Safe Harbor for Ships

Content Note- This post contains descriptions of emotional, sexual, and physical abuse, including assault and strangulation, as well as institutional harm and suicidal ideation. There are no graphic details, but the subject matter may be distressing. Please care for yourself however you need to while reading.

In 2017, I met and fell in love with a U.S. Marine who was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. We had a whirlwind month together before he left. When he went overseas, he asked me to wait for him and promised me a life together after his deployment.

That was the beginning of the worst six months, and subsequently six years, of my life.

For a long time, I believed that Afghanistan had changed him. That trauma had turned my beautiful, gallant Marine into someone who hurt me. But the truth is: this is just who he is. What happened to me wasn’t caused by war. It was caused by him, and it would have happened no matter what I did or didn’t do.

After months of isolation and fear while he was deployed, he ghosted me completely. Then, without warning, he reappeared on my doorstep, letting me believe something terrible had happened while he built a new life without me. The future we had planned- traveling to Ireland, building a life together- evaporated. He was leaving for flight school and I wasn’t even welcome to visit.

The week of July 4th, 2018, the man I thought I’d spend my life with strangled and assaulted me for the first time. Then he disappeared, only to return months later and begin years of sexual coercion, emotional manipulation, and psychological abuse.

He used his status as a veteran and our shared trauma from his deployment as an excuse to reestablish contact. Then he would exploit that access, demanding photos, threatening assault, coercing me into sex, and later demanding I pay him for it. When I resisted or tried to hold him accountable, he’d threaten suicide. When I gave in, he’d disappear, only to return when I started rebuilding. He told me I was the abuser, and that I had no right to call myself a victim.

This was the darkest period of my life. I loved him deeply, and the way he treated me shook the foundation of my sanity. I wasn’t sure I would survive. I tried to hold on however I could. I bought myself a birthday ticket to a Cillian Murphy play in London the next year just to stay alive long enough to see it. I drank and smoked too much. I lived with an eating disorder I’m still recovering from. I did harm to myself because someone I trusted convinced me I deserved no better.

Some days, I truly wished he had killed me that night. I didn’t want to face what he’d done to me, or the lifetime of healing it would take to survive it.

What made the abuse worse was how impossible it was to find help. My first therapist told me the man I loved “died in Afghanistan and never came back.” The narrative that war made him a monster undermined my healing from the start. Because I already had deep empathy for veterans it trapped me in the cycle of revictimization with my abuser.

Again and again, the help I reached for retraumatized me. A military social worker waved a mindfulness magazine at me and told me to “get over it.” A grief counselor I saw for both the miscarriage I had while he was in Afghanistan and the death of the future we wanted together told me to attend Codependents Anonymous. “Trauma-informed” therapists gave me harmful advice or minimized my pain. I reached out to survivor and peer support orgs and heard nothing. Advocates failed me. The care I needed never arrived, not until years later, when the damage was already done.

Not every survivor escapes their abuser. Mine left for further military service, found new victims in a new town, and never looked back. It’s been three years since I last saw him, and two years since he last contacted me. I’ve moved to a place he’ll never find me and changed all my contact information, but my nervous system still waits for him to show up on my porch. For the message that says it’s starting all over again.

When he left for good, the symptoms of complex trauma, held back by years of survival mode, flooded my system. Insomnia. Hypervigilance. All-day intrusive thoughts. Fragmentation into dissociative identity disorder. Self-harming urges. As I unraveled, I lost friendships, lost purpose, and felt beyond hope.

This was also when I chose to become a survivor advocate.

I recognized that my experience had given me a calling and powerful purpose: to connect with other survivors and meet their stories with the compassion I had so long been denied. I wanted to be the one person in the room who would never minimize or dismiss their pain. The one who could say:

“I believe you. I hear you. It’s okay if you still love them. It’s okay to be angry. What happened to you mattered. It was wrong. It was not your fault. You deserve care. You deserve justice.”

Working in a local domestic violence shelter only deepened that mission. The survivors I met there, people rebuilding from nothing, protecting themselves and their children with immense courage, deeply inspired me. I saw their grief, their strength, their complexity. I witnessed how systems and even my fellow advocates failed them. I saw how much better we all deserve.

