I'd like to start this by saying that I would not be asking for help if my family were not in the most dire of situations. Our mother has worked incredibly hard to raise the four of us [I, being the oldest at 21] but it has come to the point where she can neither physically nor psychologically handle the burden of living with our abusive father. Being that I am in my last year of college, there is only so much I can do to move my siblings, mother and I away from the hell we endure 24/7. My siblings, a twin boy and girl, aged 15, and my youngest brother, aged 14, are still in high school and need the stability of a healthy home life instead of the fear and uncertainty of living with our father.

We have lived through the physical and mental abuse and financial manipulation for nearly a decade now. Growing up, we woke up every night to my mother's cries for help - pleading with us to call the police and save her from my father's routine beatings. We learned to stay awake all night in fear of his violence, act as human shields for his punches and dial 9-1-1 before he could break all of the house phones. Our father's volatile personality and refusal to treat his own mental illnesses made sure that our home felt like a prison. While our mother somehow tended to her own wounds and devoted herself to our schooling and well-being, my father's violence escalated. He took the car keys and refused to let us maintain contact with any family or friends - even calling and threatening those who refused. He intentionally hoarded all of our financial assets and left us in a nearly foreclosed home. Our father became paranoid with ideas of my mother's "infidelity" and immorality, of his children's alleged distrust and apathy towards him and his own self-righteousness.

The breaking point was a day that we have never forgotten. When it was time to break fast one Ramadan, our father became enraged and took kitchen knives to our mother's throat. My siblings – still in elementary school at the time – cried and shook in horror as I tried to tear him away from her. He dealt blow after blow to her body and eventually, to me, for trying to protect her. As he yelled profanities and spit on her, she attempted to run outside to call the neighbors for help. In turn, he dragged her to the basement by her hair as my siblings ran after them. Realizing that I was going to call the police if I made it outside, my father told me [over the shattering screams of my mother] that he would kill her if I did not comply and come downstairs. I obliged, of course. That evening, this horror continued for several more hours – back and forth, back and forth with us as hostages in our own home. For years after, I would wake up in a cold sweat thinking that my mother was screaming once again.

My mother, despite the turbulence and violence she has seen, is the strings that hold our lives in place. Even amid our father's cruelty and their later separation, she remained [and remains] a pillar of permanence. She signed field trip permission slips and somehow scrapped together money we didn't have so we didn't feel left out. She made sure we maintained straight A's and attended every band concert, parent-teacher meeting and award ceremony. She swallowed her pride and fed us using church donations and cried at the store when she felt she wasn't able to give us enough. When my father bankrupted our home and moved a state away, she sold her gold jewelry to pay for the utility bills and keep us afloat so we didn't have to brace the winter on the cold streets. Once, after my father had taken our minivan – as it was legally his car – my mother and siblings walked my tearful eleven-year old self nearly two and a half miles to my best friend's birthday party. Being well off, our father owned more than twenty-five cars – many of which he bought using money he had taken from our home's line of credit while we struggled to buy groceries and basic school supplies.

Moreover, our father responded terribly to our mother's ferocity and determination to raise us. After she initiated several restraining orders against him, he regularly doctored phone records and emails to have her arrested. Jealous of my youngest brother's closeness with my mother, he sent child services to our home alleging that my mother was sexually abusing us. He tapped the phone lines in our home so he could record all of our conversations and keep track of our every move. Whenever we became close to any friends or family acquaintances, he would obsessively call and berate them until they cut off contact with us. He contacted all of our family friends and relatives to tell them that my mother was a cheating whore who had taken all of his money and turned his children against him. He was determined to make sure that we had no connect to the outside world so that we would come crawling back to him. In some way, it worked. We could no longer afford to live on our own without our father's financial means. Our mother saw it as a choice between a [somewhat] more financially stable and comfortable home and life in a shelter. Thinking of only our education and future in mind, she took that risk and didn't look back.

While I have gone away to college, my siblings and mother have forced themselves to adapt. Though my father is no longer physically abusive, the fear of that possibility has never left our thoughts. They are subject to his routine episodes of rage and paranoia, accompanied by the subsequent throwing and breaking of items all throughout the house. Leaving a dirty dish in the sink results in him screaming and breaking every dish in the kitchen. A dent on the fridge means that we don't value his money and that we don't deserve anything that he's given us. Every day is a cacophony of him banging doors or throwing photo frames at the wall. Living with him is effectively torture. They stay quiet and make their presence as unnoticeable as possible. Friends are not allowed over in fear of his repercussions and even going out of the house has become difficult because he insists that they receive his “permission” first. Inevitably the stress has taken its toll, especially on our mother who is still our main caretaker. She pays the utility bills, drives us to the doctor, cooks, cleans, runs around for school events and still wakes up early every single day to make my siblings breakfast before school. This is a woman who struggles with chronic depression amid her myriad of health issues including fibromyalgia, arthritis, severe back pain, stomach ulcers; and now as we've found out, an inoperable spinal tumor.

We are afraid that the stress of this situation is rapidly deteriorating our mother's health. While the tumor is not growing at the moment, we don't want to risk it. And I think more than anything, we have had enough of living our lives in fear and terror. We would like to move out ASAP but the biggest hindrance is that we lack the financial means to do so. Raising us, our mother never asked for help or loans from others. She prides herself in knowing that all that we are, is the culmination of her blood, sweat and tears. And all that we are, is due to her. So we humbly ask for your help. If not for us, then for our mother who has worked herself to near death raising us on her own. She is the cement that holds the bricks of our family in place and we love her inconsolably. Please help us show her that her hard work is not for nothing and that she deserves something good for all that she has done for us. Every donation would help our family to get away from this terrible situation and start our life in a new home without our father. From the bottom of our hearts, we'd like to thank you.