Growing up in an Italian American family in Queens, New York, in the ’70s, Francesca Miracola was trained from an early age to keep up appearances at all costs—but behind closed doors, her parents’ toxic marriage served as a blueprint for dysfunction. So when she met Jason Axcel at a bar as a twentysomething, she ignored all the red flags—and there were plenty of them—and dove right in, normalizing his emotional and physical abuse just like she’d learned to do. She even married and had two children with him. But something in her clicked one night when Jason strolled out the door after a vicious fight that left her degraded on the floor, and she decided she was done.

Except Jason wouldn’t let her go.

Even after they finally divorced and Francesca fell in love with someone else, her ex-husband was keen enough to recognize that she was the same broken girl he’d met a decade earlier, and he exploited that fact at every turn. He called the cops to her home with bogus claims; he bombarded her with provoking emails and texts; he stalked her every move; and, worst of all, he used their little boys as pawns in his campaign. Then he went for the jugular and sued her for custody. But Francesca was stronger than he’d given her credit for.

Raw and illuminating, I Got It from Here is one woman’s story of saving herself and her children from the grips of a sociopath posing as a family man—and from the inherited trauma passed down by her own family of birth—while learning to trust in the inner voice that’s been trying to guide her all along.

Francesca Miracola is an Italian American from Queens, NY, currently living on Long Island, but in her mind she’s a free-spirited wanderer. She wants to travel the world, but she’s afraid to fly, although a glass of wine gets her through most flights. Francesca’s mostly an introvert who greatly prefers deep, meaningful conversations to surface small talk. She keeps her circle small, and she’s still debating if that’s a good or bad thing. She’s a breast cancer survivor, but she rarely defines herself as one—probably because she feels like she’s been surviving something most of her life. She’s funny; at least, she makes herself laugh. Francesca graduated cum laude from New York University and worked in financial services for twenty-five years, even though she wanted to be a therapist. That’s probably because she needed a therapist. Francesca finally wound up on her true path as a student and teacher of A Course in Miracles, author, life coach, and founder of Protagonist Within LLC. Francesca is a wife, a best friend, and above all, a mother.