11/09/2026
I WAS USED, I WAS WOUNDED—AND I STILL CHOSE LIFE
This is not an easy story for me to tell.
It is personal. It is painful. It is part of my face, part of my body, and part of the woman I eventually became.
But I am no longer ashamed of it.
I am telling my story because somewhere there is a woman hiding a black eye beneath her makeup.
Somewhere there is a successful woman walking into work with her head held high while privately wondering whether she will survive another night.
Somewhere there is a woman who keeps returning to the person hurting her and cannot understand why.
Somewhere there is a woman who believes that because she stayed, the abuse must somehow have been her fault.
I need her to hear me:
You are not stupid.
You are not weak.
You did not cause the abuse.
You are not responsible for another person’s decision to hurt you.
I know because I was that woman.
I was still in my late twenties when I became deeply involved with a man I loved beyond reason.
I was not casually in love with him.
I was completely, overwhelmingly, and profoundly in love.
I loved him with my heart, my body, my ambition, my loyalty, and my belief in the future we were building.
That is one of the hardest truths for people to understand about abuse.
The love can feel real.
The beautiful moments can be real.
The dreams can be real.
And the danger can also be real.
We built a life together.
We operated a successful, high-profile collection agency. We made money. We worked in exciting circles. From the outside, our life looked prosperous, powerful, and almost untouchable.
I understood business, hard work, ambition, and leadership.
But I was young.
I did not understand coercive control.
I did not understand traumatic attachment.
I did not understand fraud or the complicated legal world surrounding offshore financial transactions.
Some of our collection work was connected to the offshore betting world. Payments moved through recognizable financial services, including MoneyGram and other established companies.
Because familiar companies processed the transactions, the work appeared legitimate to me.
I believed that if recognized financial businesses were handling the money, then the work surrounding those transactions must also be lawful.
I did not understand all the legal complications.
I did not enter that world with criminal knowledge or intent.
I was young.
I was working.
I was building a company.
And I trusted the man beside me to understand a world I had not yet learned to question.
I was not stupid.
I was inexperienced in those matters, profoundly in love, and living inside a reality that had been constructed around me.
The business grew.
So did the violence.
He beat me on our wedding night in Aspen, Colorado.
A night that should have represented love, safety, celebration, and the beginning of our marriage became a night of terror.
He was intensely jealous.
He could not tolerate another man looking at me, speaking to me, or recognizing something beautiful, intelligent, or powerful in me.
His jealousy seemed to consume him.
But jealousy did not make him beat me.
Jealousy is an emotion.
Violence is a choice.
His insecurity may help explain what was happening inside him, but it will never excuse what he chose to do to my body.
The beating on our wedding night was not an isolated incident.
It became part of our life.
There were weeks when my employees saw me walk into our high-profile collection agency with a black eye, another visible injury, or something clearly wrong with me.
They saw the woman running the business.
They saw my professional clothing, confidence, intelligence, and public image.
They also saw the injuries.
But I continued working.
I continued leading.
I continued pretending.
That is what many people do not understand about survivors.
We can be breaking privately while still functioning publicly.
We can lead employees, run companies, make money, solve problems, and appear completely in control while using every ounce of our strength simply to survive.
There were times when we were inside restaurants—in Aspen and other cities—when people watched him hit me so violently that I lost consciousness.
He knocked me the f**k out in public.
People saw it.
Friends saw it.
Strangers saw it.
Some looked away.
Some pretended nothing had happened.
Some may have been afraid.
Some may not have known how to intervene.
Others may have believed that what happened between a husband and wife was none of their business.
I do not live my life blaming those people.
But I remember what their silence felt like.
It felt as though I could be attacked in front of an entire room and still be invisible.
Every person who looked away unintentionally reinforced the world he was creating around me—a world in which he could hurt me publicly and expect everyone else to remain silent.
There were also times when snow covered the ground and he threw me outside naked in front of his own children.
I was exposed.
I was freezing.
I was humiliated.
I was stripped of my clothing and dignity while children stood close enough to witness what was happening.
