October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and although my scope does not include working as a crisis responder, I can’t let this month pass without raising awareness, talking about domestic violence, and sharing my own story.
I am alive today. I can share my story and hopefully make a difference in someone else’s life.
But I didn’t do it alone.
There were a few people who stood behind me along the way and became my heroes. Today, I want to tell you about one of them.
His name is Bret Martin.
Formerly known to me as Officer Bret Martin—and later, Sergeant Bret Martin.
The Day I Met Officer Martin
Many years ago, Officer Bret Martin responded the morning after I escaped my previous marriage. The night before, I could have been killed had I not escaped.
Officer Martin wasn’t called to assist me. My husband at the time had been arrested the night before. His parents had bailed him out, and they called the police to help retrieve some of his belongings from my apartment. When the officers knocked on my door, both of my children were asleep. My son was about four years old, and my daughter was about 17 months old.
I had not slept all night. I was still in shock, trying to process the fact that I could have been killed.
My husband at the time had strangled me to the point that I couldn’t breathe.
Somehow, I escaped.
I took both of my children out of the bathtub and put underwear on my son and a diaper on my daughter. As I tried to attend to my children while still in shock, he spit in my face and threatened to kill me.
Then I heard a voice behind me say very clearly:
“Get out or he’s going to kill you.”
I heard it three times. It was so clear. To this day, I don’t know who or what it was, but I didn’t doubt the warning.
I picked up both of my children—my son wearing only his underwear and my daughter in only a diaper—and walked barefoot to my neighbors’ apartment. They were an older couple whom my children affectionately called Grandma and Grandpa. When they opened the door, they let us in. Maybe they could see the distress on our faces.
I said something with a certainty that still stands out to me after everything that had just happened:
“I’m getting divorced. My husband just tried to kill me. Please call the police.”
I hadn’t planned those words. They simply came out of me. It almost felt as though someone else were speaking for me.
But the decision was mine. And it was final.
I may not have known what the next day, month, or year of my life was going to look like. But in that moment, barefoot in my neighbors’ apartment with my two little children, I knew one thing:
I wasn’t going back.
The next morning, I was back in my apartment while my children slept in their bedroom. The clock showed 7:00 a.m.
Then I heard a knock on my door.
When I opened it, I was shaking. There were two officers on the other side, a man and a woman, and when I saw them, I began shaking even more.
The male officer, Officer Martin, noticed.
“It’s okay. You’re safe. We’ve been called to retrieve your husband’s clothes and some belongings.”
My husband at the time and his parents were waiting in the parking lot. Officer Martin told me to put his belongings in a bag and that he would take them outside.
He could have collected what he had been sent to retrieve, completed his job, and left.
He didn’t.
After taking my ex-husband’s belongings outside, he came back in. Officer Martin and the other officer stayed with me for approximately two hours, and during that time, Officer Martin spoke to me with a directness I desperately needed.
He told me:
“Do not go back to him. They do not change.”
He warned me that people who behave this way can promise the world afterward. They can say everything you’ve been waiting to hear so you’ll take them back. He told me not to listen to pretty words. My husband had already tried to take my life, he reminded me. It takes only seconds for someone to succeed, and once a life is taken, there is no second chance.
At some point during that conversation, my daughter woke up. She was only 17 months old. She walked over to this police officer she had never met and stretched her little arms toward him.
He picked her up.
I had never seen anything like it. Something about that moment warmed my heart. I felt safe—not only because he had picked up my daughter, but because there was something about Officer Martin that made me feel seen, understood, and protected. I also felt that I was receiving clear direction from someone who had seen cases like mine before.
He wasn’t simply trying to make me feel better. He knew what he was talking about.
And while holding my baby in his arms, he continued talking to me.
“If you don’t do it for you, do it for her.”
He pointed to my daughter. Then he added:
“And your son.”
He told me that all three of us deserved safety, love, kindness, and respect—but that getting there would require me to stay strong and not look back.
He didn’t sugarcoat what was ahead of me. He didn’t tell me that leaving meant everything would suddenly become easy. Quite the opposite. He told me there were going to be days when it would get hard as hell. Days when I might be tempted to go back because going back might look easier. But he told me that was an illusion, and he warned me that returning could put my life in danger.
And then he told me something I would carry with me for years:
“Your future is much brighter than it looks right now. Just because you can’t see it, and because it’s hard now, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. You deserve someone who loves you and respects you.”
At that moment, I couldn’t see very far ahead.
But apparently, he could.
After my son woke up, the officers even walked outside with me so I could leave to file for a protective order.
When His Words Became Mine
Officer Martin was right about something else.
It got hard.
There were years when I was a single mother and life felt incredibly heavy. There were moments when I wondered how I was going to keep doing it. And during some of those moments, I remembered that police officer talking to me.
I never felt like going back to my ex. What I doubted at times was whether I had the strength to keep moving forward—especially because leaving him didn’t mean the mistreatment stopped.
