(CNN)“He punched me, he kicked me, he elbowed me, he choked me unconscious, he smothered me with pillows, he pinned me down for hours at a time, he destroyed all my belongings, he pulled a knife on me and said he was going to kill me and the boys and then kill himself.”
Bec Rawlings, the self-styled “Queen of bare-knuckle boxing,” is remembering the terror of living with an abusive husband. Though the 29-year-old Australian doesn’t cry anymore when talking about her miserable marriage, some wounds will never heal.
Nearly six years on, she can sleep now without fear of being murdered and no longer flinches when touched. “It gets easier day by day,” she says candidly. “I’m alive, I survived.”