When her husband’s temper flares, he crawls on the floor, rolls around, smashes furniture, and threatens suicide, every tactic at once. For nearly ten years of marriage, Xiao-Lan has fought for her life every single day. She says that during his rampages he destroys the entire house. After an all-night outburst, she is so exhausted that, despite fearing he might grab a knife and attack her, she can’t stop her overworked body from collapsing into bed. Tomorrow she still has to go to work and act as though nothing happened.

On top of physical violence, her husband verbally abused and humiliated her, calling her useless, saying she was poorly educated, calling her “rotten.” That terrifying psychological abuse slowly eroded her confidence. She endured it entirely for their daughter, hoping that neither parent would be absent from the child’s life.

Nearly ten years went by like this. Xiaolan kept enduring, constantly reminding herself of her husband’s good points and telling herself that if she could just grit her teeth and get through it, better days would come.

Later her husband quit his job and became obsessed with the stock market. He forced Xiaolan to open an online trading account and to borrow money so he could speculate. When she refused, he threatened to kill himself. Knowing things would only spiral further out of control, she seized a chaotic moment and fled with her daughter.

Around ten o’clock that night, Xiao-Lan’s phone rang. On the line, her husband angrily demanded why the two of them hadn’t come home. Xiaolan said they would head back right away, but her daughter lay face-down, not moving. Before long the phone rang again; this time her daughter firmly said she didn’t want to go back and asked, “How long are we supposed to endure this?” Around 11 p.m. he called once more. Seeing the resolute look on her daughter’s face, Xiaolan decided not to answer, and not to return. It was time to leave.

At midnight, after she and her daughter gave statements at the police station, they were placed in a Good Shepherd shelter. That night, they finally slept in peace: no one causing a scene beside them, no need to be ready to run at any moment.

After the divorce, Xiaolan and her daughter depended on each other. Money was tight, but she still worked hard to let her daughter learn the violin. She found that music made her daughter truly happy and seemed to ease the anger and helplessness of having witnessed domestic violence for ten years.

And so, better days arrived for Xiaolan and her daughter. She accepted help from Good Shepherd’s social workers, sought counseling herself, and took part in art-therapy-style classes. She was brave, she knew the confidence her ex-husband had destroyed would take time to rebuild. She sat for a civil-service exam with a very low acceptance rate and, with a high score, narrowly missed being admitted. Even so, that one attempt brought her confidence back. Afterward, Xiaolan enrolled in the Open University and read many books she loved. She realized she was not what her husband said she was, she was, in fact, a remarkable person.