Lisa Mead isn’t afraid to talk about the lowest point in her life. In 2009, the Christchurch accountant was living with her boyfriend, a man she later discovered was gang-affiliated, as well as using and selling drugs.
“One day, in a drink- and drug-fuelled rage, he threw me across the room,” says Lisa, 34. “He’d also punch me, and emotionally abused me with put-downs, coercion and threats. I lost sight of who I was and the values I’d been brought up with. When the neighbours called the police, I had to lie and say nothing was wrong or he would’ve hurt me more.”
When she was six months pregnant with their child, her former partner “got angry and threw me on the floor”.
It’s an experience Lisa details in her first book Breaking Good, a courageous story of how she broke the cycle of domestic abuse.
It took two years, but Lisa was eventually able to get away from the man she says “almost broke me”. Fearing for her safety, she and her son Dakota, now 12, moved to another part of Christchurch and started rebuilding their lives.
That included becoming a chartered accountant and, in 2018, opening her own accounting practice, Social Currency Investments.
Looking at the bright, happy businesswoman she is today, you’d never expect Lisa to have gone through some of the horrific experiences she did – from teenage alcoholism to brushes with the seedy underbelly of Aotearoa’s second-largest city, plus a violent relationship with her son’s father, a man she calls Tommy in the book.
“Tommy was charming in the beginning,” she sighs.
“I missed all the signs and fell head over heels in love. But six months in, he started being manipulative and controlling. I didn’t have much confidence and he made me feel even worse about myself, which is what abusers do.”
In such situations of domestic violence, it’s easy to blame the woman for staying. It’s a comment Lisa hears often.
“People ask, ‘Why didn’t you just leave?’ But it isn’t so simple. I had a lot of shame. I always thought domestic abuse was something that happened to other people. The shame kept me silent and trapped.”
Lisa’s breaking point came when Tommy pushed her onto the bed as her 10-week-old son lay sleeping nearby.
“Something inside me snapped. I knew I didn’t want my son growing up like this. Tommy had been in jail and I’ve since discovered that young boys are nine time more likely to end up the same if their father has been to prison. I didn’t want that for Dakota.”
Getting away was one thing, but being a single mother wasn’t easy. “Society has such a stigma about solo mums. It’s taken a long time to reframe my experience and instead of having a poor-me attitude,
I’ve worked hard to look at my experiences positively and understand how they’ve brought me to this point.”
Lisa started writing her book in 2020, spurred on by the spike in domestic violence associated with the first lockdown. “I saw those statistics and thought, ‘I need to write my story because silence doesn’t work.’ I want anyone who’s going though any kind of abuse to realise there is a way out.”
It took Lisa a year, including a three-month break, to write the 60,000 words. She explains, “I was often in tears writing it and had to leave it for a while because reliving those memories was tough.”
Lisa had always done well at school and, despite the chaos around her, completed an Open Polytech accounting course. That led to a job as a junior accountant and she worked her way up the ranks.
Today, Lisa’s company employs six staff and donates 10% of every sale to charities that support at-risk youth. Community and helping others, she says, are the twin forces that drive her.
“It’s my passion to support young people so that they don’t go down the same path.”
Although she admits writing her first book, shepherding it through the editing process and getting it published wasn’t straightforward, Lisa is thrilled with the result and keen for others to gain inspiration from her story.
“I’d love to get copies into prisons and women’s refuges. I want others to be able to tell their stories so that we break down the stigma associated with domestic abuse and violence.”
HELP IS HERE
If you’re experiencing domestic violence, please call the Women’s Refuge crisis line on 0800 REFUGE or the Shine National Helpline on 0508 744 633. In an emergency, always dial 111 and press 55 if it’s not safe to speak.
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