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Sometimes I find it's hard to keep on. I read the news, see, the isn't a, isn't it a shame, but it's
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Not music by Champagne. Charlie and the Wawas, find them on Spotify. The song title is Sometimes I find, Hey everybody, my name is Sally Hendrick and I'm here with Amanda Lee, an author of several books and a poetry book and a memoir and all of that. And I'm so excited to get to know her and to find out more about her discussions around domestic violence and whatever else we get into. So Amanda, welcome.
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Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
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Awesome. Tell me a little bit about yourself and how did we get here,
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Right? How did we get here? Well, let's see. I am originally from Philadelphia. I live now in Northern Virginia. I followed a boy down here who ended up becoming my husband, and then my ex-husband. The Cliff Notes version is he was, I am a domestic violence survivor and he was my abuser. And I hate saying that word that he was my abuser because we have come so far and after the divorce that I don't even view him that way anymore. But the reality is he was, I am a survivor. I was a victim for a number of years until a pretty traumatic event happened on August 3rd, 2019 at 8:59 PM It will forever be ingrained in my brain where I had to get my children and we had to run out of our house and the police were called. And what followed was months of just scariness going through the court system, being stalked and through it all.
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And those of you who are listening, who are parents will understand, my main focus was my children, making sure they were okay, getting them in therapy, keeping their lives normal, and not really paying attention to what I had suffered. Once I started to, one of my friends suggested, you should write this. It was a constant joke. You should write a book, you should pitch this to lifetime, all of these things. And one day I was thinking about the chapters, what they would be like, and I just started writing. And what came out of it was my memoir, and I wasn't going to do anything with it. Nobody wants to read this. And then I was like, maybe someday I'll show my children when they're adults so they can understand truly what happened. So I worked with an editor and polished it up, and then I sat there for a little bit, and then I showed it to one of my girlfriends, and she was like, you have to publish this.
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Even if it helps one person, you have to do this. So I shopped it around and I found a publisher. And as I was talking to them, I was like, well, actually, I kind of have a children's book in mind. They're like, well, what is it like? Well, when I was going through everything, my kids were five and three, and I am a teacher. So I was looking for all these resources to help comfort them, and I couldn't find anything that kind of fit the mold of kids who witnessed domestic violence. So I wrote a children's book out of just my nightly sayings of my children, because I mean, little kids don't sleep well anyway. And then they experience a traumatic event. They were in my room constantly, so it was sayings that I said to them as I walked them back in their room and covered them and put them back into bed. I was really inspired while I was going through everything by this one female detective that I worked with in the domestic violence unit in Fairfax County. And she kind of became my inspiration for my fiction book that just came out called Blue Coat.
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Blue Coat is a riveting tale of crime, courage, and complicated love. AE Lee's thrilling novel follows Brook Hill, the newly appointed head of the domestic Violence Unit and a community police department outside Washington DC who finds herself navigating a high stakes case that echoes her own haunting past. Her first investigation involves protecting a vulnerable woman and her children, even as her own memories of trauma resurface, reminding her of the motivations that drove her to law enforcement in the first place. As Brooke unravels the complexities of the case, her personal life becomes equally tangled, trapped in an emotional love triangle with a close friend and a charismatic new colleague from the legal world. Brooke seeks guidance from her adventurous best friend and outgoing sister in an effort to find stability in her turbulent love life. As the danger escalates and unexpected twists emerge, Brook's journey unfolds in a heart pounding journey of suspense and emotional discovery. The riveting dual plot line of blue coat makes it uniquely captivating, addressing the intrigue with mystery and the human longing for love and resolution. That's the description of Amanda's book. Blue Coat. Blue Coat refers to what a police officer wears. So what is the name of the children's book?
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The children's book is called Always. It's about, it has a mom and a little boy, and it's a promise to always protect you. I promise to always protect you from harm, hold you when you're sick and comfort when you are afraid always. And it's just what I used to say to my not so little boy anymore. I promise to keep you safe. I promise to comfort you. I promise to always hug you. I will always keep you safe. And that was just something I always repeated to him. And then he would be like, always. And I'd say always, I promise.
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Wow. And then how did that make you feel? If something else happened and then you had to be there for him again, did you build up guilt around it? What was happening with you
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After the main event in 2019? There really wasn't a lot that happened centered around the children. It was more centered around me, and I think I did a pretty good job of shielding them from any other trauma. They're not aware of any type of stalking. My ex had convinced our neighbor, I stayed in our family house for a time to give him access to the camera in their house so he could watch my coming and going. And my kids didn't know about that. It was very scary. But once I found out,
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How did you find out?
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He would send me texts about what I was doing, and I had a suspicion. And then he actually, when we were going through our divorce, he submitted it as evidence and I tried to get that added and it was added into our protective order that he couldn't surveil me. But as far as additional charges, the police, I called the police many times and they told me a female officer showed up when I had a suspicion. It was the neighbor, and she told me she couldn't do anything about somebody having a camera pointed at my house. It's on their property.
