How Maria Fitzpatrick went from track and field star to 'punching bag'

Let's start with the end of the movie.

A woman stands up in the Alberta legislature and shares intimate details from her life in an attempt to help others.

She is weightless.

She has shed the embarrassment and pain ofrape and punches and her children's screams.

Seeing this scene play out, one wonders: how did she get there in the first place?

How did she get here?

Andwhy did she stay with an abusive husband for nine years?

She had wings

Before thatending, and before the painful middle act,Maria Fitzpatrick felt unstoppable.

The second oldest of six kidsand one of five girls, she was a tomboy rebel.

And she would much rather be in the workshop building something with her dad's tools than doing any of the choresher strict Catholic mother suggested.

"Ask me to clean the silver and I would dally all day. Ask me to shovel the driveway, and it would be done in minutes," Fitzpatricksaid.

"I wanted to be playing baseball or running. I didn't want to be in the house doing house things."

Her love of the wind on her face led her to the track, where she won records and awards.

Fitzpatrick competed at the national level, at university championships and against people who made the Canadian Olympic team: 12 seconds for 100 metres, 40.2 seconds for 300 metres and 24.5 seconds for the 200 metres, her favourite.

"When I ran, I did not feel like the track was under me," she said, trying to describe the rush. "I just never felt the ground."

Weightless.

She was at the height of her confidence, and plain physical strength, when she met her husband.

Downward spiral

"I thought he was handsome and we seemed to have a lot of things in common," she said.

He was a track star too and played football for the London Lords.

Fitzpatrick, the first female athlete of the year in her hometown of St. John's, said he thought she was a good match.

They met during the summer at the Eastern Canada championship andsaw each other at track meet after track meet.They talked about their shared love of sports, music,the outdoors andchildren.

The romance movedas quickly as their sneakers hadon the tarmac.Theymarriedthree months later.

Eight months after that,he hit her for the first time.

Fitzpatrick was 23 years old. She was pregnant with their oldest daughter.

"And he just swung at me and slapped me and hit me up against the wall. Iwent in the bathroom and jammed the door shut and locked it," she said.

He broke the door downto apologize.

She forgave him.

"It was that whole cycle, the battered women's cycle. I just didn't know that at the time."

Total control

The cycle didn't begin that day. And it was so subtleshe can't even pinpoint when it started. But some moments stand out.

She drifted from friends and family.When Fitzpatrick's mother disapproved of the relationship before they got married,Fitzpatrick quickly changed her round-trip ticket to Ontario to a one-way ticket. Her mother disowned her.

Later they moved even farther away across the border to his hometown, Cincinnati.

She was working and he often didn't. His money was his, her money was "theirs" and paidbills,rent and food for the family.

He said they couldn't afford a phone anymore.

He told her she was fat, unattractive and unloveable.

He used his fists and weapons to threaten her, their children, her work colleagues and strangers.

"I always thought I was pretty tough because I was a tomboy. But you are not tough when someone is punching you in the face. And when they have complete control over your life. And that's what it felt like," she said.

"He would say to me, 'Don't you breathe like that.' And for years actually after I left, if I was in a stressful situation, I would not breathe."

She said leaving didn't feel like a choicebecause nothing felt like a choice anymore.

'Go ahead and shoot me'

Somewhere in the dull fog that had eclipsed her, a spark still burned. And it got brighter when she noticed others' care and support.

The priest at her church relieved the reluctance she hadabout the thought of divorcewhen he told her, "God doesn't want anyone to be a punching bag."

At that time, Fitzpatrick earned $3 an hour sewing therapeutic braces. But her boss recognized her potential and offered to pay tuition to finish the university degree she deserted when she got married.

Both men supported her when she tried to leave her husband.

Thepriest stared him down when he came to his officeholdinga gun. Fitzpatrick had fled to a women's shelter instead of going to class. Her husband knew that because he went to the university firstand waved the gun at the professor and the class.

"Go ahead and shoot me," the priest dared."I'm not going to tell you where she is."

And heremployer told him to get out of his office when he stormed in, looking for her paychequeand ordering Fitzpatrick outside.

She said these small kindnesses contributed to the large amount ofcourage requiredto dig herself and her two girls out.

And to stay out.

Falling up

Physically, digging out meant accepting a loan from her sister so she could afford to break her lease,crossthe border back to Canada and boarda flight to Yellowknife.

But real freedom took much more. And much longer.

Seeing Yellowknife's scrubby trees, rock, lakes and fireweed was the first time she felt lighter. Her sister lived there and the countryside looked like home.

Fitzpatrick took a typing course and got a good job in government. She feltlighter still.

She applied for a divorce and found out her husband was still married to another woman, which meant an annulment too more lightness.

She flirted and dated and eventually moved in with a new partner. She went to therapy. She played baseball and volunteered. And she joined boards, helped lead government unions, marched on picket lines and got into politics.

Layer upon layer, she worked to shed what had held her down.

Just getting started

And she realized she really was tough, both for herself and others.

"Incrementally, the empowerment increases," she said.

"Every time that I've stood up, I've stood up because I believed what was going on was fundamentally wrong."

Fitzpatrick doesn't hold her breath in stressful situations anymore.

And if you watch the end of this movie, you'll see just how strong her voice is now.

Because Fitzpatrick is just getting started, she said, when it comes to using her new MLA position for advocacy.

Her next project will be to craftnew rules forconduct in the Alberta legislature, inspired by the loud shouting and interruptions she witnessed this week, which she says appear akin to harassment.

The end of this movie is in fact a beginning.