes into convincing men that this is okay, that it is their right, if a woman rejects them, to hurt her, to even to kill her, that it is somehow okay, if you're a college student to put a drug in somebody's drink at your fraternity and then sexually assault her, like the things that men are told. It's just barbaric the messages that men get that they are allowed to do this because they're superior to women. And it starts so early.

Speaker 2:

And I'll tell you two stories from my own family that are horrifying and really common. The one involves my mother, so my mother. Both of my parents are dead now, but my mom was my mother, so my mother. Both of my parents are dead now, but my mom was my hero. She was beautiful. She had gone to Harvard College herself, she was really accomplished, and she I watched my father every single day of our family life denigrate her. He never told her that she was beautiful. He never told her that she was a good cook. He never told her that she was smart. He made fun of her job.

Speaker 2:

She was a teacher. She was a special education teacher and he denigrated that all the time because of his own insecurities, and my mother loved him so much of his own insecurities and my mother loved him so much. And he my mom came from a very waspy family. Generations of Harvard educated people, men and women and my father came from a poor, dirt poor family here. He was the only person in his family who'd ever even graduated from high school and my mom encouraged him and put him through Harvard Law School and did all this great stuff and he paid her back by just mocking her in front of us all the time. And that experience of seeing my own father who I loved ridicule and denigrate my mother because she was a woman it shaped my entire life. My entire life has been committed to convincing people to respect women and to take them seriously, and it's because of what I saw in my own family.

Speaker 1:

Yeah Well, thank you for that. That was one example, and I want to get to the second one. But I wanted to ask you a question. Sure, when you were a child growing up and you were witnessing this happening right there within your family, Were you conscious that this was a wrong, that this was wrong? Like? Did you, did it register for you? Or was it later that you kind of understood this was a very abusive dynamic.

Speaker 2:

I wasn't conscious of it at all and in fact I did what a lot of people do in a situation like that that I thought you know what I want to be my dad. I want to be the one with power here. I want to be the one who leaves the house every day and goes make, makes lots of money as a corporate lawyer and gets to decide. You know everything that my mother does when we, and everything the whole family does. So I worked really hard in school and I went to business school because I wanted to be my dad and it took me a long time to realize that my mom was the real hero in the family and my dad was the villain, but that I mean. That took me probably 40 years to realize that.

Speaker 2:

It comes very slowly because you know my father. To my knowledge, my father never hit my mother, but he emotionally abused her and abuse is really subtle in so many ways. And the thing that I hate the most about emotional abuse is that you don't realize that when it's happening, or when it's happening to somebody you love, it's that subtle and it doesn't it's. Often I talk to so many victims of emotional abuse who don't realize they were emotionally abused until after the relationship ends. And that's me, with what happened in my family, but it's also my mom. I don't know if my mom would have ever said that my father emotionally abused her. She would have said that he was cruel to her and not fair. But you know, she was a woman of a different generation and she saw most relationships were like this.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, for sure. What's the second story you were going to tell us?

Speaker 2:

Okay, flash forward to the next generation, two generations actually to my daughter. I have two daughters and a son and I love them both so much and they're very well-versed in emotional and physical violence, because I've talked to them openly about it when they were little.

Speaker 2:

But my daughter's sixth birthday party, we had a little pool party in the backyard. It was very casual and really fun and one of her classmates, who was a boy in front of me and his mother, punched her in the stomach and I went to comfort my daughter and the mother of the boy came to my daughter and said do you know why he did that? He did that because he has a crush on you. And thank goodness, I know so much about a crush on you and thank goodness I know so much about abuse, and I also, thank goodness, I was really angry and I didn't hold back and I said that is not true. He does not have a crush on you. That's not why he hit you. He hit you because he has a problem with his anger and he needs to deal with that. Wow, yeah, and I've banned him from our house for for like two years. He eventually came back because he had dealt with his anger better.

Speaker 2:

But you know, it's like it starts so early that you have an adult woman saying to a six-year-old this is your fault and this is love. This is a kind of love, Right? Just craziness, but that's what we see all the time, don't you? I see that all the time, that kind of incredible mixed messaging, letting little boys off the hook for being angry and somehow, in a twisted way, telling a little girl she should be flattered, that she was punched in the stomach at her own birthday party.

Speaker 1:

Right. I mean that's it's awful in so many ways, but it also tells a victim like you just should just take it. I mean you should be flattered. At least you're getting some kind of attention, right.

Speaker 2:

Well, it's like it's the crime of passion argument yeah, that, oh, he loved her so much, he was just so jealous he had to kill her. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's also Twisted. Yeah, very twisted, very crazy. We talked about this a couple minutes ago, but you presented the first ever TED Talk by a domestic violence survivor. Tell us about that experience and how it empowered you and others and how it influenced your future work.

Speaker 2:

So the first thing for me was to break the silence by talking about abuse and writing Crazy Love, and that took me 10 years after my abusive marriage ended. That was a huge thing. Crazy Love was a New York Times bestseller. I got a lot of attention from it and I was able to speak out about it. But the TED Talk took Breaking the Silence to an entirely new level because the TED Talk in the first four hours that the TED Talk was posted, more people watched that TED Talk than had bought Crazy Love in four years.

Speaker 2:

Ted Talks have incredible reach and it was within 24 hours. It was translated into over 40 languages. It was really explosive and it led to a lot of other media appearances. I was on Anderson Cooper four times. I did a lot of huge media because of the TED Talk. So it really amplified my voice in a way that was really powerful and it also for me.

Speaker 2:

It was so healing for me because I felt like all of those people who heard me in my TED Talk and on CNN and everywhere else that I went.