That was not a marital disagreement.
That was not passion.
That was not love.
That was physical danger, humiliation, and psychological cruelty.
He did not only take away my clothing in those moments.
He tried to take away my humanity.
At the same time, I was made into the bad person.
I was blamed for what had happened after his first divorce. A story was created around me that allowed people to see me as the problem instead of asking what I was experiencing behind closed doors.
That is another way abuse protects itself.
The person causing the harm controls the story.
He speaks first.
He assigns the blame.
He convinces other people that the woman reacting to abuse is creating the chaos.
The survivor becomes “difficult.”
She becomes “unstable.”
She becomes “the other woman.”
She becomes “the problem.”
Meanwhile, nobody asks why she is frightened, injured, isolated, or being thrown outside naked in the snow.
I do not blame the children who witnessed those moments.
They were children placed inside an adult situation they did not create and may not have understood.
But children grow up.
They develop language for what they witnessed.
They begin recognizing patterns that were impossible to understand when they were young.
Today, I believe at least one of those children may finally see the larger truth.
She may now understand that what happened in front of her was not normal conflict—and that I was not the enemy she may have been encouraged to believe I was.
I cannot change what she was told then.
I can only tell my truth now.
I was not the villain in that story.
I was a young woman being abused, humiliated, isolated, and blamed while desperately trying to survive.
One of the most devastating attacks happened when he drove a Corvette key into my mouth and face.
The injury was so severe that it required 90 stitches.
Ninety stitches.
Ninety stitches to repair what one violent act had done to my face.
But the cruelty did not end after medical professionals closed the wound.
Afterward, he began calling me “Stitch.”
He took the injury he had inflicted upon me and turned it into a nickname.
Every time he called me that, he reminded me of the attack while treating my pain as though it were a joke.
That was psychological abuse layered on top of physical violence.
He injured my face and then used the evidence of that injury to humiliate me.
He tried to make the wound my identity.
But “Stitch” was never my identity.
It was a name created by the man who hurt me—a way to minimize what he had done and maintain emotional control over the woman who survived it.
I was not the nickname.
I was not the scar.
I was not the violence.
I was the woman who survived 90 stitches, endured the humiliation that followed, and eventually reclaimed her name, face, life, and future.
People who have never lived through abuse often ask:
“Why did she stay?”
“Why did she return?”
“If it was really that bad, why didn’t she leave the first time?”
Those questions place the burden on the person being hurt instead of the person choosing to hurt her.
The better questions are:
What happened to her confidence?
Who had been removed from her life?
What was she being told every day?
What did she believe would happen if she tried to leave?
How had love, fear, hope, shame, money, isolation, and survival become tangled together?
I did not go back because I enjoyed being hurt.
I did not stay because I wanted the violence.
I did not return because I lacked intelligence or the ability to support myself.
I returned because I was completely in love and living inside a powerful cycle of tension, violence, fear, relief, affection, and hope.
Abuse does not necessarily happen every minute.
If it did, recognizing it might be easier.
The violence can be surrounded by apologies, tears, promises, gifts, tenderness, passion, and periods of calm.
After an explosion, the same person who caused the terror may become the person offering comfort.
He apologizes.
He cries.
He promises it will never happen again.
He becomes loving, attentive, passionate, and gentle.
He reminds the woman of the man she originally fell in love with.
This is often called the reconciliation or honeymoon stage.
For someone who is frightened and emotionally exhausted, the relief can feel overwhelming.
Her nervous system moves from intense danger into temporary calm.
Hope returns.
The affection feels especially powerful because it arrives immediately after fear and pain.
People sometimes call this a dopamine cycle, but the brain and body are more complicated than one chemical.
Stress responses, attachment, fear, reward, relief, hope, and intermittent reinforcement can become intertwined.
The relationship begins moving between terror and tenderness.
The survivor is not attached to being beaten.
She is attached to the relief that follows.
She is attached to the promise that it will never happen again.
She is attached to the loving version of the man and begins believing that version is his real self.