For the first three years, I raised my children without receiving child support, and his family did not provide support for them either. I was supporting my children on my own with a job that barely covered our basic needs.
But I remembered what Officer Martin had told me:
“Just because you can’t see your future doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”
Those words became something I could reach for when my own strength felt depleted.
Looking back, I realize now what he really gave me that morning: the ability to believe in a better future more than in the limited reality I was living. It helped me shift my focus from what was happening in that moment to what was possible, even though I couldn’t see it yet. The experience I was living was beyond difficult, but that didn’t mean it belonged in my future. I had to train myself to show up for myself every single day, believing more in what I couldn’t see than in the hardship in front of me, until part of me began to feel that future as real. From “I can’t take one more step” to “I deserve something greater.” Little by little, I was moved by what was possible rather than held back by what I felt I couldn’t do.
My parents and brother lived in Spain. Although my mom came to stay with me for a month soon after I escaped, I didn’t have my family close by when things got hard. I had friends who became like family, and they are also among my heroes. But sometimes, even as a grown adult, you just need your mom or dad to hold you.
My parents were there on the other side of the phone, encouraging me. And Officer Martin’s words were there too.
He had given me words of strength before I even knew how badly I would need them. I replayed them in my head many times. Each time, it was as if I was rehearsing a future I hadn’t lived yet. He probably had no idea that a conversation during one of his shifts would continue happening inside my head years later.
But it did.
Four Years Later, I Went Looking for Him
I always carried a deep sense of gratitude for what Officer Martin had done, and I felt that he needed to know. His words had helped keep me going. When everything around me seemed to provide evidence that life was getting harder rather than better, I held onto them.
About four years after the day Officer Martin walked into my apartment, my life was already in a much brighter place. I decided it was time for him to know what his words had meant to me.
So I hunted him down. Yes, I went on a hunt for a police officer.
I contacted the police department and specifically asked for Bret Martin. I knew his name because he had left his business card with me four years earlier when I first met him. I explained that he had helped me several years earlier and that I owed him a thank-you. I learned that he was a Sergeant by then. He wasn’t working that day, but I was told they would pass along my message.
The next day, my phone rang. It was him.
I reminded him who I was. He knew immediately. I told him I had written him a letter and wanted to give it to him personally. I also informed him that I owed him a very big hug.
Bret told me he was working that day and could come to my apartment that evening.
The same apartment he had walked into four years earlier.
When he knocked on my door this time, I didn’t open it shaking. Instead, I looked at the man standing on the other side with an overwhelming sense of gratitude.
Four years earlier, my body had been in survival mode. This time it felt safe.
He came inside and sat down. I handed him the letter. And I gave him a bag of Life Savers candy.
Because he had quite literally helped save my life.
I watched him read my letter in front of me. As he read, tears began rolling down his cheeks.
Then he told me something I hadn’t known.
After that morning four years earlier, he had continued thinking about me. When he worked nights, he would sometimes drive through my apartment complex just to make sure I was safe.
All those years, I had remembered him.
And I learned that he had remembered me too.
The picture above
The picture you see at the beginning of this post was on May 19, 2016. That’s me and Sergeant Bret Martin. The evening I finally got to thank one of my heroes, photographed after Bret read my letter.
Four years earlier, Bret had told me there was a brighter future ahead even though I couldn’t see it yet. By the time this picture was taken, I was beginning to see that he had been right.
And there is one little detail in this photograph that I didn’t even notice until years later. Behind us, hanging on my door, is a sign that reads:
“HOME is where they love you.”
Somehow, that feels especially meaningful now.
Some People Never Know the Life They Helped Change
We’ve talked at different times since then. Bret is retired now, but he is still someone I know I could call.
Whenever I thank him, Bret tells me he was just doing his job. Maybe from where he stood, that’s all it was. But for a frightened woman in survival mode, struggling to find clarity and unable to see past that morning, his words became something steady to hold onto through years of hardship. What he gave me that day became part of the foundation I built my life on.
I love and adore this man. And there is nothing romantic about that love.
Love doesn’t always mean romance. Sometimes love is simply seeing another human being in their humanity and recognizing what their presence has meant in your life.
The love I have for Bret is the kind you have for a person who stood at one of the most consequential intersections of your life, looked at you when you couldn’t see beyond the moment you were surviving, and said:
“Keep going. There is more ahead.”
Bret didn’t make my decisions for me.
He couldn’t walk the years that followed for me.
He couldn’t promise that leaving would be painless.
What he did was tell me the truth without taking away my hope.
“This is going to be hard.”
And:
“Your future is still brighter than you can see.”
Both were true.
To the Person Who Is Afraid to Ask for Help
I’m sharing Bret’s story during Domestic Violence Awareness Month because I know there may be someone reading this who is afraid to tell anyone what is happening.
Maybe you’re afraid no one will believe you.
Maybe you’re afraid you’re overreacting.
