My story, and my why

I have spent more than twenty years as a counselor in Florida, sitting with people in the hardest weeks of their lives. I learned to hear the patterns underneath what people describe — the small, deniable moves that slowly take a person's freedom without ever leaving a mark.

Then it came for my own family. I am a survivor of murder-suicide. In the aftermath, the question everyone asked was whether there had been any warning signs. There were. They just were not the kind anyone is taught to look for. No arrests. No injuries. Only control — who she saw, what she spent, how she was spoken to, how quickly an apology turned into an accusation.

Coercive control was the only red flag before the last act. That sentence is why MendRii exists.

MendRii puts language in people's hands early. You paste the messages you cannot stop rereading, and it names the pattern in plain English — no verdict about your relationship, no diagnosis of a person, just the words for what is happening so you can decide what to do next. Naming it is what breaks the fog.

You are not overreacting. You are recognizing.

Alongside the tool, I work on public awareness and on U.S. legislation that treats coercive control as the form of violence it is. Every donation to MendRii funds that work — awareness campaigns built around real patterns, and advocacy for laws that recognise them.