“Part testimony, part memoir, part explication, Joanne Betzler’s Nothing to Discuss pulls apart the hundreds of threads binding a woman to a marital situation that is inherently dangerous. Betzler’s writing skillfully conveys the constant and wearying disorientation of living in a state of emotional abuse and the toll it takes on the body. For anyone who has wondered how intimate partner violence develops its web of constraints and traps, this memoir may help parse the push and pull of conflicting reactions. Touchingly told as a confession to a trusted sister, Nothing to Discuss offers proof that respectful connection is possible. This story refuses to do anything but deliver the reader to a place where hope and a belief in love are reality.”

— Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Poet Laureate of Vancouver and editor of Against Death: 35 Essays on Living

“This is a story that speaks in the quiet spaces where survival lives. Through memory, fracture, and tenderness, it traces the journey of losing oneself and slowly, bravely, returning. It is not a story about what was done, but about the fragile, defiant hope of becoming oneself again.”

— Megan Kriger, Director of Development, Lookout Housing and Health Society

“Nothing to Discuss is an intimate reflection on the devastating yet often unnamed abuse experienced through coercive control. Serving as a powerful reminder of how easily harmful behaviour can become normalized, this honest and vulnerable memoir helps readers to truly understand the bravery and strength required to take the long journey from silence to self-determination.”

— Wendy Tynan, Calgary-based Executive, Board Member, and Community Leader.

“Joanne Betzler spent nearly two decades navigating the controlling behaviour of her husband before she was able to build a life that felt like her own. In Nothing To Discuss she tells that story, of growing up in a large Catholic family with a charismatic but domineering father and escaping into a relationship with an equally charming but emotionally abusive husband who exerts his power in every aspect of her life. Interspersed in the narrative are letters to her deceased sister that explore grief, not only for her death, but for the unhappy lives they had each resigned themselves to, and which they had been led to believe was all they deserved. Speaking of their wedding rings, Betzler writes, ‘At one time, I’d seen mine as the promise of freedom, but that night I saw the truth. All those tiny pieces of jewellery ever did was move control of our lives from one man to another—like we were batons in a relay race.

Betzler finds a way out, but the mourning for the lost sister, the lost opportunities, makes her journey both hopeful and heartbreaking.”

— Sonja Larsen, Author of Red Star Tattoo, My Life as a Girl Revolutionary