As told to Nicole Audrey Spector
October 10, 2025 is World Mental Health Day.
I was the third of four children, each four years apart, and the only woman. That last part wasn’t a good thing in my family. I was taught that girls were stupid. There was a hateful mantra in my house directed at me: “Don’t be a stupid girl.” My family would shorten it to an acronym: “DBADG.” Whenever I did something that made me appear feminine or weak, I heard these letters.
My father was an extremely angry man and abused me both physically and emotionally. In fifth grade, I failed my social studies class. When he found out, he stormed into my room and beat and pushed me around for hours. When he was finally finished, he had me collect all of my “F” papers and tape them to my bedroom wall. “Now all your friends will see how stupid you are,” he said. I was 11.
After that night, I knew I couldn’t trust myself to be smart. I believed that failure was inevitable no matter how hard I tried. I started cheating on exams and forging my parents’ signatures on exams I failed.
Life was about surviving moment to moment, enduring not only the physical abuse from my father, but also the sexual abuse from one of my older brothers. Also, my mother was an alcoholic and couldn’t really be there for me.
Sportsmanship was a language my family understood and valued, so it wasn’t a problem for me to be out at practice or a game. And I loved sports. They were a safe place for me. On the field, hitting was against the rules. There were consequences. And a responsible adult was always paying attention. I didn’t have any of that at home.
It wasn’t until I was in college, studying psychology, and beginning my own mental health journey in therapy that I began to understand that the home I was raised in was deeply dysfunctional. I met my now husband and built a really safe and healthy relationship. I was so afraid I would lose him that he would get tired of me and leave.
After my husband and I had been married for five years, we had our first of two children. We waited partly because I was struggling so much with nightmares and insecurities surrounding parenthood. I was determined to give my children everything I didn’t have – unconditional love, security, trust and support.
On April 20, 1999, my life took a new direction. My children were 1 and 4 years old when the Columbine High School massacre occurred, in which 12 students and a teacher were killed. It sparked major debates about gun control laws in the United States. It touched everything and I felt deeply called to action in a way I had never experienced before. To me, Columbine High wasn’t just any school in any city. Columbine High was my high school. It was the place that had protected me from the violence of my family life as a child.
Dave Sanders, the wonderful teacher who was killed, had been my basketball coach. This library, where so many children had been shot, had been my refuge. As I attended Sanders’ funeral, I remember looking at all of my former teachers and noticing their sobs and their red, swollen looks.
After Columbine, I felt a tremendous sense of responsibility to take every action possible to prevent gun violence and immersed myself in the world of gun control advocacy, which was more than a little intimidating. Growing up with a father who was a ticking time bomb, I was very afraid of confrontation – and people who feel passionately that you are threatening their rights, even if that is not at all what you are doing, will be confrontational. As I became an emerging voice in the gun control community, I increasingly encountered gun enthusiasts who could be aggressive toward me. I had thought I was free of the trauma of my childhood, but I was still emotionally and mentally tied up by it and still heard my father’s angry voice. Still living in fear.
If I wanted to actually make a difference in the world, I had to destroy the toxic beliefs embedded in the “DBADG” philosophy I was raised with. It wasn’t easy. Sometimes I would freeze during a speech when people in the audience would yell at me that I was a “gun robber.” But over time and with my husband’s support, I found my footing again and let go of the fears that my voice wasn’t worth hearing.
All these years later, I am an accomplished author with articles and books published not only about gun violence, but also ongoing physical and sexual abuse by family members. This year my memoir, Dumb Girl: A Journey from Childhood Abuse to Gun Control Advocacy, was published.
Healing is not an overnight experience. I have decades of intensive therapy behind me. Even though I’ve come a long way in dealing with my childhood trauma, part of me still insists on calling myself stupid. When I feel this urge, I challenge myself and ask, “Would you speak to your daughter like that?” Of course I would never do that.
So that’s my challenge: to silence those inner thoughts, knowing that each time I move further away from the girl who felt stupid and closer to the smart woman I know I am.
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Our “Real Women, Real Stories” are the authentic experiences of real-life women. The views, opinions and experiences shared in these stories are not endorsed by HealthyWomen and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of HealthyWomen.
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