The scars we carry

Family violence leaves lasting impacts, as one woman’s story shows. Early responses could help save years of pain.

by Diana Connell – Lived Experience Consultant, McAuley Community Services for Women

This article was originally published in Council to Homeless Persons’ Parity magazine – July 2025.

I am Diana Connell. I am a mother, a survivor, and a woman who has lived through things that most people only read about or see on the news.

I know first-hand that the cost of forcing women and children to run from violence, to lose everything, is lifelong. It shatters health, education, livelihoods, futures. It creates cycles of poverty, illness and instability that ripple for generations. This is why we need system change.

Now I work as a survivor advocate and codesign consultant for McAuley, looking at ways we can help women and children to stay safely at home.

If this sort of approach, called Safe at Home, had existed when I was living with a person using violence, my children and I may tell a very different story. Instead, we have endured years of upheaval, instability, financial insecurity and ill-health because of the lasting effects of family violence.

Family violence destroyed my family

I share my story not for pity, but because I want change.

For 22 years, I lived under the weight of family violence. Not just the bruises, the threats, the smashed walls, but the slow erasing of myself.

On the outside, we looked like a happy family. We worked a farm together; we were known in the community. But behind closed doors, the truth was something else entirely.

I was controlled, isolated, blamed for every failure. I was told where I could go, who I could speak to, what I was allowed to think. If I didn’t answer the phone immediately, the rage came down like a storm.

There were moments I thought I would die — slammed against walls, choked, threatened, broken down by words so sharp they cut deeper than fists.

But the hardest part wasn’t just what happened to me — it was trying to keep my children safe, trying to give them some sense of normal life, even as I quietly fell apart inside.

We were New Zealand citizens living in Australia. That meant no social supports, no housing help, no Centrelink, no safety net.

And we were in a small rural community, where everyone knew everyone, where people talk. Leaving didn’t just mean walking away from my husband, it meant walking away from a life, a home, a community, and stepping into a future where we had no idea where we would land.

But one day, the risk of staying became greater than the risk of running. So, I ran.

We left with what we had and walked for miles in the dark, terrified.

We reached the police, thinking they would help, but instead, I was judged, blamed, scrutinised. There was no warm welcome, no protective shield. There was just coldness.

We had nowhere to sleep. I snuck back to the house to get the car, grabbed whatever belongings I could.

That car became our home. We parked in a McDonald’s carpark. It was well-lit, it had security guards, it had Wi-Fi. That was how we searched for jobs, for help, for answers. For weeks, that car was our world.

My son was finishing Year 12, trying to sit exams while living in the backseat of a car, carrying the crushing weight of anxiety and the fear of his friends finding out.

My daughter was at university, holding herself together through the trauma, unable to finish her studies and knowing she had to come back to the country to no home.

And I, I was their mother, holding the last threads of our family in my hands, determined not to let us break. So, we lived in that car and survived.

When I reached out for help, doors kept slamming shut. We were blocked at every turn, no eligibility, no support.

The grief was suffocating. Not just the loss of our home, but the loss of our community, our stability, everything we’d ever known. Long after we found short-term housing, the scars remained.

Years later, my health collapsed again. Cancer after cancer, surgery after surgery, and now I live with chronic pain. My daughter developed Crohn’s disease, a painful, lifelong condition heightened by trauma. My son now lives with stress and anxiety that trace back to those years when we were running, hiding, holding on.

What people don’t tell you is that the damage doesn’t end when you leave. It stays in your bones, your cells, your memories, your children.

I tell my story not for pity, but because change matters. Because no mother should have to choose between her child’s safety and their dignity. Because no family should have to live in a car. Because no woman should have to rebuild her life from scratch while fighting cancer, while holding up two traumatised children, while begging systems for help.

We can do better. We must do better. I survived. My children survived. But survival is not enough. We deserve to heal. We need to actively build a world where no woman, no child, no family ever has to walk this path again.

Codesigning a better future

I am proud to be part of the team that codesigned the Safe at Home response being trialled in Geelong, because I know, from lived experience, that if back then my children and I had access to a response that we could access early and that would enable us to remain in our home, it could have saved us years of pain.

This Safe at Home approach doesn’t force women and children to run, to uproot, to live in cars and shelters and emergency rooms. It gives them a chance to stay safe where they are, wrapped in services and supports, without losing everything they know.

The system we have now asks women to leave, to uproot, to start over again and again, and then asks them to climb mountains to access basic support. The system we’re designing will centre lived experience, listen to survivors, and create practical pathways that protect families early, before they fall into the spiral of homelessness.

When codesigning our trial model we talked to many victim survivors, and many of them had endured similar experiences to me. One of the things I am most proud of is the way we also talked to people who had used violence in the past. If we are going to truly change things, we need to bring these people on the journey too. We need to listen to them and learn how we can support people using violence to change, before they destroy futures.

I want a world where no woman has to live in a car. Where no child has to carry trauma through their education and beyond. Where no family has to face the long-term health consequences of years spent fighting just to survive. Where system reform listens to those of us who have lived it.  Because we know what needs to change.

The Victorian Safe at Home trial gives me hope. Co-design gives me hope. Survivors lifting their voices and shaping the future give me hope.

We can stop the devastation before it begins. We just need to listen and act.