I recently had the privilege of joining Grace Ovba on Rising Above Shadows of Abuse for an episode we called Beyond Survival: Rewriting Power, Law & Healing in Domestic Abuse. Grace’s podcast occupies a rare space in this field. It holds room for both the emotional reality of abuse and the practical, legal, and structural realities that survivors have to navigate afterwards. That combination is precisely what GAWGO was written for, so this was a conversation I had been looking forward to.
We talked about power, and specifically about how it operates through conversation. Drawing on Foucault, GAWGO argues that an abuser controls the narrative, deciding what is true, what you are permitted to feel, and who is allowed to know.
Strategic silence, the central concept in the book and reclaims that power. You choose what to reveal, when to reveal it, and to whom. It is not the silence of suppression. It is the silence of preparation. We also spoke about why “just leave” is such dangerous advice, given that separation is the point at which risk escalates most sharply, and about the systemic failures survivors encounter, from low conviction rates in the criminal justice system to the culture of disbelief documented in the family courts.
What struck me most was where the conversation ended; on healing, and on the fact that it does not arrive automatically once you are physically safe. Leaving is the beginning of the work, not the end of it. My thanks to Grace for creating a space where survivors can speak honestly about all of it; the strategy, the systems, and the long, non-linear work of rebuilding.
You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
GAWGO — Getting Ahead Whilst Getting Out — explores every one of these themes in depth.
