No longer a victim, woman gains empowerment

Today’s story deals with the often hidden terror of violence and abuse in the home.  The personal journey of a Southington woman who virtually lived her childhood under the cruel parental dominance of forced domestic labor in the darkness of an abusive home, a dysfunctional family, and a fear-filled environment is revealed in her own story that becomes a crusade through her teens and adult years in a daunting struggle to crawl out of a life of victimhood.

The owner of Casey’s Image Consultants in Southington, Cosmetologist Casey Morley has written a book that journalizes her courageous and tortuous battle of half a century to ultimate escape from her entrapment as a victim. “How does a child know that living in an abusive environment is not normal?” Morley asks.  This further opens the danger of an abused child whose emotional persona could emerge in adulthood as one accepting cruelty as a way of life.

Morley’s story, published in 2014 under the title “Crawling Out: One woman’s journey to an empowered life after breaking a cycle of abuse no one should have to endure” is the result of her years of tedious hand written notes and journaling her experience. 

Author, Casey Morley

The book chronicles her childhood years as “my mother’s slave” following her father’s early exit in her life and a stepfather with a penchant for insensitive behavior and incidents of inappropriate interest in her. Her relationship with her siblings was fragile at best given the conditions that surrounded all of them.

In her early teens she seized the opportunity to leave the family and move in with a neighboring family for which she had been a baby-sitter and remained with them in a nurturing environment until she was 18.  Morley then had to face the challenge of independence, caring for her own needs while working, continuing her education and training as a certified cosmetologist, trying to improve her place in life.  But in her adult years she was charmed by a man in a new relationship. The happiness was short-lived. His alcoholism, chronic unemployment and abject irresponsibility soon yielded to an unpredictable, unstable presence in Morley’s life.

Meanwhile, Morley was challenged by work, partnerships, landlords and ownership of a business while raising a child without assistance. Morley had deep faith and persisted in searching for answers with counselling ultimately leading to her getting the deceptions and violence of one man out of her life.  However, her ‘victimhood’ was to re-emerge in another relationship which was different but just as crippling to her emotionally and physically. That, too, ended but only after repeated pleadings of another alcoholic to give their doomed relationship dozens of second chances. 

Morley’s driving energy to create awareness to those who are locked into the heartbreak and humiliation of abusive relationships has led her to speaking engagements at such places as CCSU and abuse support groups. “Crawling Out” has also received the attention of Elmer R. Freeman, Executive Director of the Center for Community Health Education Research and Service, Inc. at Northeastern University and Director of the Office of Urban Health Programs and Policy at Bouve College of Health Sciences in Boston. Freeman suggests that “Crawling Out” may be used as a hand out to participants in their group programs for domestic violence and abuse. 

Freeman stated to Morley, “Your story of survival is powerful and inspirational, and would undoubtedly be a useful tool for survivors who are dealing with the trauma of leaving a relationship with an abuser.”

The book, published by Balboa Press, is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other book sellers. Casey Morley is emerging on the scene as an advocate for the millions of children, women (and men) who are victims of the abuse of domestic violence and alcoholism. Morley may be reached at casey@caseymorley.com.
Also see her website at www.caseymorley.com
                                                                                                ©Appleseed 2014 E. Richard Fortunato

As published in the Southington Citizen
January 15, 2016

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