Angelina-My Story

Why didn’t you leave? Why did you stay? I would hear years after my life with this abuser was over. Did anyone ever ask why did the abuser stay?

In the summer of 1983 I fell in love I thought with a young man who looked like everything I ever wanted in a man. Tall full of life, oh how he made me laugh in a time I needed it, handsome, from a good family the list goes on and on.
Boom!!! I heard the oh so familiar sound of a shotgun as I leaped from the couch and ran to our bedroom. There lay a terrified one year old baby boy sitting in the middle of the bed with a look of terror on his face. He started to cry when he saw his mommy running into the room. I cuddled him in my grateful arms and didn’t let him go until I heard a deep voice say, he’s ok, thank God he’s ok. I will get rid of the guns now, all of them. There on the wall in our bed room was a sawed off shotgun hung there by a nail inches from where we had left this little baby in the bed asleep moments earlier. In the midst of his sleeping he woke up and saw the gun where he had crawled and pulled it…BOOM!!!. He survived…. But there would be another incident and then another one not involving the little baby but me the wife, the woman, the victim the SURVIVOR!!!

On a brisk Fall evening of 1998, I finally got the undeniable strength to leave after being faced with the decision of if you walk near that door “I will shoot you!” he would scream. My reaction was…”Do it, go ahead and do what you have to do. I’m dead anyway if I stay here with you”. I reached for the door and as I stepped on the outer side of the door I smiled. I’m free because I knew at that moment, I had the power to leave. That inner strength that is instilled in everyone waiting on us to trust, believe and act.
Why didn’t you leave I would hear the question over and over again throughout my life. I would even ask the question myself. Why didn’t I leave? Why do you stay? So many women asks the question. FEAR…False Evidence Appearing Real…Oftentimes we realize that staying you feel safer because even though the pain of staying is familiar stepping outside of the door was unfamiliar territory. Why did I stay? I stayed for the children, I stay to live, I stayed to survive.

I realize that most of my hurt and disappointments in life came directly from me loving someone else. How ironic is that.

I read a book once written by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, she wrote “It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.” Not that you have good intention, or you can afford to pay someone family members or a stranger to do the much-needed tasks for you. She wanted to know in my deepest despair could I get up and do what needs to be done. As I sat there one night in the dark after I read this statement, I answered out loud almost startling myself…Yes, Yes I did, I can. I have for so many days and nights when the will in me was to give up, stay in bed and let life pass me by. What then I thought. What happens when you have no desire to keep going? That’s when that inner peace, that strength from within that you didn’t know existed surface.

Ella Bebe Angels was founded on the principles, standards and concreate values of…

Charity suffered long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth, not itself, it is not puffed up, doth not behave it’s self unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoice not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hope, always preserves.

Welcome to Ella Bebe Angels – When Life Comes Home After All Hope Was Gone.