For a long time after she'd fled to Ottawa, Maggie continued being afraid.
"Oh God, yes. I used to have nightmares," she says now, looking back at the bitter times. "I could never relax when I was outside." A few years ago, her ex showed up in Ottawa after a friend of his had seen her here. "In the middle of the street, he tried to strangle me."
But that's past now, says Maggie (whose real name, of course, is not Maggie at all). "I'm not as jittery as I used to be. I feel stronger."
For that, she thanks Harmony House, where she ended up nearly a decade ago after fleeing a violent relationship in a neighbouring city. It's the reason she's throwing a party again this Christmas.
For the sixth year in a row, Maggie is tracking down donations of ham, turkey and assorted trimmings. She's hoping for a few toys also, since you can hardly have a Christmas party without gifts for the kids. There will be game-playing and carol-singing. She'll wrap the gifts, prepare the meal and make sure that her guests, all former residents of Harmony House, have bus tickets to get to the party and home again.
It's a lovely way to say thank you.
These days, Maggie lives with her daughter, who has finally stopped feeling nervous. Maggie owns and operates a small business, which is doing fine. She feels as if her future is actually in her hands.
That would not have described her in 1995 when she arrived here, toddler in hand, a desperate woman fleeing an abusive partner. She had saved just enough for a bus ticket.
"I had nothing," she says. "I came to Ottawa because it was the closest place, although I knew nothing about it and had never been here." Someone had given her the phone number of the shelter here, which led her eventually to Harmony House.
"They helped me figure out what I wanted to do and how to go about doing it."
She had help with her daughter. She went back to school. She even learned some self-defence. And she was heard.
"Sometimes," Maggie recalls, "that's all you need, just to have someone listen." When you leave an abusive relationship, you leave more than an ex-partner behind. "You lose your friends. You lose your family. You feel so alone."
Without Harmony House, she says, "I honestly don't know what I would have done."
That's why she still keeps in touch. Her reasoning is pure, simple -- and sad. "I want to be able to help the next person who comes along."
Anyone can hear the gratitude in that. But to hear as well the dismal, certain knowledge that there will indeed be a next person -- and more persons after that -- takes some sensitivity.
Against past evidence, you find yourself hoping that the government might show some small evidence of that sensitivity.
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Janice Kennedy's column appears weekly. Contact her at jkennedy@thecitizen.canwest.com
Ran with main story "Battered miracle" on page C2.
Reprinted from the Ottawa Citizen