Annagail Lynes

Growing up, I didn't realize that my home differed from everyone else's, that other children didn't have a father who would beat the washing machine or car if it didn't do what he liked. I didn't know that everyone didn't have a mother who controlled their every move.

To me, yelling seemed normal. When it's what you know, you don't think twice about whether it is normal or not.

Slowly when I went to other people's houses for sleepovers, I realized that my friends' parents let them out of the house to ride their bikes, go to the store on their own. Not my Mom. My Mom had to know where I was at all times. If she didn't want you to go there, you weren't going.

Most people chalked it up to her being an overprotective parent, but it wasn't about caring about me. It was about control.

She spoke for me in every situation. She did for me because, according to her, I would just mess it up if I did it.

With her, I felt like the worst child in the world, even though I was far from it. I didn't do drugs. I didn't drink. I didn't sneak off to be with boys.

Even into adulthood, when I started to see the signs of her depression overcoming her, she still exerted her control. She would get me to do what she wanted by threatening to commit suicide.

The roles reversed, and I become the parent in the relationship. She would do things to alienate people that normal people wouldn't do. She thought everyone owed her something because she had been abused in the past.

She aggressively got worse, telling me, "I wish we would have both died in childbirth" and "No one is ever going to put up with you."

The victim of abuse had now become the abuser.

She become stuck in the victim mentality, identifying herself as a victim of abuse first and foremost. The only thing she could control was me through manipulation and verbal and emotional abuse.

She always said she would have rather gone back to the abuse because it was so much better than having to live in the aftermath, the struggling to get her life back together.

Everyone has their story. This is mine. Now I am taking my pain and turning it into something to help and heal others who have been in similar situations.

I am developing workshops, what I call Aftermath Bootcamp, to help people of abuse move on with their lives, to find their purpose, to secure a good financial future, to locate resources and to heal. My goal is not to be a support group where w