I made the decision to report my abuser to the military because they showed me how powerful accountability could be when rooted in truth, even when systems failed or turned a blind eye.

My own recovery is ongoing. I still live with acute trauma symptoms. I am still navigating the revictimizing military reporting process a year later. There are days of hopelessness, anger, and grief. And yet, healing feels possible now.

I’ve built a life of integrity and peace. I’ve found providers who meet my story and symptoms with genuine compassion and care. I’ve cut out all harmful people and abusive family. I’ve claimed new passions like climbing and moved beyond mere survival. And most of all, I’ve found community in other survivors. Those moments of true connection, of mutual recognition and care, have become the most powerful medicine and moments of true healing.

That’s why I built Safe Harbor for Ships—for survivors like me who went too long without compassion and care. For those who’ve been silenced or dismissed. For those navigating love and grief and anger and what justice means to them in an unjust and uncaring system all at once.

This is a space for us.

Thank you for being here and sharing my story.
You and your story are always welcome here too.

Content Note: This post contains personal reflections on living with complex PTSD after long-term sexual violence, including mentions of intrusive thoughts, dissociation, self-harm, eating disorders, and trauma-related symptoms. It also references dissociative identity disorder, systemic failure, and recovery from abuse. Please take care while reading and engage only if and when you feel safe to do so.

I am in the process of healing from six years of calculated sexual violence by a soldier I loved and trusted. Every day, I live with intense, wellbeing-compromising symptoms of complex trauma: constant intrusive thoughts, dissociation, hypervigilance, chronic fatigue and pain, deep issues with self-image and self-worth, anxiety, depression, nightmares, and acute insomnia. I’m also in recovery from self-harm and a severe eating disorder. Living with these symptoms is an exhausting and relentless rollercoaster, a fight for even a moment of stability.

My experience of abuse harmed my quality of life deeper than any systemic accountability or justice could answer for. The inability to find compassionate care, help, or support in both therapeutic and advocacy systems prolonged my suffering unnecessarily by several years and kept me trapped in a cycle of violence and isolation with my abuser. I offer my experience in hopes that if you share pieces of my story you will know you are not alone, your trauma and pain are valid, and you are more than worthy of care. 

I can’t remember the last time I woke up feeling ok or well rested. Every night I have intense and vivid nightmares, and when I wake from those nightmares my brain starts yelling, cycling through intrusive thoughts and noise faster that I can reground from them. I start my day exhausted, distressed, and frustrated, and its really difficult to get out of bed. I’m grateful it isn’t the full night insomnia that I used to have for weeks on end when my abuser first left and my nervous system was completely scrambled. Most of the time I get at least 5 or 6 hours of sleep, but the nightmares make me more terrified and exhausted than not sleeping at all. 

The main symptoms I struggle with day in and day out are intrusive thoughts and dissociation. I have constant distressing intrusive thoughts and symptoms related to sexual abuse and harm. Sometimes its a passing thought or whisper in the back of my mind that I am able to reground from quickly. Sometimes its a full on brain attack, harmful thoughts spinning so fast that all I can do is hold on and stay safe until it passes. It feels like every time I come up with a method to deal with intrusive thoughts or think I’ve gotten ahead of or banished them for good, they always reemerge scarier and louder than before. They are there even in my best and most peaceful moments, when I try to rest, as I do yoga and meditate, and they keep me from being able to be truly present and connected with my life or any single moment of joy. 

At some point in the aftermath of abuse, I realized I had become severed from my sense of self. The version of me I had known was gone, and in their place were the echoes of abusers and scared, fragmented parts of me. I couldn’t connect with myself or even picture who I was anymore. To protect myself, I took on safe figures and wore them like armor until I could find my way back to who I really am.

I now understand this as dissociative identity disorder, a way my mind survived unspeakable harm. Most days, I am Stella the Spiritfarer. I am Orville Peck. I used to be Tommy Shelby, but he became unsafe. Now, I am Aragorn. I am Samwise Gamgee. Sometimes, the real me returns, just for a moment, and I like to greet them and say: “Hey, welcome back. I hope one day you’ll stay. I’m building a safe space for you.”

