“Get out of the car right now,” my mother ordered while rain hammered the highway and my three-day-old twins cried in their car seats, and when I begged her to stop because the babies were newborns, my father grabbed my hair and pushed me out onto the road while the car was still moving…

My mother Deborah Foster sat silently in the passenger seat staring straight ahead without turning around even once, while my father Franklin Foster sat beside me in the back seat pressed close to the door as if physical distance could protect him from the embarrassment he believed I had brought upon our family.

The silence inside that vehicle felt heavier than the pounding rain outside, and the only sound breaking the tension was the faint breathing of my newborn twins.

Leaving my husband Kyle Whitaker had been the most painful decision I had ever made, yet it had also been the decision that saved my life after years of escalating abuse that began with cruel words and slowly turned into something darker and more violent that left bruises I learned to hide beneath long sleeves and polite excuses.