October is Domestic Violence Awareness month, and Refinery29 has partnered with Safe Horizon to bring our readers real stories from domestic violence advocates and survivors. Here, a survivor tells us what it's like to co-parent with her abusive ex.Johane, a 44-year-old social worker, met her ex in 2002, and the two were married in 2007. Two years later, they had a daughter, and three years after that, they separated. Johane is also one of more than 10 million people affected by partner violence every year in the U.S.But despite the fact that she made the decision to leave her abuser, she must still share parenting responsibilities with him. We talked to her about the process of seeking help and the challenges of co-parenting with her ex."[There] was infidelity on his part, so we had to move out of our apartment. We had been separated from February to July, however there was one physical incident that happened to me in August of 2013 that really put the nail in it for me."He wanted to have a conversation about [shopping for] our daughter. Earlier in the day, I said, 'I’m not interested; if you want to do something, we’ll do it another time. I don’t want to talk to you.'"[Later, at night,] when I was coming out of the gym with my cousin, [he was there, and] I was struck on the left side of my face. I was saying I didn’t want him to come near me — I felt intimidated, and he was coming and just talking to me. So I called the police, and I was hit with the phone. After that, he was running after me, and I went to the side door of the gym, but the gym was about to close. He hit me again and my face started to swell up.""I called the police to make a report that my ex had assaulted me on the street. Shortly after that, I also called the 800 number [800-621-HOPE, operated by Safe Horizon in NYC]. [In my job as a social worker, I had used the] number to call for other survivors. This time, I called to find out how Safe Horizon could help me.