If you looked at a CPTSD symptom checklist, you’d find me in every single box. In a way, that knowledge helps. It reminds me this isn’t a personal failing, just a normal response to trauma and abuse. Still, there are days I ask in frustration, “What the hell is wrong with me?”

The honest truth is I struggle and suffer intensely every single day. But things have gotten better. And part of recovery is learning to recognize and celebrate the small shifts and victories. 

I’m a year and a half into recovery from self-harm. I’ve quit smoking, drinking, and other harmful coping methods. My intrusive thoughts are less frequent, and I’m better able to name and ground from them. I can link dysregulation to stress and offer myself compassion. I’ve built a safe life for myself. I’m learning to tell my frayed nervous system: this is safe, this isn’t going anywhere, this is ours. 

Finding truly compassionate care has been key to that shift. It took six years to find therapists who listened, believed me, and met me where I was. In just a few months of real care, I’ve learned to be softer with myself. I have tools that work to mitigate my distress. I’m starting to reclaim my story from trauma and lead the hurting, scared parts of me home.

Some things that help me are consistency and simple rituals. I can’t keep a daily routine, my neurospicy brain doesn’t work like that, but I do small things every day to prove I can show up for myself. I’ve done yoga and meditation for 90 days straight. I got a bonsai tree, a lifetime investment in my healing. The Finch app helps a lot. Even on my worst days, I can show up for my little guy.

Finding joy outside of trauma has been just as important. Abuse took away so many things I once loved, but I’ve reclaimed and discovered new ones. Climbing has been essential. It reconnects me to my body, my strength, my mind. It’s something that’s mine, untouched by my abuser. After climbing, my brain is quiet, and I honor and celebrate those moments of quiet when they happen. 

Recovery is work, a full-time job, a constant battle. Like Frodo’s Nazgûl wound, I expect I will carry trauma for the rest of my life. Some days, that truth is unbearable. I feel anger that my abuser walks free while I carry the aftermath. But I hold onto hope: for reduced symptoms, for stronger tools, for unwavering self-compassion, for the day trauma can live peacefully beside safety, self trust, and joy. 

I am proud of the progress I’ve made. I’ve built a life worth fighting for. And I am going to continue healing and shining light on those hurting scared parts of me until I can walk us all safely home. 

To the scared, hurting girl I was on this day seven years ago,

Hi dear one. I know that right now you are wondering how you are going to make it through today, let alone the next week, months, and years ahead, with your heart and life in pieces. Instead of a trip to Ireland and the future you planned with the Marine you love, you received violence and harm beyond naming. I know this doesn’t feel survivable, and I won’t lie to you, you will feel this way for a long time. 

Its been a difficult journey to get here, and it hasn’t always been pretty or kind. We’ve been lost and lost ourselves. He came back and hurt us times beyond counting. We lapsed and relapsed and spent years in a fog of pain and self harm. There were a lot of times we didn’t want to be here. It was enough to blacken the heart of even the strongest person and turn their souls to iron against the mere thought of trusting or loving anyone ever again. 

And yet we have emerged from all of that kinder, softer, more compassionate, willing to devote our life to advocating for others. While the person who hurt you has devoted his life to destruction and harm under the guise of a hero in uniform, you are doing the far greater and more difficult work of healing, and walking with others as they heal. There is no braver or more important purpose than this one. 

I want you to know, even in that place where getting out of bed feels impossible and you still carry bruises from him all over your body and mind, that we don’t just survive this. We built something out of this. We used that grief, that anger, and that deep hurt that won’t go away to create something that is all our own, to chart our own course beyond what he did to us. I am so fucking proud of us. I know you would be too. 

While this is a day that still hurts, even almost a decade later, with the knowledge that he is getting to be with his family while you still fight with the wounds of what he did to you, this is also a day of liberation, of reclamation, of sailing forward into a future that is ours. We are no longer a girl he destroyed. We are a shiny new person that was forged despite him. 

Today’s launch isn’t just the start of an organization. It’s a promise. A harbor opened and a lighthouse lit. A commitment to keep healing, to keep fighting, to step victoriously into the person we have always been and needed, and to walk alongside as many others as we can on the way.

I love you, we’ve got this. 

Love, 

Ed