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<p><b>Note</b> Jennifer Wood has been discharged from Suite101 and her articles have been deleted due to the plagiarism of writings that are owned and published by Andrew Vachss. Two of Jennifer's articles, specifically her article "Emotional Abuse - What is It" and "Emotional Abuse - A Form of Domestic Violence" contained sections that were directly copied without permission from Andrew Vachss' writings. This copyrighted work is prominently displayed on Mr. Vachss' own website,</p> <p>The Zero http://www.vachss.com</p> <p>Suite101 wishes to apologize to Andrew Vachss and our readers for the misrepresentation and unauthorized re-publication of Andrew's writings.</p> <p><hr></p> <p>I am a stay-at-home mom with many varying life experiences. I am the youngest child of a mother who still believes the year is 1960! I grew up with no running water or electricity and we built our own house (just imagine four women building a house and hand-sawing all the lumber!). I moved out on my own at age 14 and began working full-time to support myself. I continued high-school and graduated and then started college. I met my first husband when I first began college and got married. He was in the Air Force and we moved to Germany. Little did I know that he was extremely abusive. I survived four years of hard, physical abuse so that I could travel around Europe and experience the fall of the Berlin wall and the destruction of communism. I finally left my husband at age 21. He stalked me for several years, but eventually the abuse and stalking quit. At age 23 I met my current husband who was an old high-school sweetheart. I went to my five-year high school reunion, saw him and remembered that I always loved him. We were married one month later. He is active duty Navy, we have two beautiful children and reside in Hawaii. My experiences are so varied, it is hard to put them in a nutshell. I have never drank or done drugs, but have lived with alcoholism and drug abuse all my life. My mother was the original hippie so acid and marijuana were common in our house. My parents were divorced when I was six years old and my father and I had a difficult relationship. I was sexually molested by my grandfather at age 10. My way of dealing with it was to counsel other children who had been sexually abused. I started doing that at age 15. At age 10 I began working with mentally handicapped adults in a work-experience program. I showed them how to sort paper and supervised them. I worked as a Certified Nurses Aide for several years. Mostly, I have done secretarial work for companies such as Screen Actors Guild, Lanier Worldwide and others. My history of topic: The topic I would like to write about is Spousal Abuse (both enduring and surviving). Although not currently in an abusive situation (thank God), I endured and survived over 5 years of abuse from my ex-husband. My hobbies include crafts (cross-stitch), children's crafts (encouraging my three-year-old) and collecting Pocket Dragons. The time I spend online is around 30 hours per week on the internet and using AOL. One of my favorite sites is http://members.aol.com/Mellostar2/mellostar2</p>