Oct. 7, 2025
Teresa’s Light, Devyn’s Voice with Devyn O'Neill I Ep. 89
In this episode of 1 in 3, Devyn joins Ingrid to share her powerful domestic violence survivor story—one that began with a late-night knock, a 911 call, and the moment her stepfather returned and pulled a trigger. The small town that knew Teresa, a beloved nurse with a bright laugh and steady hands, now mourned the loss of someone who made others feel safe at their most vulnerable.
Devyn opens up about how her world changed at 14 and what healing has looked like since: panic, nightmares, self-harm, medication, and the long, imperfect process of trauma recovery through therapy. Together, we unpack how abuse hides behind high-functioning alcoholism, why separation is the most dangerous time, and how grief rewires the senses, turning even morning coffee into a reminder of gunpowder.
But this story is also about action, hope, and resilience. Devyn shares how she turned unimaginable pain into purpose—a decade of community runs funding her local domestic violence shelter, volunteering on intake desks, and speaking publicly so silence no longer shields abusers. She honors her mother’s legacy while navigating motherhood after loss, learning to trust again, and teaching her daughter that real strength welcomes support.
This conversation is both heartbreaking and empowering—a reminder that one voice can change lives. You’ll learn about safety planning, believing survivors, and the signs of domestic violence before they escalate. If you’ve ever wondered how to help, or needed someone to say “don’t give up on yourself,” this episode offers compassion and practical guidance.
If Devyn’s story moves you, subscribe, share, and leave a review to help more families find these survivor-led conversations. Your support helps 1 in 3 reach the people who need hope, healing, and a path forward.
Devyn’s 1in3 profile: https://www.1in3podcast.com/guests/devyn-oneill/
1 in 3 is intended for mature audiences. Episodes contain explicit content and may be triggering to some.
If you are in the United States and need help right now, call the national domestic violence hotline at 800-799-7233 or text the word “start” to 88788.
Contact 1 in 3:
- Send your emails to 1in3podcast@gmail.com
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Thank you for listening!
Cover art by Laura Swift Dahlke
Music by Tim Crowe
00:00 - Welcome and DVAM Theme
01:29 - Devin’s Life Today
05:29 - Portrait of Teresa
14:13 - Small-Town Ripples of Violence
15:44 - Context: Family and Brent
18:50 - The Night of July 22, 2009
24:35 - Hospital, Aftermath, and Community Shock
29:08 - Grief, Trauma, and Coping
33:43 - Action as Healing: Fundraisers and Service
38:23 - Speaking Out and Breaking Silence
41:23 - Motherhood Without a Mother
44:38 - Strength, Worthiness, and Final Reflections
47:43 - Closing and Ways to Support
WEBVTT
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Hi Warriors, welcome to One in Three.
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I'm your host, Ingrid.
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This year marks the fifth year the National Network to End Domestic Violence has carried the theme for Domestic Violence Awareness Month of Everyone Knows Someone.
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Today's episode embodies that message in an incredibly powerful way.
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This is not my story to tell.
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So I invite you to join me in welcoming my guest, Devin.
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Hi Devin, welcome to One and Three.
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Thank you so much for joining me today.
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Thanks for having me.
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So I know kind of the whole episode is going to be your background, but is there any little bit of a background you want to give to start out with?
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Sure.
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I'll give you my background as far as where I am right now.
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Um, so I live in a Milwaukee area, Wisconsin.
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Um, I've been married for three years, and I just had my first child.
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I had a daughter a year ago.
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Um, Charlotte is her name.
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And right now I'm home with her full time, which has been both the biggest challenge and also the biggest blessing.
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Um, just kind of being with her all the time, um, and just learning so much from her, which has been really special.
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Um, my husband works as an anesthesiologist outside of the house, and we have also one dog, Ginger.
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Um, I come from a very big blended family.
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So my parents were divorced when I was young, like four, maybe five years old.
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And um, so I never really remember them together.
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But um, my dad got remarried and I have um two half siblings from his marriage there.
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Um, so we've always been a little chaotic, very blended, but a lot of love like all across the board.
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Um, as far as like other parts of my childhood, I grew up in a small town called Warrens, Wisconsin.
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It's literally a village.
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And when I was growing up there, our population was literally unincorporated.
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So it was so tiny but so charming.
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Um, I grew up on my grandparents' cranberry marsh where we didn't really have neighbors, like for miles, and our only real neighbors were my grandma's house on one side and my uncle's house on the other side.
