When I was 19 I was a regular college student on Spring Break with my friends. My life was about my design classes, sororities, and parties, and my biggest problem was that my Victoria’s Secret bikini might not arrive before we left for Florida. If you asked me where I thought I would be in 4 years I would never have imagined I would be going through a divorce with a war veteran who beat me routinely, struggling with anxiety and PTSD, and still looking at apartments in NYC because I refused to let a man take one more thing away from me.

Coming out of 4 years in a violent, abusive relationship at 22 I went through a range of emotions- loneliness, sadness, stress, regret, and finally, anger. Anger towards my abuser for what he did to me, but beyond that, anger at the system that doesn’t educate young people about what a healthy vs. unhealthy relationship looks like. I had sat through all the sex ed classes, watched the movies, I knew what abuse looked like. Abusers were angry, evil men who coerced their partners into staying with them through threats and force. And while I’m sure that’s the case in some relationships, it wasn’t the case for mine. I had never heard of gaslighting, psychological abuse, or understood the role that guilt has to play in manipulating victims of domestic violence to stay with their abusers.

Coming to the realization that this is an avoidable situation that 1/3 women and 1/10 men go through, the only thing I wanted was to spread awareness of what domestic abuse actually looks like, and try to prevent these situations from happening again. At the same time, I wanted to give survivors and allies a way to spread awareness without needing to speak or share. Telling your story is really scary, not everyone is comfortable doing so and that’s ok.

Thus, RUHN was born.