October 2020: A Note from Tracy Schott, founder of Voices4Change and the director and producer of the documentary Finding Jenn’s Voice and Hope Katz Gibbs, publisher, Inkandescent Women magazine — It is a privilege to introduce you to a powerful teacher in the fight to end domestic violence: Lisette Johnson.
In October 2009, she was shot several times by her husband at close range. As her then 12 and 9-year-old children played nearby, he then turned the gun on himself and took his own life.
Lisette has made it her mission to share her story so other women won’t suffer the same trauma. She’s raised her voice and touched thousands at conferences and universities around the country, including Homeland Security, TSA, and the US Navy.
Lisette also has a powerful blog, ShamelessSurvivors.com, where she reaches and teaches people around the world. She has been featured in The Huffington Post, Washington Post, USA Today, Time, NBC, NPR The Takeaway, BBC, and the documentary Finding Jenn’s Voice.
She has also testified before Congress and the Virginia General Assembly and has been instrumental in championing legislation protecting women. Please scroll down for a recent entry to her blog, Shameless Survivors.
Honoring Domestic Violence Month: October 2020
The Night Before
By Lisette Johnson, ShamelessSurvivors.com
October 4, 2020: Today is the 11th anniversary of the shooting when my then-husband attempted murder and then committed suicide. It is 3:30 pm as I write this essay. This very hour, I was still in surgery, and it lasted 5 more.
Days go by now, and it all seems like a distant memory, another life in another lifetime, unbelievable though real. Still, certain movements, memories, pictures bring me back into that life, that day.
I was shocked to see myself in a picture. You can see on my face the toll it had taken on me. My desperation is evident. This picture was taken at my son’s early birthday celebration at our house. Looking at it, I can still feel the sense of foreboding I felt in the stillness of that brilliantly moonlit fall night, eerily exactly like this night.
After his friends had been picked up and everyone was in bed asleep, with a macabre sixth sense presenting as melancholy, I contemplated my life was about to change and would never be the same again. As I wrote this, I felt unsettled and completely isolated, so I reached out and shared it on Facebook that night before he shot me.
“Surely this must be a dream from which I will awake and feel the warm, reassuring breath of the man I love next to me. I will watch as the moonlight illuminates his chest moving quietly up and down and reflect on the sweetness of his kiss, the heat of his skin on my fingertips. Solid, unwavering, steadfast.
Surely this dream cannot be the life I have known, have accepted, have lived years suspended between passion and pain, holding on to only fleeting moments as proof love exists; a life lived as someone else while emotion lay buried beneath layers of secrecy, protected from the harshness and uncertainty of a barren landscape. Surely I am not she who hides in the dream…frightened, frozen, tentative; watching, waiting. I do not want to know her pleading, resignation, hopelessness.
Surely whatever darkness I dream is far away and cannot hurt me. I will awake to hear the crickets in the cool fall air and be comforted by familiar surroundings. He will stir and draw me close, gathering me securely in his arms. We will slumber, entwined, peacefully. Surely the morning light will reveal what is true and good.” October 3, 2009
My life was about to change forever, though I could not have understood then what that would end up looking like. I just knew I was leaving the house that week if he once again refused to, as he had the twelve weeks since I’d asked for a separation. By this point, I knew when I walked out; I would probably lose everything. I knew there was a good chance he would get custody of the children. I knew I was walking away with only my faith.
Some people say I won. I lived. I live with my children. He can no longer hurt us. I am free. My faith still sustains me. If someone wins, however, then there has been a loss. The little boy in that picture was forever lost that next day, as was his big sister, thrust into the intersection of evil and death and robbed of the carefree innocence of childhood.
No longer the woman in that picture, maybe I am victorious. But I never wanted a competition, a war. I only wanted my life back and the man in that poem to come forward.
I have peace for the most part now, but the cost was enormous. On nights like tonight, knowing now what the morning light revealed, it washes over me like waves. All I’ve said and written and done to bring awareness seems meaningless in these moments. I’m back to being that (and every) woman trying to protect her kids while exiting a dangerous relationship, suspended and balancing on a tightrope between two places, her murderer hot on her heels.
And here’s another essay about what Lisette sees for What’s Next.
Navigating Ambiguous Loss
By Lisette Johnson, ShamelessSurvivors.com
The global pandemic has thrust us into a sudden state of shared trauma. The rug feels like it’s been pulled out from under our feet as everything about our world changed in a moment. At first reeling, most of us have settled into a state of being stunned by everything we knew to be our lives turning upside down, and now every societal structure seems unstable. With more questions than answers, we see no clear vision of a right-siding and a path forward.
Cycling up and down, most of us at some point of the day or week fight a looming sense of helplessness, trying not to surrender to hopelessness. Without being dependably anchored in our daily routine, we are effectively adrift at sea with no land in sight, counting days passed, uncertain of what to expect in the days ahead with more questions than answers.
That is a lot to sit with. It isn’t easy to sit with, to be in the midst of. It triggers our primal responses to fight, flee, or freeze. Each of us approaches it differently. Any of us who have experienced profound trauma recognize the urgency to “return to normal,” to do something familiar in our daily routine resumption, is fueled by the unconscious attempt to mitigate the sudden destabilization. And in sitting in this moment of quiet, of isolation, fear, and uncertainty, we are also grieving.
Once this is over, and the history of time has proven all things pass, we will undoubtedly need to heal. We may never fully recover from being robbed of our sense of safety. Our trust that we will get through this, in systems we depended on to protect us and our loved ones, both internal and external, will need to be rebuilt as we proceed cautiously. We may never be fully confident it’s over. We may always have in the back of our mind something; anything may take us back here.
But your world and my world and our world will return—differently, no doubt. We will continue to mourn the losses both of life and what we left behind. Each of us will recreate our lives, and this trauma period will play a part in it. Still, we will break bread with those we love again, engage in the rituals that replenish us, do things we loved before, again. There will be new opportunities to leave behind outdated thoughts and processes that no longer serve us. We were created to adapt, and adapt we will.
“All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”- Julian of Norwich.
Learn more about Lisette Johnson: ShamelessSurvivors.com