A friend sent me a statement by Elina Svitolina announcing the end of her marriage to Gaël Monfils. He later called to ask whether I had read it.
One passage stayed with me:
“But some battles happen deep inside you, and no amount of love from someone else can win them for you.”
In her statement, she spoke warmly of her husband’s support. My reflection is not an explanation of their marriage. Her words opened a much wider question for me: what happens inside people after experiences the rest of us may never fully understand?
We meet people at work, in church, in business and within our families. We encounter their competence, generosity, ambition or humour. We rarely know how much effort it takes for them to be present.
Sometimes they do not fully understand it themselves.
They know something happened. They may remember every detail. But explaining an event is different from finding words for what it has done to you.
How do you explain that you no longer trust your own judgement? That affection makes you uneasy? That you are permanently preparing for something to go wrong, even when the day appears peaceful?
Some battles begin in the very places where a person should have been protected.
A child molested by a father, an uncle, a cousin or a neighbour. A niece sent to a relative for an education who discovers that the home everybody calls her opportunity is unsafe. A boy abused by someone responsible for him, afraid that speaking will bring ridicule rather than protection.
A domestic worker sexually assaulted by someone in the household. A student violated by a teacher. A young person exploited by someone they were taught to honour.
Sometimes, when they finally tell somebody, the response becomes another wound.
“Don’t say that about him.”
“Do you want to destroy this family?”
“After everything that person has done for you?”
The person seeking protection learns that everybody else’s comfort must be considered before their safety.
There is also the young person who approaches a pastor or choir leader for help and is exploited. They came seeking refuge. Now they must struggle with what happened and with the confusion of having been harmed by someone they associated with God.
There is the employee whose boss demands sexual access before approving a promotion they have earned. The banker, insurance professional or entrepreneur told that an account or contract depends on sleeping with the person controlling it.
Someone has spent years developing competence, only to find their livelihood placed at the mercy of another person’s sexual demands.
And there is betrayal within marriage.
You labour beside a husband or wife for years. You make sacrifices, raise children and plan a future together. Then you discover an affair with your friend, your relative or someone working in your home.
Suddenly, your memories have questions attached.
Who knew? How long had it been happening? What was taking place while you were giving so much of yourself?
You may begin questioning your ability to recognise sincerity. Even after the relationship changes or ends, those questions can remain.
Where an employee or domestic worker is involved, we must also consider whether dependence or an imbalance of power made them vulnerable to coercion. More than one person can be harmed within the same household.
Then there are children abandoned while a parent builds another life. Children made into weapons between separating parents. Children whose confidence is steadily diminished by a mother’s or father’s words.
There are young people carrying adult financial responsibilities before they have had room to establish themselves. Everybody praises how dependable they are. Few ask whether they are frightened, exhausted or permitted to need anything.
We must also remember children and young people trafficked abroad for sexual exploitation.
Some leave believing that education or employment awaits them. Some are deceived by people they trust. In some cases, relatives participate in the exploitation; in others, families are deceived too.
Imagine being exploited abroad while calls keep coming from home about rent, school fees and the house you are expected to build.
How do you explain that you are suffering when other people depend on the money your suffering produces?
How do you ask for rescue when the person you would call helped arrange your departure?
Sometimes telling the truth means acknowledging that someone you still love participated in your pain. You may want protection and still feel the urge to protect them.
That is a difficult battle to put into words.
Think, too, about survivors of Boko Haram attacks, kidnapping, gang rape and communal violence.
Someone returns home, and everybody gives thanks. But what happened while they were away? What did they witness? What are they still unable to say?
Their relatives may also be carrying memories of ransom calls, threats, desperate borrowing and days of pleading for a life.
The reunion is real. So is everything it cannot immediately resolve.
There is the person stabbed or robbed by street gangs while trying to get home. The trader whose shop is looted. The pensioner defrauded of retirement savings. The entrepreneur whose trusted partner disappears with years of labour.
“You will make the money again,” people say.
But the loss includes time, deferred comfort and the future that money was meant to make possible.
There are families dispossessed of homes and land because somebody with political connections wants what belongs to them. People threatened, displaced or bereaved, then left watching those responsible continue without consequences.
There are people falsely accused or unlawfully detained. Widows driven from their homes. Apprentices dismissed when it is time to receive the settlement they worked towards. Families grieving someone they could not obtain timely care for.
These experiences differ. They do not leave everyone with the same wounds.
But each can disturb something fundamental: the belief that home is safe, that affection can be trusted, that effort will be rewarded, that authority will protect us, or that we have some control over our lives.
And the next morning, life may still require us to get up.
Children need breakfast. Rent is due. Customers are waiting. Salaries must be paid.
So people continue.
Some move through their days almost mechanically, attending to what is urgent because they cannot afford to attend to what hurts. Some have pushed their experiences aside for so long that they do not recognise how those experiences may still influence their decisions and relationships.
We cannot determine someone’s history from their behaviour. But we should be careful about what we conclude from their ability to function.
A person can meet a deadline while struggling deeply.
A business can be growing while its founder is barely coping.
Someone can be loved sincerely and still find closeness frightening.
In many of our African families and communities, we have made endurance admirable while making its consequences difficult to discuss.
“Are you the first person to be betrayed?”
“Other people have suffered worse.”
“Why are you still thinking about it?”
We ask people to defend the seriousness of their pain before we consider listening.
Sometimes they stop trying.
Then, when they eventually become overwhelmed, everybody says it happened suddenly. What may be sudden is our awareness. We did not see the years of holding things together, the conversations they rehearsed and abandoned, or the moments when another obligation pushed their own needs aside.
This is why Svitolina’s words stayed with me.
Another person’s love can matter enormously. It can offer safety, companionship and practical support. It can help us discover that care does not always come with a demand.
But nobody can do every part of healing on our behalf.
There may be experiences we need support to acknowledge, boundaries we need help establishing and decisions we need time to prepare for.
Our participation matters. That must never become another accusation against someone who is hurting.
Healing is not a test of willpower. Struggling does not mean a person has refused love, lacked faith or failed to try. Sometimes beginning requires safety they do not yet have.
This is where money matters.
Money can provide somewhere else to live, access to professional support and time away from work. It can make leaving possible.
Without those resources, the place harming someone may also be the place feeding their children. A person may understand that an arrangement is damaging and still need a practical plan before they can change it. We must remember that before asking why they stayed.
This conversation belongs in business because people bring their lives to work.
The founder, employee, supplier and customer each have a history beyond the transaction. Competence and financial success do not tell us whether someone feels safe within themselves.
As employers and leaders, we can take harassment seriously, provide credible ways to report abuse and stop using someone’s commercial results to excuse the harm they cause.
Within our families, we can stop making reputation more important than protection.
Within our faith communities, we can listen without demanding immediate forgiveness, public disclosure or a perfectly ordered account.
And those of us who have kept going can begin asking a question survival may have postponed:
What did getting through it do to me?
The answer may come slowly. It may require professional support, a trustworthy listener, distance from a harmful environment or changes we cannot make all at once.
We do not owe everybody our story. We do not have to explain everything before we deserve care.
Some battles happen deep inside us. Another person cannot do all the work of healing for us, but their presence can help make that work possible.
We have praised people for enduring so much. We must also make room for them to recover.
Opening quotation: Elina Svitolina, from her public statement announcing the end of her marriage to Gaël Monfils.