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Um, so I grew up very close with my uncles, aunts, grandparents, and cousins, um, which was just like such a special way to grow up.
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Um after um I graduated high school, I went to UW Lacrosse, got my undergrad, lived and worked in Madison for a few years in corporate HR, which was again a great learning experience.
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It's a special type of job, I would say.
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Um I went on to get my MBA at Whitewater while I was still working full-time.
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And then, of course, as everyone knows, COVID happened, and that's actually when I met my husband.
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So um, yeah, it was a bit of a whirlwind.
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Um, we were together for a year, engaged, married the next year, and now here we are five years later with our daughter, our dog, in our home.
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How did you guys meet?
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We actually met on hinge.
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Okay.
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Yes.
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Okay.
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As grim as the dating apps look out there, it does work sometimes.
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Right.
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One of the lucky ones there.
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Oh, for sure.
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For sure.
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There's a lot more horror stories, I think, than success stories.
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For sure.
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Okay, so part of the reason you're joining me today is to talk about family and specifically your mom.
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Yes.
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And she was a nurse.
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Now I grew up in Toma, which uh for a lot of people listening are going to have no idea where Toma or was Warren's is, but um we at least did have a population.
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I did have to go there for school.
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So right, right.
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So I think we had like a population of around 8,000 when I went to high school, but uh very small town.
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Um kind of everybody knows everything about everyone there.
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And even now, um I graduated 30 years ago and I still know a lot about people.
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I don't live there.
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I I live in Tennessee.
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And I still know a lot about a lot of people there.
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But um, so your mom was a nurse at the hospital, the local hospital.
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Yes, the only hospital.
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Yes.
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Like 30 mile radius.
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Right.
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That is true.
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That's true.
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So uh, do you want to talk a little bit about um actually just before we get into like the whole uh domestic violence end of the story, but just talk about her as who she was.
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Yes.
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Well, I have so much to say about her.
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Um, and I'll disclaim this like for the duration of this podcast, in that I share what I remember today.
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Um, and that kind of changes day to day.
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That's one interesting thing I have found about not just like memory, but like trauma in the way you remember things.
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Um, so it's not that I um making things up as I go.
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It's just this is what I literally remember today, 16 years later.
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So it's been 16 years since I've seen my mom um or heard her voice.
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And what I remember of her today is um, first of all, her sense of humor was well, as a teenager, it was irritating.
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Um, but I have such an appreciation for it now because I I've come to understand that's just how she kind of, I mean, coped with life in some ways, where you just can't be so serious and just laughing things off, making corny jokes, you know, kind of annoying your kids because you're trying to connect with them.
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I really as a mom now, I really understand.
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Um, I really understand that so much better.
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And now that I do, I just appreciated that about I appreciate that about her now, like so much more because um I think it allowed her to just carry on the day-to-day with such a good attitude.
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Um my mom never really like sat and felt like woe is me or sorry for herself, like regardless of the circumstances.
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She was very much, she was like a strong-willed, like half a glass half full like attitude, and it was very infectious.
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Um, coupled with that was her her smile was also very infectious.
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I mean, her smile and laugh were very infectious, but um, when I talk to other people about her now, so many of them will mention that about her, where it's like, oh, your mom just like lit up the room, and it was like her smile or her laugh or her humor, whatever it was, she had such a presence.
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Um, and you know, that carried through her career as well.
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She was an OB nurse.
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So, like the most vulnerable time in a woman's life is when you're giving birth.
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Um, and she was literally made for that.
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Um, she was just wonderful at it, to the point where we would, you know, go through the only grocery store in our hometown Walmart at the time.
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Um, and people I had never met before would stop us and say, You delivered my son or my daughter, and like she just made such an impact on people in like such a good way in like such a vulnerable time of a woman's life.
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And I just really admired that about her because I'm sure it wasn't effortless, but it seemed that way.
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It just seems so natural for her to just treat people with such dignity, respect, and just the ability to like listen when someone is talking to her.
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It's one everybody can hear, right?
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Like you can hear people talking, but it's different when you know that somebody's actually listening to you.
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And I feel like that's something that she really had just mastered.
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Um, so all qualities that I think the world needs a little bit more of now.
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Of course, we didn't have like all the technology that we have today to distract us, but um, I often will humble myself in moments where I'm distracted by thinking about like what kind of person do I want to be and what do I what do I want my daughter to absorb?
