After Abuse: Where Are They Now?

Pictured: Ali Kessler, Leslie Morgan Steiner, Megan Hiatt

Key Takeaways:

1. Healing is ongoing. Each survivor shows that life after abuse involves both rebuilding and navigating lasting wounds.

2. Purpose drives their paths forward. Whether through advocacy, writing or helping other survivors, each woman turns her experience into meaningful action.

3. Joy and pain coexist. Moments of progress and hope sit alongside lingering grief, highlighting the need for stronger support systems.

At DomesticShelters.org, we’ve been honored to tell the stories of many survivors of violence. These individuals have bravely walked us through their journey of living with and escaping an abusive partner, sometimes barely escaping with their lives. Some of them endured the unthinkable—an abuser stole the life of their child or children before they could get them to safety. 

The reason we think it’s so important to share these stories is so that others may begin to understand the relentlessness of abusers and how difficult it can be to escape them. We want others to know they’re not alone if they, too, are struggling with leaving. But we also want them to know that there is hope on the other side. There can be a safer life—a life that every survivor deserves. 

For some of the survivors below, it’s been months since we last spoke, and others, it’s been years. We were curious—how are they now? How is the healing journey going (because we know it can take a lifetime). And, most importantly, do they feel safe and more at peace? 

Megan Hiatt 

Megan’s story is one that no one who reads it could ever forget. In 2015, while attempting to leave her abusive boyfriend, he shot her, their twin 5-month-old daughters, Megan’s father and himself. Megan was the only survivor but would endure years of recovery and over 50 surgeries to try and fix her leg that was shattered by bullets. 

Two weeks before we spoke was the 10-year anniversary of the horrific incident. 

“I feel like this last decade has been nothing but healing. Just surgery after surgery,” she says. This next decade, she says, is going to be different. Mostly because it's going to be marked by a tremendously joyous event. 

Megan is pregnant. She and husband Joe, whom she married in 2021, are excited to welcome a little boy next summer. She hopes it’s the first of multiple kids to come with “the most amazing man I’ve ever met in my life.”

“I want [her future children] to know they have sisters in heaven, guardian angels,” she says. 

Megan is also working toward a bachelor’s degree in human resource management and hopes to complete it before her baby arrives. On top of that, she’s also working at One Safe Place, a Family Justice Center, as an executive administrative assistant. 

“I’m so grateful for the opportunity to be on some sort of side of giving back to survivors,” she says. “This place is so fulfilling. I don’t feel like I’m coming to work. This is my happy place.”

Unfortunately, she hasn’t been in the job long enough to qualify for maternity leave. In order to fund more time at home with her baby, she sells jams, jellies and sourdough, and she’s made a public baby registry on Amazon. 

“Everything that we don’t have to purchase means we can save those funds for maternity leave,” she wrote on her public Facebook page where she has over 4,000 followers supporting her journey. 

She hopes she can get more into public speaking and use her story to spark change. 

“I want to educate about domestic violence and inspire people—even when your life is at rock bottom, it can get better.”

Find out more about Megan at MeganHiatt.com.

Ali Kessler

In 2019, Ali Kessler’s 4-year-old son, Greyson, was killed in a murder-suicide by his abusive father—something Ali had tried desperately to stop. Even as the father’s violence escalated, and despite threatening texts and stalking, a family court judge denied multiple requests from Ali and her family to remove Greyson from his custody. When we last spoke with her in 2022, Ali said her grief made it hard to breathe most days.

Although the devastation of losing Greyson still shapes her life, Ali has devoted herself to changing the laws that allowed his abuse to escalate unchecked. In 2023, Greyson’s Law, SB1106/HB781, was signed into law in her home state of Florida. The legislation will make it easier for a judge to have cause to remove a child from a dangerous or threatening parent. It also changes the state’s definition of domestic violence to include coercive control, financial abuse and threatening to exploit false information about a partner. All of these were tactics Ali experienced from Greyson’s abusive father. 

Ali doesn’t sugarcoat where she’s at. “In general, things suck,” she says bluntly. Life goes on, but it’s a dark place.” She admits she still cries daily, missing her little boy, and is still very angry. 

“I don’t think any of that will ever change.”

But even in that darkness, she’s building something meaningful. She launched a podcast, Grey Minds Think Ali.Ke, about navigating the complexities of family court when domestic violence is present. Guests like DomesticShelters.org Advisory Committee member Barry Goldstein and contributing author to the site, Dr. Christine Cocchiola, share their wisdom. 

“It’s the only thing I can think of to help others. Greyson’s legacy will live on, our story will still be told, and I hope to write a book very soon.”

Leslie Morgan Steiner

In 2018, we chose Leslie’s New York Times bestselling 2009 book Crazy Love as our first-ever DomesticShelters.org Book Club selection. (We started ours after Oprah but before Reese, just for the record!) Leslie’s memoir tells her story of living through and escaping from an abusive boyfriend-turned-husband in her 20s. He would strangle her just days before their wedding, but Leslie pushed on with hope for change, like so many survivors do. She endured his ever-escalating, terrifying abuse for five years, knowing that he, himself, was a victim of childhood domestic violence. She escaped at 27, certain that if she didn’t go, he would kill her. It took a decade for her to feel ready to write her story.  

Today, at age 60, working as both an author and advocate, she says the messages from other survivors who read Crazy Love or listen to her TED Talk still come on a regular basis. 

“I never expected this work to be so immensely fulfilling,” she says. “I might be in front of 500 teenage boys in a school auditorium and I think, ‘Why are they listening to me about this? I’m older than their moms.’ But they’re transported back into my abusive relationship. Dozens come up to me afterwards and ask me questions about their relationships.”

Leslie went on to author additional books—Mommy Wars: Stay-at-Home Moms and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families and The Baby Chase: How Surrogacy is Transforming the American Family. In 2019, she published a second memoir, The Naked Truth, this time about finding herself after divorce. This split, unlike the one with her abusive-ex, was amicable but still much needed. 

“The marriage wasn’t abusive, but it was neglectful. Women are told from the time we’re little girls that this is what we should shoot for—marriage to a good man. Even under good circumstances, it’s still an unfair deal,” she says. Again, she heard from a bevy of women that this, too, was their story. 

“The fact that I got remarried after my abusive marriage and had kids ….people thought I got the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and that’s not it. We’re [women] under so much pressure to be married. I am so much happier after I ended this marriage even though he was, by all standards, a good husband.”

Leslie says even though she’s now “going at life alone,” in some respects, she doesn’t ever feel alone. On a recent trip to Madrid and Rome, she describes the “glorious time” she had surrounded by 5 million other people. 

“It’s been a really unexpectedly wonderful time.  And I know so many women who are doing a really similar thing. The culture and media are just beginning to catch on that for women over 50, life doesn’t have to be over.”

For All Survivors

Healing is a lifetime journey and time doesn’t always heal all wounds. But with the right support and plenty of patience, peace can be found again. Survivors may find the articles in our Taking Care of You section helpful as you navigate life after abuse. Or, you may want to check out our DomesticShelters.org Victims and Survivors Community Facebook page and talk to others who have gone through or or going through similar things. You’re not alone.