Strength, hope, amazing braveness and a beautiful heart, these are all the things that come to mind when I think of Angie Jordan.
I may have only had the chance to speak to her in an interview capacity for a short while, but this is a woman who left me simply mind blown.
Although named Angela at birth, she now prefers to go by Angie, saying that Angela is the women who lived through the domestic violence and Angie is the person she has now been able to evolve into.
It leads to questions of how she could endure such horrific behaviour from her abuser for 40 years, but to now as an incredible survivor advocate work with the Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Council’s Love Does Not Equal Control campaign and share her message in hope that if it saves one person it is all worthwhile.
Remarkably it all began for Angie when she was just 18 and she would later find out her husband was 32 years old at the time.
As a young girl, she found him charming and charismatic, swept up in his apparent knowledge of all the right places to go, ways she should have her hair styled, not realising this was the start of his coercive control which ultimately lead to living in what she describes an upside down, topsy turvy world where mental torture was an everyday thing and she began to convince herself that this was perfectly normal.
Unable to maintain friendships due to her husband also being an alcoholic, for Angie her life became almost in auto pilot, waking up every day and doing everything 100 per cent so as to avoid her husband’s wrath and knowing that her every move was monitored by him through webcams throughout the house.
Angie said sadly her thoughts turned to the fact that her own death was the only way she would receive any peace.
“It became to the stage that if the wind blew in a different direction to the way he wanted then it would be my fault and I didn’t argue because I ultimately had given up and thought what’s the point in it,” she said.
“This kind of relationship is a sick reality because they try and make you grateful for everything, they supposedly do for you, treat you like a possession, while even being a serial cheater in order to have their ego stroked.
“For so long, domestic and family violence was something that wasn’t spoken about, and I lived with the shame, while to the outside world we were the perfect family with our children.
“I want people to know that they can move out, out of being a victim and into being a survivor.”
In a final cruel act, after Angie’s daughter Jess had given her the confidence to contact police, an act which may have ultimately saved her life, her husband committed suicide, leaving behind a note for Angie.
“I lived with the guilt of this for a long time, I couldn’t eat or sleep after reading the note, going through complex post-traumatic stress disorder and an emotional breakdown.
“I was emotionally naked, but we don’t get called survivors for nothing and I knew I had to let that person go who went through it in order to become the person I am today.
“While I live by myself now, I have never felt less alone, having a lovely, simple quiet life where I read, play music, watch television, look after my dogs and chooks and I have had a chance to learn what I really like.”
It has been three and a half years since Angie’s first interview, and she believes it is important for survivors if they can to come forward and share their stories, because the only way people learn is to know the real truth.
“It is a hard, hard road, but victims will leave when they are done, hearing the words ‘I’m done’ in their head.
“I want victims of domestic and family violence to know they have to face it head on and really feel it, but ultimately, they will eventually learn to leave the trauma over there, almost in a separate room, because they didn’t ask to be abused and hurt.
“If someone had told me four years ago that I could be living the life I am now I would never have believed them, but while there is always the opportunity to work on myself, I am now able to live a darn good life afterwards.
“This is me; Angie Jordan and I am a survivor.”
