Rafaela Nunnally

Man, Oh Man!

Violence breeds trauma, and part of the trauma that spawned my depression and anxiety is the domestic violence I regularly witnessed when I was a child. My father was a brutal man when we were children. There were eight of us total that lived through that nightmare. What it taught me was that men aren’t safe. That your “protector” can easily be your tormentor. Now, my father was a different man by the time he passed. He became more gentle and understanding the older he got, and by the time he became an elderly man, he was so different that none of the grandchildren could believe the stories we kids told of our childhood.