A journaled truth about memory loss, betrayal, parenting with PTSD, and a system that refused to see us.
It’s was nearly two years since the day that changed everything.
Since the attack.
Since my nervous system began keeping score in places no doctor could see.
Since the court system failed me so completely, I wondered if anyone gets through the system unharmed.
The following are unedited journal entries from December 2016 to February 2017. I’m sharing them exactly as I wrote them—because this is what real trauma looks like. Because if you’ve ever been in the aftermath, you know: healing doesn’t happen in a straight line. Especially when you’re still surrounded by the person who tried to destroy you. Especially when your child still has to go back and forth between both worlds.
This isn’t just my story. It’s the story of every step-parent who isn’t protected by law. Every survivor who wasn’t believed. Every mother who cried alone after holding it together all day.
These are the main reflections of these journals:
When trauma affects parenting
Your brain knows when pretending is unsafe. Nurturing becomes hard when your body is stuck in survival mode. Relationships become “special needs” because safety trumps connection.
Somatic flashbacks
PTSD lives in the body. And sometimes, the world around you is quiet—but inside, it’s chaos. You don’t need to be in danger to feel unsafe when your body still thinks it’s dying.
Children carry the aftermath too
Even when they don’t talk about it, they feel it. They dream it. They absorb it. But love still finds a way through.
The system doesn’t understand strangulation
The law protects wives, but not stepmothers. Protects the idea of family, but not the one gasping for air. Strangulation is often minimized—and so is the trauma left behind.
Covert control through children
When abusers can’t reach you, they weaponize proximity—using shared children as messengers of manipulation. It confuses the kids, retraumatizes the target, and ensures no one heals.
The grief that keeps circling back
You don’t stop grieving when the court case ends. Or when the attacker is sentenced. Or when you start therapy. You grieve in layers. You grieve what the system took from you too.
It’s been 692 days since the day I was strangled in my own garage by a woman who declared, “You destroyed my life,” as she tried to end mine.
And 692 days since the system didn’t protect me, didn’t understand me, and didn’t account for the ripple effect this would have on our children, our marriage, and our minds.
But I’m still here.
Breathing.
Speaking.
Remembering.
Parenting.
Breaking.
And rebuilding.
If you’re a step-parent, a survivor, or someone navigating post-trauma parenting—you are not alone. If you’re living in the cracks of a system that failed you, you are still whole. And if you’re quiet at family gatherings because your body doesn’t feel safe—you are not wrong. You are wise.
“This is not just about what happened. It’s about what it changed.”
If this resonates, I invite you to leave a comment or share your story with me. The more we speak, the more we change what gets swept under the rug.
Here is is raw and messy….
December 15, 2016
I am about to start a three day weekend. I am feeling pretty crappy my neck and shoulders hurt, I am getting headaches again and I am realizing that my memory is bad or I am missing whole parts of conversations. It’s a strange feeling. When I feel this way it makes me extra crabby towards people that are seemingly unaffected and I have very little tolerance or motivation to nurture a relationship with my husband’s children. I love my step daughter very much and feel I will always be a part of her life and I love my stepson but feel it harder to trust him. He presents accomplishments to me like starting his first IRA and I am so proud knowing that I talked to him about this years ago. Years ago I was focused on how great do I want my life to be and what was I going to do to make sure that it was. Saving for my retirement years was a priority and I was sharing that frequently with him. His first taxes. But at the end of the day I am fine having this special needs relationship because we both know the outwardly display of having a relationship let alone a good one inherently puts me in danger.
12/1/16
My husband’s ex wife telling the school we are paying then telling my step son.
12/2/16
Our daughter got a loose tooth!
12/9/16
My husband’s buddy says at least I didn’t call the police on my wife ex-wife, he is clueless.
12/14/16
How can an injured traumatized person who is intact and had a light tunnel near death experience be expected to heal when the person that did that to her it essentially always around her?
