ABOUT THE BOOK
ARE YOU OR SOMEONE YOU LOVE…
- Keeping secrets about your relationship because you feel ashamed or fear no one will believe you?
- Isolating from family or friends?
- Permitting yourself to be treated with disrespect, disregard or disdain?
- Minimizing or making excuses for an intimate partner’s harmful behavior?
- Rationalizing that stress or some other reason is the cause for their “acting out”?
- Feeling afraid of your intimate partner?
If you answered “yes” to any of the above, you may be in abusive relationship.
1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner. This includes a range of behaviors (e.g. slapping, shoving, pushing) and in some cases might not be considered "domestic violence."
HEAL WELL, LIVE FREE
Through Dr. Ramona’s own powerful personal story of coming out of an abusive relationship, along with her twenty years of experience as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Healing Well and Living Free from an Abusive Relationship takes readers through a proven, step-by-step process for moving from victim to survivor to overcomer.
With understanding and empathy, Dr. Ramona encourages readers to:
- Begin to look at their own story
- Call it what it is… Abuse
- Understand the mindset of an abuser
- Recognize the cyclical pattern of abuse
- Work through the tough questions
- Understand what forgiveness is and is not
- Learn to listen to their gut again
- Identify what safe and healthy love looks like
- Find a healthy support system, and more.
Dr. Ramona provides questions for further reflection at the end of each chapter. Readers are encouraged to go through the book individually, with a trained domestic violence counselor, or as part of a support group.
Meet the Author and Our Co-Founder
DR. RAMONA PROBASCO
It is hard to imagine someone with a Doctorate in Psychology, a flourishing counseling practice, experience in both TV and radio, to have hidden in a different state with her children, worn sunglasses on a rainy day to her child’s field trip and often used turtlenecks to hide choke marks. Most people would not believe this could be the same person.
Dr. Ramona is that person.
Dr. Ramona says she was presenting a picture to the world that wasn’t true. And worst of all, she was lying to herself. She told herself the abuse was temporary. That if she could change, it would stop. Then one day a brutal attack shook her up so badly that she realized if she didn’t get away, someone would die. That wasn’t the end of her story, but it was the first step to finding freedom.
Today, Dr. Ramona is a Marriage and Family Therapist, a Certified Domestic Violence Counselor, a Nationally Certified Counselor, a personal overcomer of domestic violence and the author of Healing Well and Living Free from an Abusive Relationship. She teaches people across the globe on how to not only heal, but heal well from the trauma that an abusive relationship causes. She knows firsthand how destructive an abusive relationship can be.
Regardless if your experience involves verbal, physical, emotional, financial, sexual and/or spiritual abuse, the abuse will always get worse overtime. Abuse never plateaus. It escalates often leaving you just a shell of the person you once were. The emotional scars can seem inconceivable to heal from. But the fact is, surviving an abusive relationship is no guarantee you will not experience another one. Changing your partner will never change your life. Changing yourself will.
It is only by intentionally taking proven steps to heal well that we can eventually live free…abuse free. What Dr. Ramona has discovered is that healing well is the precursor to living free.
As a woman of deep faith, she believes we were created for freedom. It is her hope that by sharing her story and advocating for other victims and survivors through the Healing Well & Living Free Foundation, she can encourage you or someone you love who is in an abusive relationship to pursue genuine healing and lasting freedom.
Our Vision
To be a global example of a safe space, void of all judgment, offering an extended hand to domestic violence survivors and their children so they can fully heal well and ultimately live free.
Our Mission
To provide vetted resources and practical support for those impacted by the trauma of domestic violence and to accurately educate and inform individuals who are in a position to enhance or impede a domestic violence survivor’s healing well journey. We connect survivors with the allies and the resources they need to heal well and live free.
We do this by focusing on four key areas of support:
Everyday living and medical expenses:
- Rent and utilities
- Medical and dental care
- Veterinarian care for pets
- Auto repairs and other pertinent needs
Legal advocacy and support:
- Resources for attorneys offering pro bono services
- Advocates who accompany DV survivors to family court
- Assisting with filing a domestic violence restraining order
Education and counseling resources:
- Trauma-informed therapy
- Support groups
- Seminars and workshops
- Complimentary copies of Dr. Ramona’s book
- Additional books and resources
Recreational experiences for victims and their families:
- Providing survivors and their children a day of fun or even a family vacation
- Sending their kids to trauma- informed summer camp