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I mean, that's a priority now too.
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So I find myself now as a mother, thinking about what my mother did, how she acted, how she carried herself, and just like trying to embody that as much as possible.
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Um, brings me like a certain type of fulfillment um and joy because it almost feels like she's involved in some ways because I'm trying to like carry on the way that she carried herself.
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Um the other like really funny thing, not funny, but my mom was only five, two.
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So she was a short gal, but she was incredibly strong.
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Like, so strong, and like for jokes and for fun at holidays, she'd want to arm wrestle all the men in the family just to see if she could beat them.
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Like, and she really would, like, give them a run for their money.
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And we all just like laugh just laughed about it because she was like half serious, half not.
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She had a little bit of a competitive edge to her.
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Um she was extremely present in my life and my brother's life when it came to our sports, our academics, just like always kind of pushing us to do better than we did the day before, um, which is something that I think stuck with both of us.
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And of course, as a kid, you're you know, your parents are annoying, and it's like, what's wrong with my B?
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And why do you want me to get an A and all this?
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And she it all came from a place of just wanting what was best for us.
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And she always, at the end of the day, regardless, made us feel loved.
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And I think that's really all like like kids need, like they just need to feel loved and to feel seen and heard, and she just um again, it like came so naturally to her.
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Like she was incredible at all of that and balancing, like pushing us to be better human beings and like contributing to the world in a way that would be productive and kind.
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And so I could ramble all day about her, um, but she is just she was special.
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Like um, I find that I haven't found anyone quite like her.
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Um, and maybe I'm biased because that was my mom, but um yeah, she was just incredibly special, and I think the community and people around us felt that too.
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For sure.
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I think that when you have a if a person like what you described your mom to be, that that push that she like actually was consciously doing with you and your brother, she probably also just subconsciously nudged everyone else around her to want to be better people themselves.
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It's it's individuals like that that just have this, you know, they just give off this energy, this happy energy that people feed off of, but then like feed off in a good way.
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Um that's beautiful.
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That's a really beautiful way to describe your mom.
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And listening to you describe her.
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I'm I'm being brought to my kids and how annoying I am to my kids.
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I love all of that about your mom, and I think it's really important to point out that she had such a big impact on your life, your brother's life, and then the community.
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And that's something that really needs to be recognized that there's not just one person that is affected by violence.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah, it was and I'm sure you can relate to this too, but it's especially impactful when you grow up in a small town.
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Yes.
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Like you were saying earlier, everybody knows everybody.
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Right.
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Or somebody knows of somebody, and um just the sheer ripple effect um seemed so much greater almost in like a smaller town because you you make connections with like such a large majority of it.
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Whereas, you know, you're not just like a fish in like the sea, you're more of like a fish in a pond, so to speak.
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Or you run into the other fish in the pond, but maybe you miss them in the sea.
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So um, yeah, it was you nailed it, it's so much greater than just me or just my family.
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It's like impacting the community.
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And do you want to go into a little bit about what happens?
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Yeah.
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Um, again, this is what I remembered today.
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I don't I don't practice any of this.
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I don't like look back at newspapers and um, you know, I don't Google my name.
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All that.
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Um, but yeah, so I think a little context is important here in that I mentioned earlier my biological parents, so my mom and my dad got divorced when I was young.
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And I had always had a good good relationship with my dad, and he was very much part of our lives.
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He we saw him every other weekend.
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He was like at our sporting events, like he definitely loved us.
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I don't want to say off from afar, but there was just some distance from where he lived and where we lived for like a period of time.
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But there was always a you know, they co-parented really well and all of that.
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So my dad got remarried, but my mom also got remarried.
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Um, so I think I was eight um when they got remarried.
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Um, she got married to who was my stepfather, Brent.
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And um, you know, eight is still like very much kid age.
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And so he was like a he lived in our house.
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Like he in some ways was like around when we were being raised, and um, you know, came to our sport events here and there.
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Like he was a part, he was like a big part of our lives.
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Um, and he never had kids of his own.
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So we were just me and my brother were kind of like quote unquote his kids um when we were growing up at such like a young age.
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So um the thing about Brent was um he there was so much that I didn't like really realize about him when I was a child that I understand now as an adult.
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Um, one of those things was I didn't recognize a temper that he had.
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Um, I know my brother had witnessed or heard him say a couple of things that kind of alluded to him having a short fuse, but he was never violent towards us.
