Final Chapter: We Are the Bridge
For the past several weeks, I’ve taken you down roads I spent years trying not to look back on.
I’ve told you about abuse.
About ten dollars.
About being dragged outside a bar and beaten.
About waking up in a hospital unable to speak and seeing John Doe written where my name should have been.
I’ve told you about nearly losing my leg.
Losing my home.
Losing my job.
Sleeping beside a dumpster.
Addiction.
Starting over.
And eventually finding myself in another abusive relationship.
There were times during this series when writing these words took me back to places I didn’t particularly want to visit again.
But I promised from the beginning that this story wasn’t really about me.
It was about the mission.
So today, I want to tell you how the mission began.
Two Survivors
Years later, I met a woman in a bar in downtown Round Rock, Texas.
We hit it off almost immediately.
She was gorgeous. Smart. And I was excited about getting to know her.
We started dating.
As we spent more time together, she began telling me about some of the abuse she had experienced in a previous relationship.
I listened.
I felt terrible about what had happened to her.
I wanted to be supportive.
But looking back today, I can admit something I couldn’t see then.
I had no idea how to help someone else deal with trauma because I hadn’t dealt with my own.
Eventually, we moved in together.
That’s when things became more complicated.
She could be guarded.
Trust was difficult for her.
And when I felt that lack of trust, something happened inside me too.
I overthought things.
I reacted to things.
My own experiences started influencing the way I interpreted what was happening between us.
At the time, I didn’t understand triggers.
I didn’t understand trauma responses.
I didn’t understand how two people could care about each other and still unintentionally keep bumping into wounds neither one had healed.
I know now that she was carrying her history.
And I was carrying mine.
Neither of us really knew what to do with all that weight.
“We Have to Help Her”
Then one day, we were home together.
She was looking at her phone.
Suddenly, she came over to me.
She showed me pictures of a woman.
The woman was in a hospital.
She was battered and bruised.
Her story was written underneath the photographs.
I looked at those pictures.
And before I had much time to process what I was seeing, the woman beside me said something simple:
“We have to help her.”
And she went into action.
She contacted the woman, who was in Missouri.
She started making calls.
She started looking for resources.
She was trying to figure out who could help this survivor and how we could connect her with that help.
I watched her.
And something clicked inside me.
We weren’t counselors.
We weren’t attorneys.
We weren’t a shelter.
We couldn’t magically fix this woman’s life.
But maybe we could help her find the people who could.
Maybe there needed to be something between the survivor who was desperately looking for help and the resources that already existed.
Something connecting the two.
A bridge.
That idea stayed with me.
What if there were people willing to stand in that gap?
What if riders could come together and help survivors find resources?
What if we could raise awareness?
What if we could support the organizations already doing the work?
What if someone who felt completely alone could reach out and hear:
We don’t have every answer, but we’ll help you find the next step.
That was the seed.
That was the beginning of Riders Against Domestic Violence.
But Our Own Story Wasn’t Healed
There’s another part of this story I need to tell.
Because if I’m going to finish this series truthfully, I can’t make the beginning of RADV sound cleaner than it really was.
While we were thinking about helping other survivors, our own relationship was hurting.
We were two people carrying a lot of unresolved pain.
One afternoon, I came home from work.
She was gone.
She had packed her things and left.
She had taken back the things she had given me.
I tried to contact her.
I couldn’t.
I was blocked on Facebook, and I couldn’t reach her by phone.
I was devastated.
I cried.
And one of the thoughts running through my mind was:
I’m no good for anybody.
At first, I couldn’t understand what had happened.
But over the next several months, I started looking at things differently.
Not just at her.
At myself.
And that’s when another truth began to emerge.
I hadn’t healed either.
I had spent years surviving.
But surviving and healing aren’t the same thing.
My past affected how I reacted.
Fear affected how I interpreted things.
My experiences with abuse affected trust, relationships, and the way I responded when something triggered those old wounds.
I had wanted to be a good person.
I had wanted to love someone well.
But good intentions don’t automatically heal trauma.
Looking back, I don’t see a villain and a hero in that relationship.
I see two survivors.
Two people who had been hurt.
