Virginia Tanner is a young singer, song writer and domestic violence survivor who found her strength through music. Her story in her own words is below:

My name is Ginna and I am 28 years old. I’ve been in two abusive relationships. I got pregnant with my second daughter at 20 years old and married the father of my youngest daughter. I felt trapped as I was always taught, pregnant = married. The abuse started as verbal and when I was 8 months pregnant it accelerated to physical. My husband then was suffering from PTSD from being in a war in Bosnia. He threw me down the outside stairs in December in the rain. I ran to a friend’s house and when I came home he started crying, saying how sorry he was and it would never happen again. I heard this many times over the year and half I stayed with him. In the end I had been punched, kicked, and choked to many times to count. The relationship ended one day when I was beaten relentlessly for two hours and woke up on my bathroom floor after being choked unconscious.

I went to my parents who took my children in while I tryed to get on my feet. My oldest daughter who was 2 1/2 at the time was so traumatized that she wouldn’t leave with me when I decided to move away from the city my husband lived in. My parents have since adopted her.

I remarried at almost 24 years old. I have since come to learn that abuse is a cycle. You tend to be attracted to the same kind of men until you decide to change yourself. I had a son in 2006 with this new man whom I will simply call G.

G was very much a loner. He tried to keep me from contact with my mother and the physical abuse started after I had our son. There was financial stress in our life, we both were into drugs at the time, and I had a tendancy to speak without thinking. Again I was stuck in an abusive marraige. Only this time I was to ashamed to tell anyone. I was hit, choked, and restrained many times. Typically it would be because he was being verbally abusive and I was standing up for myself. This time there were witnesses. My babysitter quit because I wouldn’t tell the police. My brother (who was living with me) moved back home after witnesses many instances of abuse.

The last straw was on January 25, 2009. I can’t remember what set G off. It started with him throwing a coffee mug at me so hard it stuck in the wall beside my head where I had ducked, I remember being in a ball on the living room floor while he literally was wrapping his arms around my body and not allowing me to get away from him because he said if I called the police he would have nothing to lose. I was begging him to let me go and trying with all my strength to break free of his grasp, but he was just to strong for me. My children were watching the whole time. He wrapped one arm around my throat and I can remember thinking “This is it. I am going to die in front of my children.” I don’t know where the strength came from, but this rush of adrenalinie ran through me and I broke free. I stood up to run and that’s when he pushed me. I fell backward and hit my head on our stone fireplace. When I woke up my son was laying on me and crying saying “Mommy wake up.”

I can see this moment as clearly as watching a movie.

I was done.

Done being a victim, done being afraid, and done being the one who always ends up with these men.

I am a single mom now, working, in a program for addicts, and starting college in March. I am very happy now. My kids are happy. I’ve been drug, alcohol, and abuse free for over a year now. I no longer live my life wondering when the next episode of abuse will hit. I have found the strength to stand up for myself. I do not tolerate anyone so much as being verbally abusive towards me.

I have a boyfriend now who knows my past. He does not so much as call me out of my name. He knows that I will never tolerate abuse again and he respects that. I do not live with him, and have made the decision that I will not get married or move in with someone until I have dated them for years.

I have always been a writer. Poetry and songs were my escape. I wrote Survivor in the midst of my abuse as a way to try and find the strength to leave. Now it is my anthem for living.Through my music I have become a stronger person. I write my heart into my songs and poetry. It is my therapy.

I will not set myself up for a next time.

~Virginia (Ginna) Tanner

This is Ginna’s original song “Survivor”: