Because not all survivors leave. And not all strength looks like escape.
There’s a part no one sees.
When people hear the word “abuse,” they picture bruises, broken plates, screaming matches.
What they don’t see is the woman quietly opening her laptop the next morning —
because that’s the only place she feels like she exists.
That was me.
People ask, “Why didn’t you leave?”
And I don’t know where to start.
Should I talk about the night he hit me, and I still opened my laptop the next morning because a client was waiting?
Should I talk about the way I’d cry in the bathroom, wipe my face, and come back to a Zoom call like nothing happened?
Should I say that even though I was surviving abuse, I never missed a deadline?
Because that’s the truth.
My work — my business — was the one thing that kept me alive.
It gave me something no one else did: identity. Dignity. Autonomy.
When the rest of my life felt like a prison, work felt like breath.
But here’s the part I didn’t admit for a long time:
It was also the reason I couldn’t leave.
I didn’t have the luxury to break.
Not when I had campaigns running.
Not when I was the only one holding the finances together.
Not when the one space where I still felt like me — was also the one I had to protect at all costs.
In 2022, I came close.
I thought, Maybe this is it. Maybe I leave now.
But I didn’t.
Because I had a launch.
A team relying on me.
Deadlines, deliverables, momentum.
People think women stay because they’re weak.
But many of us stay because we’re strong in the wrong direction.
Because we’ve built systems that work — even when we’re falling apart.
I didn’t stay because I didn’t recognise the abuse.
I stayed because I was already functioning at maximum capacity — and still barely holding it all up.
People around me praised me.
“You’re a powerhouse.”
“You’re so driven.”
“You do it all.”
And I did.
But I also bled.
I also flinched when doors slammed.
I also rehearsed excuses for bruises that never showed.
There were days I thought, I’ll run away. I’ll go to the mountains. Or hell. Or just anywhere else.
But even in that fantasy, I saw my inbox.
I saw the next pitch.
I saw my kids’ school calendar.
I saw the work — the one thing that kept me alive also keeping me stuck.
Work was my control.
Work was my safety.
Work was the only place I was allowed to be excellent.
And in a world that told me I was too much, too dramatic, too angry —
work was the only place I was just… enough.
So no, I didn’t walk away.
Not yet.
Because I couldn’t afford to stop.
Work was my heaven.
Work was my hell.
And I lived in both — every single day.
This is the piece no one writes — because it’s not clean. It doesn’t end with freedom. It sits in the middle of the mess, exactly where so many women live.
If this story echoes your own — or someone you know — don’t scroll past.
🫶 Share it. Save it. Send it.
Let’s open the conversation around invisible battles, silent strength, and the complicated truths we rarely say out loud.
