So why are we treating them like separate problems? Their year relationship had been rife with verbal and physical violence. Over the years, her husband had choked her, run over her foot with a car and thrown her down a flight of stairs, resulting in a miscarriage.
The verbal abuse and harassment only worsened. Four months later, her husband returned to their home one night, loaded his shotgun and berated her for hours β his finger on or near the trigger the entire time. Thomas tells me this story in September, displaying a mix of calm and disbelief at the realization that she had survived years of violence and a childhood and adolescence that made it all feel normal. Thomas, 49, grew up in Sacramento, California, where she remembers facing violence both in and outside of her home.
Her parents struggled with drug addiction and would often get into physical fights. Meanwhile, the crack epidemic was in full swing and the gun violence that accompanied it was always within earshot. In , when she was a teenager, a group of men approached the car she and her friends were sitting in.
They demanded money, then shot into the car, killing one of her friends. The trauma threw Thomas into a downward spiral of alcohol abuse and bad boyfriends. After a stint in juvenile hall, she turned much of her life around, but she still found herself in a violent relationship.
Since leaving that relationship, Thomas has been trying to connect the dots between her childhood experiences with gun violence and spending most of her adulthood with a man who regularly harmed her.