Maybe you’re afraid of what happens after you tell someone.
Maybe you aren’t ready to leave.
Maybe you don’t even know what you want to do yet.
And perhaps contacting law enforcement feels terrifying.
I can’t promise that everyone will have the experience I had with Bret. Survivors’ experiences with law enforcement are not all the same, and I don’t want to pretend they are. I can only tell you mine.
I felt all of those fears too. I wasn’t ready for what happened or for the moment when I had to escape. I didn’t have a plan for what came next.
But I had Bret’s message.
And part of the reason I am sharing his story is because I know not everyone will have a Bret Martin standing in their home at one of the most frightening moments of their life. So perhaps, by sharing what he gave me that morning, I can pass a little of it forward.
In essence, this is what Bret told me:
Your life is valuable. Don’t give someone the opportunity to take it from you in seconds. Leaving may not be easy. There may be days when staying away requires every bit of strength you have. But the difficulty you can see right now is not evidence that there isn’t something better beyond it. Believe in your future more than your current reality. It may be much brighter than you can imagine from where you’re standing today. You deserve the opportunity to discover that future. You deserve safety. You deserve love. And you deserve to be treated with kindness and respect.
I want to publicly recognize a man who became one of my heroes. But I also want his message to travel farther than that apartment where he first gave it to me.
Maybe someone reading this doesn’t have a Bret Martin.
Maybe Bret’s words can reach that person through me.
And maybe, all these years later, my dear Bret can become someone else’s hero too.
On one of the worst mornings of my life, a police officer came into my home to do his job.
And then he stayed.
He held my 17-month-old daughter in his arms while reminding me that my children and I deserved something different. He told me the road ahead would be difficult. He told me not to mistake familiar for safe.
And he saw a future for me that I couldn’t yet see for myself.
Today, when I look at everything that happened afterward—the life I lived, the children I raised, the person I became, and even the work I am doing now—I understand something I couldn’t fully understand that morning:
He was right.
There was so much more ahead.
To Bret Martin
Bret, if you’re reading this, there are some debts in life that cannot be repaid.
This is one of them.
But they can be honored.
So this October, I want other people to know your name. What you did for my children and me was heroic, and I don’t want it to remain untold.
I want them to know about the officer who stayed.
The officer who held a frightened mother’s baby while telling her the truth.
The officer who drove through her apartment complex afterward because he hadn’t stopped wondering whether she was safe.
And the officer whose words followed that woman for years until she was finally able to see the future he had told her was there.
You didn’t just respond to a call.
You changed the trajectory of a life.
Actually, more than one.
Because that little four-year-old boy sleeping in his bed and the little 17-month-old girl you held in your arms grew up too.
Thank you for seeing us.
Thank you for staying.
And thank you for helping me believe in a future I couldn’t see yet.
That day, you were more than a police officer to me. You may see what you did as simply part of your job, but your actions made you one of my forever heroes.
I love you to pieces, Bret. Thank you. Always.
The Future He Saw
My life today is very different from the life I was living the first time I met Bret, and even from the life I was living the day I gave him that letter. It continues to move forward and become brighter in ways I couldn’t have imagined back then.
But that future didn’t arrive because someone came along and rescued me or suddenly made my life beautiful. It came as I learned to return to myself—to know my values, trust my own voice, stop abandoning myself to accommodate harmful behavior, and become an active participant in creating the life I wanted to live.
Bret saw a brighter future for me before I could see it for myself.
Even in some of the hardest years, there were moments when I felt grateful for that future before there was any evidence of it.
Today, I realize I didn’t simply find that future waiting for me.
I became the woman who could build it.
I’ve also come to see Bret’s words that morning in a new light: “You deserve someone who loves you and respects you.” For a long time, I thought that someone would be another person. Today, I know the first person who needed to love and respect me was me. As I began showing up for myself every day, I stopped searching for someone else to give me what I had been missing. Loving myself didn’t close the door to a healthy relationship. It opened it, because I could finally recognize what real love and respect look like, starting with how I treat myself.
Ten years later
So much life exists between the picture on this post and who I am now. The woman in the picture had already traveled a long way from the terrified woman Bret first met, but she still had so much ahead of her.
More growing.
More learning.
More becoming.
More moments when she would have to find herself again.
And the man standing beside her had no idea just how far the words he gave her one morning would travel.
They traveled through years.
They traveled through hard days.
They traveled into the woman I became.
And now, through this story, I hope they travel even farther—to someone who may need them today.
If You Are Living This Right Now
You do not have to know what the rest of your life looks like today. You don’t have to solve the next five years. Sometimes the next step is simply letting one safe person know what is happening.
And if today you cannot see anything beyond the life you are currently surviving, I want to pass along something an officer once gave me:
Just because you can’t see a brighter future doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Please visit my Resources page for domestic violence hotlines, advocacy organizations, safety information, and other support. If you are in immediate danger, call 911.
Thank you always Bret. Love you forever, my hero.
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