One Second at a Time: My Story of Pain and Reclamation

A deeply personal history of colonialism's effects on an Ojibway-Anishinabe woman who survives a traumatic childhood and eventually escapes domestic violence to find hope and healing.

Bullied and abused at the Fort Alexander Indian Residential day school, Diane Morrisseau fought back and left school at the age of fifteen. Despite her strength, a childhood of trauma and abuse led her into the arms of Edgar Olson, and by sixteen, the young Ojibway-Anishinabe woman had given birth to her first child and married the man who would become her tormentor for the next eighteen years. Her abuser was aided and abetted by the same systems of colonialism that failed to protect Diane during her childhood. Edgar was able to keep Diane and her children trapped in a cycle of violence for years, without being held accountable by law or society. What could have been a chronicle of unrelenting hardship instead becomes the narrative of how Diane found the strength to survive, reclaim her life, and eventually thrive. Today she draws meaning from her painful past, counseling women, children, and men experiencing similarly difficult circumstances.