When Jennifer Ash first met her ex-husband, “Matt”, she had no idea what the next nine years would hold for her. After the sudden loss of her first husband from a heart attack when she was 30, Jennifer had to deal with the grief of losing her husband and having to raise three small children on her own.

“I lived in subsidized apartments. I was very, very poor. I had basically nothing, and three little kids,” said Jennifer. She had met Matt through an online dating site, where they soon became friends. At the time of her late husband’s passing, Jennifer was being threatened by his old friends, who would often come to her home to harass her. With this threat looming over her, and being alone with her children, she decided to give Matt a chance.

“He wouldn’t go away, so I tried to give him a chance,” said Jennifer. “Matt seemed decent enough, and wasn’t threatening at the time.” 

However, that would change as their relationship went on, with Matt becoming more controlling of Jennifer. 

“Within a few months, I wasn’t allowed to talk about my husband who had passed away. I wasn’t allowed to mourn him anymore,” said Jennifer.

With emotional abuse also came physical abuse. 

A huge part of Jennifer’s healing process came from writing her second book, “Sheila’s Men.”

This book, which acts as a prequel to her first book “Within the Gray,” is a fictionalized version of meeting Matt and surviving her marriage to him. Jennifer first started writing her second novel roughly a year before her relationship to Matt ended.

“It was a way for me to express everything I had been through,” said Jennifer. “It was part of my healing process.”

Though she started the book before she divorced Matt, she took a break from writing it and came back to it once the relationship was officially over. When the time came to continue writing, she finished the book in six months. The book follows protagonist Sheila, a representation of Jennifer.

“The hardest part is the beginning,” said Jennifer, explaining that it was difficult for her to write about meeting Matt and not knowing she was about to enter such a tumultuous, hurtful relationship. Jennifer says she feels ridiculous when she looks back on how attached she got to Matt, but tries to not be too hard on herself when she thinks back to that time.

“I am kind to [younger Jennifer] because I understand why I did the things I did,” she said. “You start seeing yourself from a different perspective. I learned a lot about myself.”

One of Liz's first memories is being raped in a closet in her childhood home by her older brother, Tyler, at the age of 5. Though she doesn’t remember many details from the assault, she does remember the fear and confusion she felt.

Liz grew up in Utah, a middle child with eight siblings, and was raised Mormon. Liz describes her childhood as sad and full of darkness, a result of her brother sexually abusing her, and several of her sisters, from the age of 5 to 9.

She recognizes that she’s had anxiety since she was a child, which exacerbated her confusion surrounding Tyler’s abuse and the confidence she had in her mother to help her. Liz claims that her mother, at some point, must have known what was going on, despite doing nothing to stop it.

“At all points, my mother saw him come out of our bedroom once,” she said. Her mother told Tyler to stop going into their room, but he didn’t.

“I didn’t want him to touch me, but I liked feeling special,” said Liz, recalling the only time she invited Tyler into her personal space. 

Having grown up Mormon, Liz had spent her teenage years looking forward to the mission trip she was required to take when she turned 21. Not wanting to wait that long, Liz decided to travel to Varanasi, India when she was 19 for her trip.

While there, she decided that religion didn’t really make sense, and after getting her college degree, Liz became an atheist at 24 and officially left the Mormon church.

“[Religion is] full of patriarchy and misogyny,” said Liz. “Misogyny is everywhere. I just see it everywhere. It’s a control of white men to keep power.”

Despite her family being Mormon, Liz was not ostracized from her family when she decided to leave the church; however, it did give her a sense of clarity to the role religion had played in her years of abuse. According to Liz, her mother used to tell her that the abuse she had suffered was meant to happen to her and that it was what God intended.

Liz recalls learning that her mother had gone to one of the bishops in their church about the abuse Tyler was inflicting on his younger sisters. “[He] told her not to do anything about what Tyler was doing... but even if he hadn’t said that, I don’t think she would have ever reported him.”

After Liz’s encounter with Heather at the SAOP event in 2016, Liz began the process to report her brother to the Navy Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), as Tyler was an active member of the Navy at the time.

The process proved grueling. It involved three hours of interviews, with which Liz’s mother helped.

Liz asked her mom to not share with anyone that she was going after Tyler, but later found out she went and told Tyler despite her request.

“I’ve probably only been super low three times in my life, and that was one of them,” said Liz. “It’s always this realization that if I were to lean on my mother, she would always lean more towards my brother.”

After her mother betrayed her trust, Liz cut her off. Despite Liz’s best efforts, Tyler was never investigated nor prosecuted by the Navy.

“It was bullshit. I was angry for myself, I was sad for myself, but I’m just angry for all women,” said Liz.

Liz cites rape culture and victim blaming as reasons her case, like so many others, never went further than giving the information over to the authorities.

“It’s the system we’ve based on misogyny, and a resource problem because they really can’t investigate every single sexual abuse crime that happens,” explained Liz.