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I had not I never saw him be violent towards my mother.
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What I did see from him was he was very aloof.
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Um, so we had like a shed, like in our like as part of our property, and he had kind of sort of like a man cave of sorts in the shed.
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And um, you know, he spent a lot of time back there and up playing his guitar or throwing darts or whatever.
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And one thing that I I just like never thought much of it, but as an adult, I know that he was in the shed drinking, um, and just like away from us.
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So what I realize now is he was just a source of like high-functioning alcoholic.
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Um, where, you know, one memory I have very vividly um is we were camping with my mom, my stepdad.
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It was me, my mom, my stepdad, my brother.
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And um he opened a beer at 10 o'clock in the morning.
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And my mom like got emotional.
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Like, one thing about my mom is she I can truly count on like one hand how many times I've saw I saw her cry.
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Um, she was just not she really kind of like kept it together, especially in front of us kids.
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Um and it was me and her in the camp, or and she's like crying, and I'm like trying to understand like what why are you crying?
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There was like an exchange, and then he left, and so it was just us um at the campsite, and I don't remember specifically what she said, but it was almost like in that moment I realized like what was wrong.
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Because there's always like this underlying issue, it seemed, um, but I never could quite put my finger on it, and maybe it's because I was a teen, like a very young teenager, or maybe I just wasn't paying attention or didn't know what I was looking for.
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Um, but it was kind of in that moment that I felt something bigger was going on here.
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So um to make that a long story short, they ended up, my mom ended up filing for divorce um after they were married for seven or eight years.
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So a long time they were together.
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And I remember him moving out of our house and not being a hundred percent sure why, other than they just they weren't happy together anymore and they were just like going their separate ways.
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Like that's what I understood about it.
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Um, so then fast forward, I would say roughly a month or two, and um, it was July 22nd, 2009.
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Um, my brother was off at a motocross race with my uncle and my cousins.
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And so it's just me and mom at home, and we were doing our usual wind-down routine at night, where um I was tucked into bed, promised uh breakfast in bed for my birthday the next day, um, which I always looked forward to.
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Um and then, you know, it was kind of like lights out.
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Mom was, you know, getting herself ready for bed, and I was almost asleep.
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It was late, so like maybe 10-ish o'clock at night.
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I was almost asleep, whatever time it was.
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And I heard a really loud knock on the door, which I always found, I found in that moment to be like really odd because we grew up so far out in the country that we never locked our door for one.
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Like I never had a house key growing up.
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We were just like lived in the safe community where my neighbors were my grandparents and my aunt and uncle, and whoever was coming would just walk through the front door.
00:19:33.980 --> 00:19:38.380
Um, so I thought that was like very odd um that someone was like knocking really loud on the door.
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So I was like, oh, mom must have like locked the door.
00:19:40.700 --> 00:19:43.259
You know, I didn't think much of it, kind of rolled over.
00:19:43.980 --> 00:19:49.740
And I heard her walk past my room because we had our bedrooms upstairs, and then there was the main level.
00:19:49.980 --> 00:19:54.380
Heard her walk past my room, go downstairs to, you know, like see who was there.
00:19:55.180 --> 00:20:00.460
And then I heard her scream and the door hit the wall.
00:20:00.779 --> 00:20:03.980
And so I was immediately awake.
00:20:04.140 --> 00:20:11.819
I jumped up out of bed, I shut my door and locked it, and then I called 911 right away and I didn't even know what was going on.
00:20:12.059 --> 00:20:20.220
I just know that when you hear someone scream like that, you are a hundred percent sure that something is wrong.
00:20:20.380 --> 00:20:21.900
You're just not sure what.
00:20:22.380 --> 00:20:33.500
Um, and so I'm talking to the 911 operator, and I'm also listening to see if I can figure out why it why is my mom screaming.
00:20:34.140 --> 00:20:46.460
Um I hear like a man's voice, and it's more of like it's like they're having a like a heated discussion, like they're yelling at each other.
00:20:46.700 --> 00:21:01.259
Um, and you know, I'm like like I'm trying to like figure out who that is, and then I hear my mom say, like, I tried for eight years, and then I was like, okay, and then I heard the man's voice now like okay, it's Brent.
00:21:01.339 --> 00:21:08.380
Like I realize like who it is now, and I couldn't figure out why my mom was so scared.
