Domestic Violence: A survivor’s story

Last week, clinical social worker Cathy Arney and I explored how environment — particularly an abusive one — can have a tremendous effect on a child’s development. When the home is plagued by violence, that behavior directly and indirectly teaches children that violent, abusive behavior is acceptable — even “normal.”

Today’s podcast guest experienced this firsthand.

Raised by a single mother in a loving and supportive home, Jenissee Volpintesta says that the home she and her sisters grew up in had instances of abuse by her mother’s partner. Jenissee left the house at 17, and shortly after moved in with her boyfriend and became pregnant with his child. Within a matter of months, she says the relationship became abusive.

“As the product of an abusive household…I felt like it was normal for me to be in [an abusive relationship],” she says. Jenissee explains how being caught up in the cycle of violence in some ways blinded her to the red flags in the relationship, allowing her to stay in it. In that seven-year relationship, she says she left “more times than I can count,” even moving herself and her two small boys into a shelter. But as we discussed last week, the psychology of abuse is wildly complex, and Jenissee found herself going back many times before she was able to end it for good.

“There is this want to create a ‘nuclear family’, especially when you come from a broken home, where there was an absent parent,” Jenissee says.

To close this series, Jenissee Volpintesta was brave enough to share her story. Today, she describes the physical, emotional and psychological abuse she endured, and how she was (eventually) able to confront her abusers and create a new life for herself and for her children.

Listen now:

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