12/15/16
When I returned from NY on the 8th I had the worst headache yet, felt like I was hit in the head.
12/19/16
My stepdaughter told us about her mom talking about me.
Definitely having memory issues at work not recalling lots of parts of conversation.
12/20/16
She thinks I’m 50.
My stepduaghther talked to Heather and she was incredibly rude and totally misinformed about restraining orders
December 21 2016
Happy Winter Solstice. We went to the nutcracker. It is pouring rain outside. I drove down to the civic center from work and met our close friend her daughter and the girls.
12/22/16
I’m beginning to really appreciate the meaning of PTSD 😀 imagine how great it felt walking 🚶 alone near the parking structure we used to park in for criminal court 👍🏼so the times the noise in my head gets so loud it drowns out the noise outside my head and I feel pressure around my neck and it gets hard to swallow like I’m being choked out but I know nothing is really happening…that is fucking PTSD. Do you know what I’m talking about? OMG not fun. Then it dumped rain and now I can’t stop crying. I guess the universe is telling me to cry. It’s still pouring rain.
Smallest debt first.
12/28/17
Spent the night with our daughter she started crying in her sleep. I grabbed her hand. She held it and told me she loved me.
12/29/17
Talked with my old besite from school. I’m under utilizing my life. Make up your mind to have this not hold you back. Traumatic experiences hurt you but do they have to? Will I be scared to love for my whole life? Am I scared to love? What am I afraid of?
My head is spinning. I feel like walking out of this place I am not into this.
01/05/17
My husband talked to Heather she was so rude about not having restraining orders.
01/18/17
Just got off the phone with the city prosecutor. My husband’s ex wife’s probation is being revoked and she is being mandated to court where it will be talked about how she needs to find a new place to pick up her daughter, she needs to stop soliciting information from her about us and they need to stop snooping around on my work location. Thankfully we have support like this and we don’t have to deal with it.
I mean she is basically an attempted murderer.
One way my life is different from the trauma today is my confidence.
My step daughter told me that her step dad was looking at the website of the new company I work for.
1/22/17
The Yoga of Max’s discontent book recommendations.
1/29/17
wow dealing with this lawsuit is so draining.
1/30/17
Wow dealing with the lawsuit is draining I am so tired
Feb 1, 2017
Wow it’s been awhile, not by it not being on my mind but by not having any time to sit and put to paper what is in my head. I still think about being strangled everyday and then I think of all the women out there that are being strangled on a pretty regular basis if you just look at the numbers on paper. Kids are witnessing their mothers being strangled. It is the most bizarre thing that if I had slept with my now husband while he was married (which did not happen because he is 11 years older than I), then it would have been domestic violence and strangulation would have not been able to be dismissed so easily. For San Diego being the home of where the largest study on strangulation was it is interesting but not surprising that I slipped through the cracks. Granted my life on a daily basis isn’t threatened like these other women. I don’t have to worry about my husband coming home and trying to silence and dominate me. The stress they feel is probably similar to the stress I was under after getting attacked and then being dragged through a year of court over a bogus restraining order.
So I have made the decision to move forward with a civil suit against her, the woman who went bat shit crazy, grabbed my by the throat and beat my head until I stop screaming. Screaming was my only defense, I was so startled by what had happened I froze which probably saved my life and hers. Had I permanently paralyzeed or died that day she would have called into her life what she declared that day about me. “YOU DESTROYED MY LIFE!” She called into her life disastrous things.
It’s funny all the people who got involved and wrongly judged us now have exactly what they said about us. People who gossiped and said my husband was having an affair with our friend now are just finding out that their husbands have been cheating on them the majority of their relationship.
I feel supported by the universe. I hear and have heard for a long time now ‘why am i here’, I hear myself asking ‘what am I supposed to do?’, over and over again I ponder this. I especially ask myself why did this happen to me and what am I suppose to do with it. I know that I am supposed to talk about this but not because what happened to me is special butbecause I don’t live with the person that did this to me. Yes it was domestic violence and the person that is going to suffer the most because of this is my step daughter and yes the language in the domestic relationship definitions needs to change so that step parents are protected because had I been myself and my family would have suffered much less and would be much further along in healing than we are today.
