I’m from Lin Ke. I moved to Thailand to work after being married for 17 years.
When we got here, my husband’s friend always visited our home to drink. He is Chinese but can speak a little bit of Myanmar language. My husband invited him because he always paid for the drinks, but I never felt right about him.
One night, he made my husband drink until he blacked out. While my husband was unconscious, he raped me. I was very young at the time. He came into my room and raped me. I told him to marry me because he raped me. He did. But he never took responsibility for me, and always got jealous.
I trained in professional massage and tried to make a living from it, but he never approved. He always beat me and even the neighbors could not stop it. He always scolded and hit my children from the first marriage. Once, my eldest son drove his motorbike and was slapped very hard for that. He slapped me too because I stopped him from beating my son.
I tried to divorce him, but instead I did some spiritual practices to maintain the marriage. There was a monk from Myanmar who lived at the monastery nearby. The monk could do certain spiritual practices involving lifting up a candle to make marriages work. So, the monk did those candle things whenever I left, and it made me go back to my husband no matter how hard I tried.
These kinds of things happened again and again until finally he got married again to a Lisu woman, who was very naive. Later, after that, he got paralyzed from a motorcycle accident. But he’s still alive and living in the neighboring village called Chinese Village. I was neither excited nor happy about the news of his accident - I just accepted that it was fate.
I took care of my children alone the whole time. I worked in garlic fields, doing massage; I did so much hard work. Now all of my children have Thai ID cards and they all are at least as educated as other common people. My grandchildren are 8 and 1.5 years old. Now, I’m trying to build a house with the effort I have left. My children are married and I want them to stay in a nice home, that’s why I saved up money and improved my house, and then saved up again. I carry on like that…
A Daw Nann
Northern Thailand
A Daw Nang is nearly 60 years old now. Even though she encountered an irresponsible husband and an abusive husband who made her life very hard, she took care of her children as a single mother. She stood on her own two feet, built a family, and is living a better life now. Her story was written down and translated by the Doh Zat team and paired with artwork to represent her story.
The silver ring in a square shape represents the resilience and strength of A Daw Nang, made by a local jeweler from the region where A Daw Nang lives, in Northern Thailand.
It is saddening and inspiring at the same time to hear how A Daw Nan survived and got out of an abusive marriage. There are many women like A Daw Nang in our society. When it comes to an unsuccessful marriage, we should not blame the women for not maintaining the marriage properly. In some cases, the husband it to blame for torturing his wife. Women who are mentally or physically abused face challenges to get out of abusive marriages for several reasons such as: financial dependency; not being able to stand alone; and family and environmental pressures. The government and legislators need to be aware of the challenges that such women face, and protect them. The society itself should encourage women who are survivors of domestic violence, instead of discriminating against them.