Personal Stories Information

Thankyou for offering to contribute your experiences to this collection of stories. We understand that it may be difficult to write about your experiences of domestic violence, but by adding your story to this collection you will be helping to increase our understanding of domestic violence in same sex relationships and hopefully making it easier for others going through a similar experience.

What we use these stories for:

• To help in developing our community awareness campaign.
• As a resource for domestic violence (DV) and health workers, counsellors and others who work in the area of domestic violence.
• As a resource for the gay and lesbian community to help build understanding of the issues of domestic violence.
• To provide real experiences to the media when they write about DV.

What you might include:
Here is a list of questions that you can use as a guide when writing your story. You don't need to answer all of them.

• How, where, when did you meet your partner?
• What was the relationship like in the beginning?
• When, how and/or why did the abuse begin to show itself or when did you become aware that this was an abusive relationship?
• What were some specific examples of the abuse you experienced?
• How did the abuse affect you while you were experiencing it?
• In what ways did you cope with the abuse? What supports did you have?
• Did you use any support services? What was your experience of these services?
• Was there a turning point in how you experienced the abuse? How did the relationship finish?
• Has the abuse left a lasting impact on you? If so how? How do you feel now?

Other Information:

• You can, and we'd encourage you to, change the names and details that may identify either of you.
• To be able to produce as many stories as we can we'd encourage you to use a 1,000-word limit as a guide.
• We reserve the right to edit the story for consistency, language, identifying details, grammar and length. We won't alter the meanings of your story.
• We will show you any changes we make to the story.
• You have the right to withdraw your story at any time or to change any part of the story.

To submit your story, please send us an email with your story attached.  We will email a release form for you to sign and return before publishing your story on this site.

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