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That's crazy.
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I didn't have the best experience with the criminal justice system. I mean, I respect what they do, and I understand you have to support both sides. But in the end, I understand very clearly why most domestic violence victims don't come forward because I had a lot of support surrounding me in my personal life, and I did not feel supported with the criminal justice system.
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That leads me to ask the next question, what is lacking? Is it the laws? Is it the lack of support because of the individual police officers? Is it having to prove yourself so much before it was having heard?
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Yeah, it was having to prove yourself. The police officers that responded that night in August were phenomenal. I can't say enough about 'em. The police officers that I had to call subsequently for stalking and just feeling unsafe weren't fabulous at one. The last time I had to call, I was getting random text messages and it was like, I see you, and it would be like eyes and it was creepy. And he's like, well, we can't do anything to prove it's him. And I'm like, but what can you do to keep me safe? And he told me that I should come up with a code word so that when I call my friends and family, if I say this code word, they'll know I'm in danger. And I'm like, do you hear what you're saying to me? You're telling me I need a code word because I might be in danger and I'm calling the police. I feel like I'm in danger, but you're not doing anything about it. That doesn't make sense. And when we went there was assault involved that night in August. So the state pressed charges against my ex-husband. And when we went to court, they told me because he didn't have a criminal record, and this was the first time I called, the first instance that the state knew about that he was going to get a slap on the wrist.
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And then they tried to convince me that this was best because then I would get child support. I'm like, I don't care about the money. I want to be safe.
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Exactly. I feel like a lot of men, unless they've experienced that sort of thing, which they rarely do, I think that they cannot empathize.
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Yeah. Yeah. I, and it never occurred to me that people wouldn't believe me in the beginning. It just never occurred to me that someone would think I would lie about being so scared that I had to pull my children out of their beds and run for our lives.
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Domestic violence victims often face skepticism and disbelief when they come forward, which can make reporting abuse and seeking help. Difficult statistics show that nearly half of all intimate partner violence incidents are not reported to the police reflecting the systemic issues around believing victims. In 2022, over 950,000 incidents occurred in the us, but many went unreported due to fear, shame or the belief that they would not be believed. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the lack of belief in victims not only hampers justice, but also perpetuates cycles of violence by leaving abusers unchecked.
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And I was constantly having to prove like, no, this really did happen. He said he was going to burn the house down. He got a gas can in a lighter.
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Wow, did he actually bring that over? Or how do you
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Know? So we were fighting upstairs. He had thrown water on me, and I ran downstairs and I had my cell phone in my hand to call the police where he began to mock me. I was like, whatcha going to do? You going to call the cops? Are you're going to call the cops? And I realized as I ran down the stairs that he was in between me and our kids who were in their bedrooms. So then he passed me on the stairs and said, F this, I'm going to burn the house down. I'm going to burn the house down before they even get here. And that's when I sprinted upstairs, grabbed my kids, and we ran to my neighbors who happened to be a police officer at the time. And as I looked back, he was coming around the corner from the garage with a red gas can in his hand and a lighter and another one. But I was told by the police that that was hearsay because he claimed it didn't happen them.
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Wow. That's when you want cameras inside the house.
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Well, there were, but he had erased them by the time that the cops showed up.
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The last episode I did right before this one I did with a guy named Zachary Heath, and he's got a corporation that's called Finn, FYNN, which is finding your new normal. He went through a situation, not so much domestic violence for him, but he went through some situation with abuse through the church.
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Oh, wow.
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And he is now teamed up with all these different people. This is a nonprofit, and his goal is to build these communities with housing and doctor, like a doctor on staff or a nurse practitioner on staff or whatever to, and also therapists, et cetera, in a gated community to help domestic violence victims who need to get away, but going to the shelter, they can't always have their kids there. They don't necessarily feel safe there. They're lacking the resources that they really need. And so he's talking about creating these communities, and he's on the fundraising part right now. And I just wanted to mention that because it seems like, well, okay, so what is the next step for people? What ended up happening after that? What started to change?
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What do you mean? What
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Started to change? If you say you're now with him and things are much better, but what got you to that point of even being able to look at him?
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Right. It took a lot of years and a lot of therapy on both of our parts. He did everything he was told to do to get the kids back. He did anger management. He had a psychologist and a psychiatrist. He still does. He through evaluations, was diagnosed with bipolar and got on medication. We had a mediator for a little bit to kind of be our go-between for co-parenting. She kind of sucked, but it taught us how to communicate with each other. And I did everything in anything anyone suggested. Once I realized that I needed to focus on myself too, not just my kids, because initially it was like, what do I need to do to make sure my kids, this is part of their story and I hate that it's part of their story, but how do I help them? What do I do? And once I took a step back after a couple months and realized I needed help, I needed to do what I needed to do, I saw a psychic, I saw a therapist, I did energy healing, I did meditation.