00:21:08.460 --> 00:21:12.700
Like, I knew she was scared, I could hear it in her voice without even like seeing her.
00:21:12.940 --> 00:21:17.099
But when I realized who it was, it was almost like this moment of like, do I open the door?
00:21:17.259 --> 00:21:19.099
Because I know who Brent is.
00:21:19.339 --> 00:21:23.660
Um, it's not like there's an intruder in our house, and I have like no idea who it is.
00:21:23.900 --> 00:21:24.619
I don't.
00:21:24.859 --> 00:21:34.700
Um, I don't know if it was like flight, fight freeze like moment for me, but I was like laser focused on getting the cops there like as quickly as possible.
00:21:35.180 --> 00:21:41.660
Um, and so it's felt like an eternity um for them to get there.
00:21:41.900 --> 00:21:50.140
But while they were having their argument, I'm like telling them, like, oh, like here's like what I can hear and like what's going on.
00:21:50.380 --> 00:21:56.940
And then I heard like this really loud bang, and it's like a sound that I've never heard, like from the inside of my house.
00:21:57.180 --> 00:22:06.940
So I thought like a cupboard door had slammed shut or like the the stool from the kitchen table had like fallen on the floor or something like that.
00:22:07.900 --> 00:22:13.339
And then I heard it again, and then I was like, I realized like, oh, that was a gun.
00:22:13.579 --> 00:22:15.259
Like there's a gun in our house.
00:22:15.339 --> 00:22:18.140
Like my my stepfather has a gun.
00:22:18.460 --> 00:22:22.779
And so I'm like telling the police, like, please hurry.
00:22:23.019 --> 00:22:38.140
You know, we live in the middle of nowhere, like they like the you know, this stuff took time back then, and um I can still hear them yelling, despite like these two gunshots.
00:22:38.299 --> 00:22:41.819
The second one actually went up the stairs, like kind of like past my bedroom.
00:22:41.900 --> 00:22:43.019
I could hear it.
00:22:43.500 --> 00:22:58.619
And um, you know, there was there was some more arguing, I heard some glass breaking, and then there was a third gunshot, and then I heard a thump, and then I heard nothing.
00:22:58.940 --> 00:23:00.539
Like it was silent.
00:23:02.059 --> 00:23:12.059
And then I saw my I didn't see him get in his truck, but I saw him like drive away from our house, and it still is like so quiet.
00:23:12.940 --> 00:23:28.779
And so I opened my bedroom door, and I look down the stairs, which our dining room was right, like you could see it like looking down the stairs is where our dining room was, and my mom was like laying face down on the floor, and I'm yelling.
00:23:28.940 --> 00:23:32.220
I said, Mom, and she didn't answer me.
00:23:32.299 --> 00:23:49.180
And so I start walking down the stairs to get closer to her, and I feel wood, like wood chips on my feet from like where the bullet had like hit the stairs, and the smell like of gunpowder was just like so strong in the house.
00:23:49.819 --> 00:24:16.059
And I yelled again, I said, Mom, and she didn't move, she didn't answer me, and it was I could like see this shadow next to her, and then it took like a moment, and I realized like that shadow is actually blood, and she wasn't responsive, and so I get scared, and I basically like begging these people like the first responders, please like, please get here like as soon as you can.
00:24:16.460 --> 00:24:31.099
And I go back in my room and wait, and it's not long after that that they show up, and at that moment it was just like it was such like a surreal out-of-body experience.
00:24:31.259 --> 00:24:35.099
I couldn't even comprehend what just happened or what was happening.
00:24:36.140 --> 00:24:43.980
And um I just remember like a police officer coming upstairs to like see if I was okay and they're working on her downstairs.
00:24:44.140 --> 00:24:49.980
So now they have me upstairs and her downstairs, and like no one's like really going anywhere.
00:24:50.220 --> 00:25:03.900
Um, at that point, I think they were just they got a sheet and they're like, you know, like holding it up so they could like protect me from like seeing them like work on her and like get her to the hospital like as quickly as possible.
00:25:05.180 --> 00:25:06.700
So that's all happening.
00:25:06.940 --> 00:25:10.859
And then, you know, they like send her off in the ambulance.
00:25:11.019 --> 00:25:20.140
And I remember I had to use my house phone, if you can believe that, um, to call my grandma, who was my neighbor, so my mom's mom.
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And I had to tell her what just happened.
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And so she comes down.
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