I kept searching for the man I loved inside the man who was hurting me.
I kept believing the honeymoon version was the truth and that the violence was something we could overcome.
I confused intensity with intimacy.
I confused jealousy with devotion.
I confused relief with safety.
I confused surviving another attack with saving the marriage.
Then the tension would begin building again.
I watched his face.
I listened to his footsteps.
I studied his voice.
I could feel the atmosphere in a room change before he said a word.
I adjusted my behavior to prevent another explosion.
I became quieter.
I avoided certain subjects.
I apologized for things I had not done.
I believed that if I became more loving, patient, understanding, obedient, or invisible, I might be able to keep myself safe.
But I was not causing the violence.
I could not prevent another person’s decision to abuse me by making myself smaller.
Eventually, the tension erupted again.
Then came the apologies, affection, promises, and renewed hope.
The cycle began again.
At the same time, my world grew smaller.
Relationships with family became strained.
Friendships were affected.
The man hurting me also became the person around whom my emotional world revolved.
That is what isolation does.
The abusive person criticizes the people who love you.
He creates arguments around them.
He accuses them of interfering.
He convinces you that nobody else understands the relationship.
You stop answering calls because you do not want to explain another injury.
You avoid friends because you are ashamed that you returned.
You become afraid that everyone will say, “I told you so.”
Eventually, the person hurting you becomes the central person left in your life.
That is not ordinary love.
That is coercive control.
Every time I returned, I carried more shame.
Shame is one of the strongest locks on the door of an abusive relationship.
I thought:
“My employees already saw the black eye.”
“My friends warned me.”
“My family will think I am stupid.”
“Everyone will ask why I went back.”
So I said nothing.
I covered injuries.
I invented explanations.
I protected the person who hurt me because admitting the complete truth felt unbearable.
I was running a high-profile business while privately trying to stay alive.
From the outside, I appeared powerful.
Behind closed doors, I was being injured, isolated, humiliated, confused, and emotionally dismantled.
Professional success does not immunize a woman against abuse.
Education does not automatically protect her.
Money does not guarantee escape.
Intelligence does not prevent traumatic attachment.
Strength does not mean she can immediately recognize the cycle while she is trapped inside it.
Sometimes the strongest woman in the room is using all of her strength just to make it through another day.
I also had to confront complicated truths about our business life.
I was young and did not understand fraud.
I did not understand how legitimate-looking transactions could exist alongside activities carrying serious legal risks.
I believed recognizable payment services made the surrounding business legitimate.
I understand now that appearances can be deceptive.
A company can look professional.
Money can move through familiar institutions.
The people involved can appear successful.
And a young woman can still be kept unaware of the complete reality surrounding her.
Abusive control does not always remain inside the marriage.
It can extend into money, business, information, friendships, family, and the explanations a woman receives about her own life.
A controlling partner may determine what she knows, whom she trusts, what she signs, how money moves, and which version of reality she is expected to accept.
By the time she recognizes that something is wrong, her confidence may be damaged and her support system may have disappeared.
I will never describe my younger self as stupid.
She was young.
She was in love.
She was working.
She was trusting.
She did not possess the knowledge I carry today.
I understand now that love and safety are not the same thing.
Someone can say he loves you and still be dangerous to you.
Someone can be emotionally attached to you and still make choices that destroy your life.
Your love for someone does not make his violence your responsibility.
His jealousy does not prove devotion.
His pain does not excuse the injuries he causes.
His apology does not erase the attack.
His difficult past does not give him permission to destroy your future.
You can understand that someone is wounded without volunteering to become the place where he deposits his wounds.
I had to forgive myself for returning.
That may have been one of the hardest parts of my healing.
I had to stop judging the young woman I was with the knowledge of the woman I am today.
The woman I am today has decades of education, experience, faith, wisdom, and perspective that the young woman did not have.
She did not understand coercive control.
She did not understand traumatic attachment.
She did not understand how fear and relief could become connected.
She did not understand how an abusive person could gradually separate someone from family, friends, confidence, and reality.
