We are getting an early start today honoring our featured shero for #SurvivorSunday, the beautiful and bad ass Megan Hall. Survivor and domestic violence awareness advocate, Megan is the founder of Megan Hall Motivation, where she empowers women daily to “manage the chaos”. Her spirit is both admirable and contagious and inspires many to believe they are ENOUGH.

Megan’s Story

When I was in my senior year at Clarkson University I met my ex.  I was a single mom, bartending full time, and attending school full time. My biggest weakness has always been the need to save people. He needed saving and I thought I could do that.
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I was in my last semester of college when I started skipping classes because he needed me. At first it was just a class here or there but then it became wholes days. Whole days turned into whole weeks and before I knew it I was flunking all of my classes. Eventually I stopped going all together. He became more important than my education.
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It didn’t start off with him laying hands on me. It started out with a harsh word here or there, disrespecting me in front of others. He would say he was sorry then it wouldn’t happen again for a while. Eventually it turned into daily verbal abuse. I went from semi confident woman to no confidence at all. I started to believe everything he said.
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I left him the first time after I dropped out of college and started a new life three hours away but before I knew it I was being sucked back in. I decided to move in with him at his parents’ house after I found him in another woman’s dorm room while I was visiting him at college. This was a woman I knew he had cheated on me with but he promised they were just friends. I thought I could change him, I thought he needed me so I left everything behind to be with him. Several months later I became pregnant
with our daughter.
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I left him for the second time when I was pregnant. He was an addict and his addictions had become so bad that he was never sober. He came to me and promised he would get sober even asked me to marry him. I said yes. He was sober for a couple of months. Then after my C-section with our daughter I found my pain killers gone when I went to take one for the pain. He had taken them all himself.
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When I decided to leave for the third time he begged me to stay. He promised he would never drink or do drugs again. He got himself a job, a car, and we even got a cute little place that we were going to buy. We had all of the money to make that purchase happen. Next thing I knew he was telling me stories about the owners saying they weren’t willing to work with us anymore. He said he found us a new place, a fixer upper, it was going to be amazing.
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Only a few weeks later we moved into the house where it all came to an end. This house should have been condemned. It had no heat and we moved in February, we used space heaters. It had no stove, we used a microwave for meals and we only had enough hot water for a five minute shower. It was missing some interior walls and the flooring was plywood. I believed him that this would be a beautiful place and I even fought with my family and friends about it.
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Next thing I knew he was drinking all the time and doing drugs again. He even started dealing them for “extra money”. It was rare for me to see him sober. That’s when I realized the reason we couldn’t buy our house is because most of the money was gone to feed his addictions. The verbal abuse was a constant. I felt alone, isolated, depressed, and worthless.
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The evening before I left him it went from verbal to physical. He dragged me out of a bar by my arm leaving a bruise where his hand was. When we got home it went from bad to worse. As chairs flew past my head I decided I was going to leave. Of course I decided not to the next day when he calmed down. But by noon that day he was drunk and high screaming at me again. I called my sister and begged her to come get me, I had had enough.
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Then I heard a gunshot. He had shot off a gun in my house. I feared he would kill me. When I said I called the police he ran. For the next hour I had to stay in that house of horrors as the police went on a manhunt for him. My oldest daughter came running from the neighbor’s house where she was playing, crying and said “I thought he killed you.” She saw how bad things had become before I did.
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I didn’t know where we would live but I knew we had to go. I left with nothing. No car, no job, no license, and two little girls to care for. Thankfully my family took us in, they didn’t know how bad it had become until that point. I got a job, my license back, a car, and pushed forward every day because of my girls.
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Today I am a happily married, mom of four, military spouse entrepreneur. I met my husband not long after leaving that horrific relationship. One decision changed my entire life. The words cut deeper and stayed with me longer than the bruises. I am a survivor.

Facebook: Megan Hall Motivation