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Melissa Jordan nearly died at the hands of her abuser. As a survivor, she has reclaimed her life and is helping other women do the same thing as a board member of the Family Violence Center. KSMU's Missy Shelton has her story.
When you meet Melissa Jordan, she comes across as a confident woman who’s got it together. She has a warm, ready smile. There aren’t any obvious, outward signs of the trauma she’s been through, of the horrible circumstances she has overcome, of the courage she has shown as a survivor of domestic violence. Melissa has had a total of 4 abusive relationships. In the beginning of these relationships, there was a lot of emotional abuse.
“I had been in relationships in the past where I was told, ‘You’re lucky I want because no one else would.’ And when I started having children being told no one would ever want me again. No one would ever be interested in me…just the put downs and the insults and stuff like that.”
Melissa’s last abusive relationship came to a violent end in 2004. We want to let you know that Melissa’s description that you’re about to hear of what happened to her is disturbing. She says it was her faith that helped her get through what was the worst day of her life. She explains what happened and how she ended up first in the hospital and then in a shelter for battered women.
“My abuser had a psychological break. It happened over night. He woke up one morning and decided that that day he was going to kill me. He held me hostage in my house for 15 hours. He beat me beyond recognition. He fractured my elbow. He fractured my ribs. He broke my nose, busted out some of my teeth. He told me that he was going to kill me at midnight that night. And at 11:08, 52 minutes before he said he was going to kill me, the police knocked on the door. That’s when he shot me. He used a pump up pellet rifle. He put the barrel against my chest and pulled the trigger. The pellet went between my ribs. It went through the front wall of my heart and lodged in the back wall of my heart. They had to do open heart surgery. From what my mom tells me, they said if the aim had been one inch any other direction, it would have actually shredded the wall separating the chambers and I would’ve died.”
After Melissa left the hospital, she went to live at the Family Violence Center in Springfield.
“My first few weeks in the shelter, I spent closed up in my room because I didn’t want to scare the children…was how bad the damage to my face was.”
Melissa says when she first came into the shelter, she numbed her mind to what had happened by reading books…But eventually, Melissa came out of her room. She began to process what had happened to her.
“Part of the thing that helped me maintain my sanity after going through something like that, is the realization that there was a lot of lessons to be learned from it for me. One of those was that after waking up in the hospital, I suddenly had a real sense of how strong I am. It’s given me a sense of direction and what I needed to do. I knew that I had a responsibility.”
A responsibility to help other women who may feel trapped in abusive relationships. A responsibility to give back to the Family Violence Center, which helped her recover. A responsibility to share her story.
“I told someone very shortly after it happened, actually that the reason I willingly stand up in front of rooms of people and say this happened to me is because there is someone out there who doesn’t recognize it’s escalating to the point of physical violence. And if I can drive home the fact that this could happen to anyone else and one person realizes and gets out before that happens, then everything I went through that day was worth it.”
Melissa Jordan will complete her associate’s degree this May and plans to pursue a bachelor’s degree next fall. Beyond these tangible accomplishments, Melissa says she has changed a lot on the inside as a result of the trauma she endured.
“I suddenly realized the reason I had been through so many abusive relationships was because I didn’t have any idea who I was. I had always turned to someone else to define me. I don’t think that’s touched on enough that the reason these women go back is because they get a certain distance away and they get scared. They don’t know what their favorite food is because someone else has told them what their favorite food is. They don’t know how to wear their hair because for years, someone else has told them how to wear their hair. That is not an easy cycle to break. And it’s definitely not easy to re-train the thought process.”
Melissa now serves on the Board of Directors at the Family Violence Center and volunteers at the center. She makes herself available to any of the women in the shelter who want to talk to her. She shares her story with shelter volunteers when they go through training. She is a woman on a mission.
“I consider it a responsibility to do everything I can to make sure these women have a place to go and that they get the help they need. And that they understand it is possible to come through something like that and come through the other side still on your feet.”