Brian F. Martin
Founder & CEO
Childhood Domestic Violence Association
Brian F. Martin is one of the billion people alive today who grew up living with domestic violence. The impact of this experience lasted into adulthood but his quest for answers to long-unasked questions led him to a revelation: the unlikely gifts and hidden truths that the experience gave him, and has given others who have lived through the same circumstances.
By rejecting the lies that he believed throughout his life, he set himself on a course to reach his full potential. He founded several multi-million dollar global businesses, cultivated a confident mindset, forged loving relationships and developed a deep connection with his children.
In 2007, he founded what later became the Childhood Domestic Violence Association, the only nonprofit organization dedicated exclusively to helping those who grow up living with domestic violence. Read more…
Q. Why do you claim that this is the first book of its kind? What makes it that?
A. There has never before been a book on the market that speaks uniquely to this population – children of domestic violence.
No book has even existed to help them reshape their flawed belief system and self-concept, shaped in childhood by a set of Lies they learned growing up with domestic violence that often last into adulthood and keep them from reaching their full potential. This book is the first book specifically meant for them – the 40 million former children of domestic violence who haven’t had an opportunity to unlearn what they learned in childhood. This book can help free them of the LIES that may still have power over their lives and show them the path to reaching their potential by discovering and living the TRUTHS. It offers them the alternative perspective they never saw as children and may have been selectively blind to their whole lives, because the brain finds more evidence of what it already believes, whether those beliefs are true or not, helpful or harmful. It filters out any evidence that does not support these beliefs – even when they’re false. But now, they have a chance to unlearn what they learned and discover the Truth. This book can show them the way. Read more…
Q. What do you believe are the most important messages or take – aways from this book?
A. The simple but powerful message I hope to instill is that if you lived with domestic violence when you were young, you no longer have to live with the effects today. Read more…
Q. What was the worst part about growing up with domestic violence?
A. The uncertainty, the fear. Not knowing what would happen from one moment to the next. Not knowing what to expect. Not being able to stop it. Read more… Waking up in the middle of the night to screams, the noise of things being knocked over. Cracking the door open, my heart pounding, creeping down the stairs, not knowing what terrible scene I would find there. Having to relive this fear night after night. Close second were the consuming feelings of guilt and worthlessness – thinking it’s my fault that it keeps happening, that it’s up to me to stop it, that I can stop it, if only I wasn’t such a coward. And feeling so worthless because I failed. And although, many times I was physically hit, that pain, that feeling was nothing compared to the anxiety from the build-up and the guilt of not being able to stop it. I, as many people who grew up living with domestic violence that I spoke with would agree, would have preferred to take the physical beating on any given night than have to endure the anticipation and the guilt.
Q. How did you end up not repeating the cycle of violence – what would you attribute that to?
A. I hate suffering. All the memories I had of my childhood were awful. I could never imagine being responsible for causing such pain to another, especially not my children.Read more… This was unthinkable to me. I believe at the forefront was the unique, inherited ability to truly understand pain and fear that kept me from going down a path that would have caused similar pain and fear to someone whom I love.