Speaker 2:

They believed me and the most powerful you can thing you can do for any victim, maria, is to believe them when they tell their story, when they have the courage to tell their story, to believe them. It also did something so incredible for me. It helped me almost change the past, because I felt like all of those people who listened to me and who listened to me talk about being alone in my abusive marriage, because one of the most crippling things about being abused is that it happens behind closed doors, usually just with you and the abuser, so you feel so alone. And having all these people that you know 10 million people who've watched the Ted talk and the countless other millions who've heard me tell my story, different media outlets and podcasts such as this they make me feel supported and like I'm not alone, and that's what I want as a survivor of abuse. I think it's what most victims want is to feel like they're believed and they're no longer alone and that they're safe.

Speaker 1:

That's incredible. That's an extremely empowering outcome from just doing that one thing. Ted Talks are like 20 minutes right.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, mine was 16 minutes. I will tell you, though, that it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. Telling my story is always hard. It's always so personal and it makes me feel kind of like I'm walking down a highway naked. But that TED Talk was excruci personal and it makes me feel kind of like I'm walking down a highway naked, but that TED Talk was excruciating, and it took me four months of daily prep to memorize that speech, and I was coached through it extensively by the people at TED.

Speaker 2:

Now, I was really lucky that a boy who I had known since second grade was my coach for the TED Talk. He's a curator Yep, his name is Phil Klein Wonderful, wonderful human being. He curates the TEDxSeattle Talks, and he's the one who convinced me to do it and he's the one who helped me with it. He also Maria. He did something so great because he took the template of my talk and he told me that it was a great talk but that I had to really push myself to reach everybody people who didn't care about abuse and people who didn't care about women's issues. I had to get them to.

Speaker 2:

So there's a point in my TED talk where I pivot and I say you might be thinking that I was really stupid to say in this abusive relationship, or that I'm really strong and smart that I got out. Stupid to stay in this abusive relationship, or that I'm really strong and smart that I got out. But this whole time that you think I've been talking about me, I actually have been talking about you. I've been talking about you, your daughter, your wife, your sister, your employee, your neighbor, because that's how common abuse is. It happens everywhere. This is not a women's issue. This isn't everyone's issue, and Phil Kline, because he was so smart, is the one who really helped me create the TED Talk that is there today. There's one of the funny details about this and one of the reasons I think the talk is so strong is that my coach was somebody who I trusted so very much.

Speaker 1:

Yes, yes, well, that's a great story, leslie. Thank you for telling us all about that. Well, that's a great story, leslie. Thank you for telling us all about that. So I want you to wrap us up today with a very important message that is a kind of a quote from that TED Talk that we've been talking about for the past half hour. Can you share that message, the closing message of your TED Talk, with us?

Speaker 2:

Most definitely, I was able to end my own crazy love story by breaking the silence. I'm still breaking the silence today. It's my way of helping other victims and it's my final request of you Talk about what you heard here. Abuse thrives only in silence. So you have the power to end domestic violence simply by shining a spotlight on it. We victims need everyone. We need every one of you to understand the secrets of domestic violence. Show abuse the light of day by talking about it with your children, your co-workers, your friends and family. Recast survivors as wonderful, lovable people with full futures. Recognize the early signs of violence and conscientiously intervene. De-escalated it. Show victims a safe way out. Together we can make our beds, our dinner tables and our families the safe and peaceful oases they should be. Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Crazy Love was authored by Leslie Morgan Steiner and published in 2009. Among the book's many pearls of wisdom is this summary that can be found on her website, lesliemorgansteinercom.

Speaker 2:

If you and I met at one of our children's birthday parties, in the hallway at work or at a neighbor's barbecue, you'd never guess my secret that as a young woman, I fell in love with and married a man who beat me regularly and nearly killed me. I don't look the part. I have an MBA and an undergraduate degree from Ivy League schools. I live in a red brick house on a tree-lined street in one of the prettiest neighborhoods in Washington DC. I've got 15 years of marketing experience at Fortune 500 companies and a best-selling book about motherhood to my name. A smart, loyal husband with a sexy gap in his front teeth, a softie who puts out food for the stray kittens in our alley, three rambunctious, well-loved children, a dog and three cats of our own.

Speaker 2:

Everyone in my family is blonde the people at least. Oh, if only being well-educated and blonde and coming from a good family were enough to defang all life's demons. If I were brave enough, the first time I met you, I'd try to share what torture it is to fall in love with a good man who cannot leave a troubled past behind. I'd tell you why I stayed for years and how I finally confronted someone whose love I valued almost more than my own life. Then maybe the next time you came across a woman in an abusive relationship, instead of asking why anyone stays with a man who beats her, you'd have the empathy and courage to help her on her way. We all have secrets we don't reveal the first time we cross paths with others. This is mine.

Speaker 1:

If there's one key takeaway from this episode, perhaps it is that, in order to break the cycle of violence against women, we must dismantle what we think we know and, in doing so, uncover and lay bare the roots of this violence, exposing the truth about what has happened and how we got here and extend a hand to all women in help, hope and support. In our next episode, we expose the roots of sexual harassment and how it is linked to sexual assault and intimate partner violence and how it is caused by patriarchal social conditioning. I hope you'll join us for that conversation. Take care to sexual assault and intimate partner violence and how it is caused by patriarchal social conditioning. I hope you'll join us for that conversation. Take care.

Speaker 1:

Genesis Women's Shelter and Support exists to give women in abusive situations a way out. We are committed to our mission of providing safety, shelter and support for women and children who have experienced domestic violence and to raise awareness regarding its cause, prevalence and impact. Join us in creating a societal shift on how people think about domestic violence. You can learn more at genesisshelterorg and when you follow us on social media on Facebook and Instagram at Genesis Women's Shelter and on X at Genesis Shelter. The Genesis Helpline is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by call or text at 214-946-HELP 214-946-4357.