She only understood that she was deeply in love and kept hoping the man she loved would permanently return.
I do not condemn that young woman anymore.
I honor her.
She survived the wedding night.
She survived the weekly violence.
She survived being knocked unconscious in public.
She survived being thrown outside naked in the snow.
She survived the black eyes her employees witnessed.
She survived the attack that required 90 stitches in her face.
She survived being called “Stitch” by the man who caused the wound.
She survived the humiliation.
She survived the isolation.
She survived the confusion.
She survived the grief of realizing that love could not make an unsafe man safe.
Most importantly, she eventually found the courage to leave.
Looking back, I understand what remaining might have cost me.
It could have cost me my health.
It could have cost me my identity.
It could have cost me my professional reputation.
It could have cost me my freedom.
It could have cost me my future.
It could have cost me my life.
Leaving did not mean I had never loved him.
I had been profoundly in love.
That was what made leaving so devastating.
I was not only leaving a man.
I was grieving the person I believed he could become.
I was grieving the future I thought we would share.
I was grieving the business and life we had built.
I was grieving the younger version of myself who had invested everything in us.
I did not simply walk out of a marriage.
I crawled out of the wreckage of a love that had injured my body and wounded my soul.
Then I began the long work of turning everything around inside myself.
I rebuilt my relationship with my own mind.
I taught my body that it was no longer in constant danger.
I rediscovered my instincts after years of being taught not to trust them.
I learned that peace did not mean something terrible was about to happen.
I stopped apologizing for surviving.
And I decided that the man who harmed me would not control the rest of my life.
That transformation did not happen overnight.
Healing is not a straight line.
There were memories.
There were triggers.
There were moments when I questioned myself.
There were times when the past felt close enough to touch.
But I continued moving.
I continued learning.
I continued working.
I rebuilt my confidence.
I reclaimed my intelligence.
I reclaimed my faith.
I reclaimed my body.
I reclaimed my name.
I transformed pain into knowledge.
I transformed survival into purpose.
I transformed silence into a voice that may help someone else recognize what is happening before violence takes even more from them.
Look at who I am now.
My name is Professor Ronda Lucia Lewis.
I am a Medical Reflexologist.
I am a Reflexology Health Physician.
I am a biologist, educator, author, and the founder and CEO of the Reflexology Health Physicians Institute.
I became the powerful woman that violence once tried to erase.
I built a professional life.
I created an institute.
I became a teacher.
I worked with people from many walks of life, including professional athletes, business leaders, government officials, physicians, families, and individuals searching for hope.
I turned what happened to me into a deeper understanding of the human body, the nervous system, trauma, fear, survival, and recovery.
I did not remain the woman lying injured on the floor.
I did not remain the woman standing naked in the snow.
I did not remain the woman hiding a black eye from her employees.
I did not remain the woman answering to the name “Stitch.”
I became a woman who could stand in her own name and tell the truth.
People who know me today may have noticed the scar above my lip.
Some may have wondered where it came from but never felt comfortable asking.
That scar marks the place where he drove the Corvette key into my mouth and face.
The injury required 90 stitches.
For years, that scar carried a story I was not prepared to tell.
Today, I no longer see it as something that makes me damaged or less beautiful.
I see evidence that my body healed.
I see evidence that my life continued.
I see the face of a woman who survived.
My scar is visible.
So is my success.
So is my strength.
So is the life I built after leaving.
I am not ashamed of what happened to me.
The shame belongs to the person who chose violence—not to the woman who survived it.
I became more than what happened to me.
You can too.
You can build a career after abuse.
You can become educated.
You can create a business.
You can become a leader.
You can rediscover your faith.
You can find purpose.
You can help other people.
You can laugh again.
You can love again.
You can trust yourself again.
You can look in the mirror and recognize the person looking back.
Moving forward does not mean pretending the abuse never happened.
It does not mean denying the injuries, forgetting the pain, or excusing the person who caused them.
It means placing the experience behind you instead of allowing it to control everything ahead of you.
The scar may remain.
