I wanted to be at the top. Clinical ladder 4 was the top. You couldn’t get any higher achievement as an ICU nurse than this.

There were many requirements to obtain this:

• Community service.
• Having a nursing article you wrote published in an established nursing magazine.
• Doing many hours as a charge nurse without that differential.

I checked all the boxes, every year. It was hard work. And tiresome. The compensation for this was $8,000.

They gave us a list of local community services. I chose a shelter for women and children, battered, domestic violence, and now homeless.

I taught the women how to take blood pressures. I taught the women what systolic and diastolic meant. We talked about good and nutritious foods to eat.

It was a safety home.

Their children had day care or school during the day. Three meals a day. Each mom and her child or children stayed in a small room. Enough for beds and a toilet and shower.

The community room was their living room and they had a common kitchen.

It was a village to me. Of very sad women. They’d file slowly into the education room where I taught twice a week. It was difficult to teach as they filed in.

Women. Sad eyes. Disheveled in appearance. Slowly shuffling into my classroom.

Some with bruises on their arms. One with a large black and blue eye where she was punched by her husband. Unable to open that eye.

I didn’t know I was one of them.

When my assignment ended, I couldn’t help but look back. Those children. Happy, learning, and playing in a structured environment. The moms feeling safe from the chaos they left behind. A roof over their head. Hot meals to eat. Love. And safety.

Our ICU manager signed me off on my community service. Another box to check off to obtain my clinical ladder 4.

I went back to work. That one-hour drive to the hospital is certainly a long time to think.

With the approval from the ICU manager, I was able to create a Christmas project every year for the children of this home. Toiletries and gift cards for the moms. The children would wake up to brand new toys from our ICU staff. It easily took two vans to deliver the presents.

But I didn’t know I was one of them.

I successfully became a clinical ladder 4 RN. No doubt that I worked really hard at this.

$8,000 finally came my way and my children and husband were overjoyed. Bountiful blessings.

My husband never hit me. He never physically hurt me. It was more like a slow infusion of disrespect and disregard. Always discounting me. I’m not that smart. I’m not that pretty. And if you want to move out of this trailer (this dilapidated two-bedroom trailer), then you’ll have to do this by yourself. He would tell me.

And I did. Do it myself. I frequently worked 60 hours a week. I got a second job at a small hospital ICU so I could save for a down payment of a real house. As he stood by. Never blinking an eye over how many hours I put in at work. I was always there for my children’s birthdays, and I was the grade mother for all three children. Granted, I sometimes appeared semi-comatose from working the night shift. But I made it happen.

One day, my eight-year-old daughter asked her daddy: “Why does mommy work so much?”

And his response was: “She likes to work, all of her girlfriends are there. She has fun with them.”

My daughter reported this to me.

It was another truth I had to face. Gaslighting.

The truth, I told her, was that I desperately wanted to spend more time with our children, but I had to buy that house, I had to have nice clothes for them. I wanted fun vacations for them.

As my husband stood by. A college-educated quiet genius who could have easily made more money than his minimum wage job. He plotted his “business trips.” A new woman, many infidelities.

It wasn’t until he died. Cancer. Liver, pancreas, and metastases to his lungs and lymph nodes, that I finally looked in the mirror.

The reflection of myself shouted volumes of abuse.

Domestic abuse. The lies I made up to convince myself that we were a happy family. And that I was happily married. I stared the truth in the mirror. And it all came back to me.

Those women at that shelter years ago. They had been slapped and punched and left penniless and homeless. Domestic violence.

My husband never punched me. Instead, he slowly verbally abused me over and over again. That infusion of continuous self-doubt I had. That I was never good enough. That continuous disregard and disrespect he had for me. Years and years of turmoil, feeling trapped. Feeling that I couldn’t escape. Because of the children.

My daughter recently said to me that her daddy couldn’t have loved them. She said: “He disrespected you, Mom. So therefore, he disrespected us.”

I’m sad that I didn’t recognize that I was being abused. I thought abuse was only physical abuse. But I was wrong.

The mothers and their children in the shelter, slowly through therapy, and community awareness, began to heal. The shelter helped the moms train for jobs. Helped them obtain their own housing.

The laughter of the children receiving their gifts at Christmas from our ICU staff. A moment of profound joy mixed with tears.

I didn’t know I was one of them.

We left behind two vans full of wrapped Christmas presents for the kids. The kids with broken families. The kids with sadness who watched physical abuse, heard verbal abuse, and saw neglect.

A beautiful Christmas tree wrapped in presents, and for one gleaming moment, they knew there was peace and love in the house. Thank you to all the ICU staff for providing for them. With love in their hearts, they wrapped each present.

The $8,000 was a bountiful treat for me. Well earned. But the best gift for me was self-awareness.

Debbie Moore-Black is a nurse who blogs at The Critical Care Nurse.