Unlearning & Becoming

During my pregnancy, the drinking didn’t stop.

If anything, it intensified.

The emotional abuse grew sharper. The physical aggression more frequent. But I kept hoping that once the baby came, something in him would shift.

It didn’t.

When I was in the hospital having my first son, recovering from a complicated C-section, he showed up on the last day drunk.

He almost got put out of the hospital.

He said the baby wasn’t his.

After five days, I was released. Healing from surgery. Holding a newborn. Carrying emotional exhaustion I didn’t yet have language for.

Because he had told his family the baby wasn’t his, I ended up taking a paternity test.

It was his.

For four months, I didn’t speak to him.

He apologized. Repeatedly. He did small nice things. Showed up in ways that looked like change.

And I wanted my son to have his father.

So when it was time for me to return to work, and I needed help with childcare, I let him come back.

For about three months, things were calm.

Then the pattern returned.

Two beers became four. Four became many. He got a job and lost it because the drinking swallowed the money. He would tell me to hold his paycheck, then demand it back before the night was over.

One weekend, he gave me $300 to hold. It was for our Cilco bill. We were on final notice.

When he asked for it back, I refused.

The next morning, he came to me.

He had been drinking all night.

My daughter was next door at my mother’s house. Thank God.

It was just me, my six-month-old son, and him.

He asked for the money again.

I told him no. I was going to pay the bill that day.

He hit me while I was holding my son.

Then he did something he had never done before.

He wrapped his hands around my neck.

And he squeezed.

I remember praying.

Not for myself.

For my children.

“God, please take care of my kids. Let them know I love them. Tell my mother and my sister I love them. Tell my dad I love him too.”

I truly believed that was the end.

I held my son as long as I could.

Then everything blurred.

And suddenly, he let go.

To this day, I don’t know what made him release me.

I ran to my mother’s house.

My mother and he fought. The police were called. He went to prison.

For two weeks, I could barely speak.

My eyes were blood red from hemorrhaging.

His fingerprints were visible around my neck.

And I understood something with painful clarity:

This wasn’t love that needed fixing.

This was violence that could have killed me.

I took my son and I ran.

And for the first time, survival wasn’t a metaphor.

It was literal.

Naomi Willow 🌿

Chapter 4 coming February 24, 2026

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