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I got into yoga. I did this massage that, I can't think of the name, but it's for PTSD victims. I did everything and anything anyone suggested, because I wanted to heal, this is always going to be part of my story. There's always going to be things that trigger me. I have a diagnosis of PTSD and anxiety now because of what I went through, but I wanted to make sure that I had enough tools that when I felt that way, that I could deal with it. And at the end of the day, I knew this man is never going to be out of my life. I have children with him. It became very clear going through the court system, Virginia is a unification state. They want him a part of the kids' lives. So my thinking has always been, as long as my kids are safe and this is what they want, I need to do what I need to do.
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So I'm comfortable with this too. If they develop feelings about their dad where they're scared or they're resentful or they're angry, I want to be able to help them without inserting my feelings into that. I don't want my feelings to carry over into their feelings. They need to develop their own feelings about what happened. So we both did a ton of work and we had a protective order for three and a half years, which I also think was great because it limited our communication so I could have that space. But it was rough in the beginning. I mean, he didn't see the kids for several months, and then it was supervised visitation, and then we had covid and he didn't see them, and then it gradually worked up. But I will never forget that first time that he had them overnight. I don't think I slept at all. I was so worried,
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Hey, this is an ad, an ad promoting the rest of Amanda's books, which you can find online. Her bio reads, a e lee started her career in Pennsylvania politics, and while she had hoped it would be everything like her favorite TV show, the West Wing, she quickly learned it was not long hours, little pay and even less respect. She decided it was time for a change and embarked on a second career in education. Her books include the two mentioned previously in this episode, plus a collection of poems, which is divided into four sections, seeking solace, seeking gratitude, seeking inspiration and seeking love. And finally, her memoir, one of the lucky ones that goes into great detail about the abuse she experienced, her escape from that marriage and the determination she conjured to be one of the lucky ones. So has anything ever happened with them after all of this, or has it been good?
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No, it's been good. I mean, I get complaints every once in a while. Dad got frustrated with me about my homework. Well, why I left my homework at school. All right, well, I would be frustrated with you too. So nothing serious. And they're old enough now they, they're 10 and nine that if something is going on, they'll tell me.
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It makes me think about how kids see things in the world because they start to blame themselves and then they don't know, well, is this really my responsibility? What just happened? Or is this just dad being a bad guy?
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Yeah. I mean, that's why one of the very first things I did is I got them a therapist who specializes in trauma for children. So she did a lot of play therapy with them right in the beginning, and I don't believe that they carry that it was in any way, shape or form their fault what happened. But I honestly don't know. They still see a therapist because my son has anxiety. But I don't know.
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Is there anything else that, what's your hope for what's to come after all that you've been through so far? What's your hope with your books and with your life? What are you doing?
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I have to say, I've come out on the other side. I have a great life now. I'm remarried to a wonderful man, and I'm not just saying that because he's sitting in the other room. I'm a stepmom now. We have a really great life. I'm very, very much at peace. My hope is that people read my books, they pick it up and they're like, oh my gosh, this is so good. I connected to this in some way, shape, or form, and I helped them. The feedback that I've gotten from my memoir, it's been out for a couple of years now, is that there have been several women that have reached out to me and told me that it was the push that they needed. They read it and were like, oh my God, this is happening to me. Oh my God. That happened to me, and it was the push that they needed. And I also have found since talking about this, that there are so many people in my life that experienced this too, and I'm always like, why are we not talking about this? Why is this not something that we are all sharing? I feel like the more we share this, the more awareness we bring to it, and hopefully doesn't happen to other people in the future.
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I will tell you there is a large community around this topic on TikTok,
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And
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If you don't ever want to go down that rabbit hole, that's fine. But if you needed to grow your following or spread more awareness or do more of what you're wanting to do to help other people, it is a great platform for that because it quickly, the algorithm works differently than it does on other channels, and it quickly brings the right people to you. Just so you know. A lot of people who either go missing or you are trying to find out who someone is. That sort of thing also travels very quickly to the right people. It's amazing how it
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Does it. Okay, good to know.
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Yeah. Is there anything else that you'd like to share?
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I always end my interviews with this when it's like one last piece. What do you want to leave? I can't take credit for this quote, and I don't remember where I heard it, but if you are a domestic violence victim right now, or someone, just remember one thing. No one ever regrets leaving. No one ever regrets leaving a domestic violence situation. A lot of the abuse is psychological. You don't think you can survive without the other person. I mean, that's why I stayed for so long. I didn't think I could survive without him.
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Wow. Well, thank you. I think it's been a really good interview with you. I really appreciate what you have done and how you are pushing this message out there for people, and I'm sure it's going to help a whole lot of people for years to come. Well, folks, that was Amanda Lee, a wonderful example of how to make it out the other side of a domestic violence situation. Thank you for listening today. I'm your host, Sally Hendrick. Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review. If you like what you hear, visit [email protected].
