EPISODE 096 | Starting Over After an Abusive Marriage with Shonda Pence

People often ask survivors of abuse the same question: “Why didn’t you leave?”But abusive relationships rarely begin with obvious violence. More often, they unfold slowly through jealousy, control, isolation, emotional manipulation, and trauma bonding over time. By the time the abuse becomes impossible to ignore, many people are already emotionally, financially, psychologically, or physically trapped in ways outsiders don’t fully understand.In this episode, Shonda Pence (social worker, educator, domestic violence survivor, and co-founder of Mending Fences) shares what it was really like living inside an abusive marriage that began when she was still a teenager. She opens up about fear, motherhood, PTSD, the long aftermath of emotional abuse, and what it took to eventually rebuild a peaceful life afterward.