But the abuser does not get to control what the rest of your life becomes.
Your scars do not cancel your beauty.
Your past does not cancel your purpose.
What someone did to you does not determine who you are permitted to become.
Years after I escaped the violence, I was told that he was facing serious allegations involving Medicare fraud.
I have not independently verified the complete court record, so I will not present an allegation as a conviction or claim more than I can prove.
But hearing those allegations forced me to think about what remaining beside him might eventually have cost me.
My safety.
My professional reputation.
My freedom.
My future.
I left before his later decisions could become my responsibility.
Whatever a court may ultimately determine about his actions belongs to him—not to me.
I survived the life we shared.
I rebuilt without him.
And I did not follow him into the life he chose after me.
I am not telling my story because I want pity.
I am telling it because silence protects abuse.
I am telling it because another woman may be reading this while covering a black eye.
Someone may be hiding an injury from coworkers.
Someone may be defending the person who hurt her.
Someone may believe his apology means the violence has ended.
Someone may be waiting for the honeymoon version of him to return permanently.
Someone may believe leaving means her love was never real.
Please hear me:
You can love someone and still leave.
You can miss someone and still protect yourself from him.
You can remember beautiful moments without returning to danger.
You can grieve the relationship and still know that ending it may save your life.
You can forgive yourself for every time you returned.
You can begin again.
The honeymoon stage is not proof that the abuse has ended.
An apology without sustained accountability is not change.
A gift is not healing.
Possession is not protection.
Jealousy is not devotion.
Isolation is not love.
Being afraid of the person who says he loves you is not safety.
You are not stupid because you stayed.
You are not weak because you returned.
You did not cause the violence.
You are not responsible for changing the person hurting you.
And you do not have to wait for another attack to prove that the danger is real.
I was used.
I was wounded.
I was isolated.
I was humiliated.
I was profoundly in love.
And I still chose life.
I moved forward—not because the past stopped hurting, but because I finally understood that my life was worth protecting.
He gave me a nickname based on the wound he caused.
But he did not get to name the woman I became.
I am not “Stitch.”
I am not the black eyes.
I am not the violence.
I am not the silence of the people who looked away.
I am Professor Ronda Lucia Lewis.
I am a survivor.
I am an educator.
I am a founder.
I am a powerful woman who reclaimed her body, voice, identity, purpose, and future.
This story does not end with the abuse.
It does not end with the wedding-night beating.
It does not end with me lying unconscious after being struck in public.
It does not end with me standing naked in the snow.
It does not end with 90 stitches in my face.
It does not end with him calling me “Stitch.”
Those moments belong to my past, but they do not own my future.
A future book will take readers more deeply into this story—the love, the violence, the business, the money, the isolation, the injuries, the psychological cycle, the people who looked away, the decision to leave, and the powerful woman who emerged from the wreckage.
That book will be only one of many.
I have lived enough for more than one story.
I have survived enough for more than one book.
And I have learned enough to help people still trying to find their way out.
This will not be written as revenge.
It will not be written to humiliate anyone.
It will be written because silence protects abuse, while truth may help protect the next person.
If the man who caused these injuries ever reads my words, I want him to understand something:
You left a scar above my lip, but you did not destroy my face.
You wounded my body, but you did not own it.
You tried to isolate me, but you did not erase my voice.
You called me “Stitch,” but you did not get to name the woman I became.
You became part of my past.
I became the author of my future.
My scars will become pages.
My pain will become purpose.
My survival will become a legacy.
The future book is coming.
It will be one of many.
And this is only the beginning.
IF MY STORY FEELS FAMILIAR, PLEASE DO NOT FACE IT ALONE.
Call the National Domestic Violence Hotline:
1-800-799-SAFE (7233)
It is free, confidential, and available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A trained advocate can listen without judging you, help you consider your options, and connect you with local safety resources.
You do not have to be ready to leave before calling.
You do not have to prove what happened.
You deserve to be heard.
You deserve to be protected.
You deserve to be reminded that you are not alone.
If you are in immediate danger, call 911.
