On my wedding day, I walked in with a black eye. My fiancé stood beside me… and when he looked at my mother, he smiled. Then he said, “She needed to learn.” The room burst into laughter. And that’s when I did something no one expected.

was taking the first step toward making them better.

But as she sat there in the room, surrounded by the women who loved her, Olivia’s thoughts drifted back to the events that had led up to this moment. The years of humiliation, the subtle and not-so-subtle ways Daniel had manipulated her, the ways her mother had controlled her like a puppet on a string.continue reading …