Two people carrying things they didn’t fully understand.
Two people who cared but didn’t yet know how to keep their individual wounds from hurting the relationship.
Sometimes that’s the truth of trauma.
It doesn’t stay politely in the past.
It follows us until we begin dealing with it.
The Bridge Started Working on Me
After that relationship ended, I made a decision.
For a while, I stayed out of relationships.
I needed to understand myself.
At the same time, I kept working on this idea called Riders Against Domestic Violence.
I started reading survivor stories.
I searched for resources.
I worked on the website.
I built the page.
I tried to find information that might help someone who didn’t know where to turn.
And something unexpected happened.
While I was looking for help for everybody else, I started finding help for myself.
I began recognizing pieces of my own story in the stories of other survivors.
I started understanding things I had never understood before.
Trauma.
Control.
Triggers.
Shame.
Why people stay.
Why people go back.
Why survivors sometimes blame themselves.
Why healing doesn’t happen on somebody else’s timetable.
Working on RADV became therapeutic for me.
The bridge I was trying to build for other people…
I was walking across it too.
We Are the Bridge
That’s why those words mean so much to me today.
We Are the Bridge.
It’s not just a slogan.
It’s the lesson my life taught me.
I know what it’s like to need a bridge.
The doctors who saved my leg were part of one.
The friend who gave me somewhere to stay when I had nowhere to go was part of one.
My brother telling me there was a place for me in Texas and a job waiting was part of one.
And years later, a woman standing in our home holding a phone and saying,
“We have to help her,”
became part of one too.
None of those people could live my life for me.
None could make every decision for me.
None could erase what had happened.
But each one helped me reach another mile.
That’s what I want RADV to do.
We don’t have to be the destination.
We can be the bridge.
A bridge to a shelter.
A bridge to information.
A bridge to legal resources.
A bridge to a support group.
A bridge to somebody willing to listen.
A bridge to hope.
And sometimes simply a bridge to the realization:
Maybe my story isn’t over yet.
Reflection
When I started telling Before There Was RADV, I told you this wasn’t about getting sympathy for what happened to me.
It still isn’t.
There are millions of survivor stories.
Mine is only one.
But maybe somebody reading these chapters recognized themselves somewhere along the road.
Maybe you’re walking on eggshells.
Maybe you’re sleeping somewhere you never imagined you’d be.
Maybe you’re struggling with addiction because you’re trying desperately not to feel something.
Maybe you’re a man who’s embarrassed to admit you’re being abused.
Maybe you’ve escaped once and found yourself in another unhealthy relationship.
Maybe you’ve left, but you’re discovering that leaving didn’t automatically heal everything.
Or maybe you’re simply wondering whether there’s anything left of the person you used to be.
I can’t tell you exactly what your road will look like.
But I can tell you what mine taught me.
Your worst chapter does not have to be your final chapter.
I thought parts of my story represented the end.
They didn’t.
There was another mile.
Then another.
Then another.
And somewhere along those miles, pain began turning into purpose.
I believe God had been working in my life long before I understood what He was doing.
I don’t believe God needed those terrible things to happen to me.
But I do believe He found a purpose for the man who survived them.
That purpose became clearer every time another survivor reached out.
Every time somebody needed a resource.
Every time somebody needed encouragement.
Every time somebody simply needed to know they weren’t alone.
That’s why I’m still here.
That’s why RADV is still here.
And that’s why we’ll keep building.
Not because I have all the answers.
I never did.
I’m still learning.
I’m still growing.
I’m still healing.
But I know something today that the man lying behind that dumpster couldn’t possibly have known.
His story wasn’t finished.
Neither was mine.
And neither is the mission.
So this is where Before There Was RADV ends.
But it’s not where the story ends.
Because now…
There is RADV.
And as long as there is a survivor somewhere wondering where to turn next, we’ll keep doing everything we can to point toward that next step.
One survivor.
One resource.
One connection.
One mile at a time.
We Are the Bridge.
My story. Our mission. Their hope.
Your best miles are ahead.
— Dave “Grizzly Dave” Beatty
Founder, Riders Against Domestic Violence (RADV)
RADV.org