Donna’s love story with Nick begins so sweetly. He charms her with all the
right words and all the right actions that make it seem so easy and so
possible to be happy. Nick’s words and actions change and become so abusive
on every level that he makes it nearly impossible for Donna or their
children to love him, or like him. As he makes one bad decision after
another, Donna is forced to question her own bad decisions and why and how
she both sacrifices her dreams and enables Nicks’s bad behaviour.
It takes a brutally violent physical attack by Nick for Donna to make the
decision to leave him for good. He retaliates with financial abuse, eagerly
taking on the role of deadbeat dad, by refusing the financial support that
would provide for the well-being of his children. Donna digs deep to find
the strength to go it alone rather than return to the life of physical,
emotional, and verbal abuse with Nick. If it means working three jobs, she
works three jobs. Day and night shifts. If it means relying on the help of
her family, friends, or the charity of strangers, she accepts their help
and charity with grace; all while Nick drifts in and out of their
children’s lives with the whimsy of a teenager.
As Donna works to maintain stability and security for her kids, in spite of
their father, she also begins to pursue the lifelong dream she’s repeatedly
put on hold while she got married and started her family like the “good
girls” of her era were raised to do. It may seem like a small dream, but
it’s hers and she fulfils it. She goes to college and graduates.