The fact that my husband was in the doctor because he believed he may be having a heart attack while he has walking pneumonia because being near this person that attacked us sets off the alarms in our nervous systems, adrenaline and cortisol start pumping but our adrenals are so taxed from firing during a life threatening attack and a year of court proceedings after being under represented. We did and are still suffering. Violence of any sort is worthy of public discussion to help prevent but that of the home involving children should be especially worthy of community discussion. Through the decision making process I realized that I want things to change because of what happened to me has profoundly changed my life in ways the the legal system has not yet fully embraced, the invisible injuries. PTSD and so much more.
Civil Rights are being denied in the the Southern California Criminal Courts, Victims are being denied restitution.
Step-Parents are not protected under the domestic violence laws.
2/9/17
Jen said my texts are way better
2/10/17
How childhood trauma affects health across a lifetime https://www.ted.com/talks/nadine_burke_harris_how_childhood_trauma_affects_health_across_a_lifetime
DV from the no page to the front page
02/13/17
My stepdaughter came home today telling us that Momma told me to tell you to stop doing what you are doing.
My daughter face planted into a rock at the beach feel so bad, not really able to keep my eye on her. Or get her to listen to me saying STOP RUNNING!
2/14/17
The therapist suggested that we tell the minor counsel about her non-consensual sex experience and her mom took her on a date and then after we talked about it for a little while but we decided that it’s useless contacting Heather but she’s miserable and all she does is add crisis to our lives so that’s a big mess in the judicial system it’s riddled with people who have agendas.
2/15/17
Fight with my husband this is killing us 😞
2/16/17
Need a record of what was said in chambers
2/17/17
😖we are snapping at eachother all day
2//22/17
Criminal court, nothing but an admonishment happened at court today. Although I certainly got some feelings out on the prosecutor although misplaced. I wonder how many strangulation cases they have had through the duration of the time we have been with them.
2/19/17
2:22
Stark contrast between environments bed time. Hostile. Not taken advantage.
2/20/17
Panic attack on the way to work. Bikram yoga activates PTSD that feeling of tingling fingers.
Grant activated PTSD
2/22/17
How to go to the Doctor epiphany go with an agenda, I had to write everything down. Dr Anderson 1- how to go to the doctor
Forgot jaw pain and grinding teeth.
Staying on one task issue
02/24/17
Conversation with prosecutor Jordan
2/25/17
-biased minor counsel 4
She is not comfortable
-not paying judgment 2
-violated CPO 3
-Step daugher wants to drop Thursday on the record with the therapist to the minor counsel
-sign off on therapy and share costs
02/27/17
Valiant Warriors
02/28/17
The ex/ mom talked to therapist and told my step daughter it’s not sure she will go with her because she doesn’t want this therapist to be biased.
The more her relationship suffer with her daughter the more I am out at risk.
Had my first real therapy appointment today. I was sick about going all week dreading it. I just don’t want to go there and cry and all I want to do these days is cry. It’s like I have constipated eyeballs with tears. I am afraid that if I start I won’t stop. So I went. I always wonder what another reaction is going to be when I start talking about it. In many ways I think it is unique but it is not uncommon. Although the therapist looked at me funny when I said it is common. She tended to not think that domestic violence was that common. Maybe because we are submerged into it it feels like it is everyones’ normal. So I have homework to think about what is nurturing and what is draining this week. I hated going to the therapist. I cried so hard, I felt so out of control. It was like impossible to fake being capable to handling everything that is in my life. It is frightening to start giving into not being able to handle this. I am so tired. 692 days and we are still dealing with this and until my step daughter is out of the house we are going to be dealing with harassment from her mother. Diane suggested we move and I nearly bit her head off.
Strangled In La Jolla 