When everything falls apart, what does starting over really take?

Kylie Dorr had built the life she always wanted, including a farm of her own. Then an abusive marriage left her with two small children, just $500 and the prospect of starting again. Today, she runs a thriving agricultural business. But the journey back was anything but straightforward.

Content note: This article discusses domestic violence, including emotional, financial and physical abuse. Some readers may find the content distressing. Support services and contact details are provided at the end of the article.

“I always thought I was this independent, strong woman.”

It is one of the things Kylie Dorr still finds difficult to reconcile with what happened to her.

She had moved from New Zealand to the United States at 21, worked across agriculture, bought her own 120-acre farm, raced motorbikes and built a life from scratch.

She never imagined she could become trapped in an abusive relationship.

For Kylie, it did not begin with one dramatic event. She says the mental and emotional abuse in her marriage developed over time, wearing away at her confidence and changing her perception of what was normal.

“It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens gradually, and it wears down on you slowly, and you get so embarrassed and trapped into a corner.”

None of her family back in New Zealand knew how bad things had become. Kylie says she turned the blame inwards, convincing herself she needed to try harder to hold the family together.

“I thought I was a bad wife, and I just kept trying harder and harder. At all costs I was going to protect my family and that family unit.”

Her American father died when she was five, and Kylie grew up in New Zealand without him. She says the family unit was something she was determined to hold onto, while looking back, she also recognises that she grew up without a clear example of what a healthy, respectful partnership looked like.

“If I could give myself advice as a young person, it would be to value myself more and to value the importance of respect and a healthy relationship.

“Not having that around me growing up, I didn’t know what that was or what that looked like.”

By the time her marriage unravelled, the abuse had become multi-layered.

Kylie says her then-husband, a horse trainer, was using methamphetamine and prescription drugs. The emotional and psychological abuse had worn down her confidence, he had taken control of their finances, and physical violence was also part of what was happening at home.

She later discovered their mortgage had not been paid for more than a year.

She had around $500 in the bank and no job.

“I don’t say this lightly, I’m very, very lucky to be alive and to have come back to New Zealand in one piece with my two kids.”

Yet even then, Kylie struggled to recognise the full extent of what she was experiencing as domestic violence.

“I remember thinking that it would be stupid of me to call a women’s refuge, or stupid of me to say that domestic violence was happening in my home, because it was never physically bad enough that I was hospitalised.”

Looking back, what strikes her is how normal that reasoning felt at the time.

“It wasn’t until I got out of that situation, which some days I still don’t know how I did, that I actually really recognised how horrific it was.”

Her experience illustrates how different forms of abuse can sit alongside each other and reinforce one another.

Under New Zealand law, family violence can be physical, emotional, psychological, financial or sexual, and can include controlling someone’s finances, who they see or how they spend their time. It does not have to include physical violence.

For Kylie, those forms of abuse did not exist separately. The financial control, erosion of confidence, fear and physical violence were all part of the same situation.

She is far from alone.

The Ministry for Women cites a 2019 study that found 55 per cent of New Zealand women had experienced at least one form of abuse from an intimate partner, ranging from physical or sexual violence to psychological abuse, controlling behaviour or economic abuse.

For Kylie, leaving was not as simple as packing bags and booking flights home.

Because her children were American citizens, she says she first had to go to police and work through protection, custody and legal processes before she could take them out of the country.

Kylie returned to New Zealand in 2019, when Lane was five months old and Wyatt was three. But getting home did not end the legal uncertainty, with further hurdles around the boys’ right to remain in New Zealand.

She had brought them home, but she had also lost almost everything she had spent years building.

One loss cut particularly deeply.

Kylie had bought her farm before she met her husband. Farm ownership had been a goal since childhood and something she had achieved through her own work.

“That was my identity. That was the thing that I’d worked for, that I’d wanted since I was a kid.

“All of that was gone.”

For about six months, Kylie and the boys lived with her mother in a little cottage by the beach in Northland.

They went to the beach every day. Kylie was on the sole-parent benefit and grateful to be safe, but after a while she wanted to begin building a life of her own again.

“I needed to be an adult again and have my own space.”

A weekend visit to friends in the South Island became the unlikely beginning of that next stage.

Kylie spotted an advertisement from farmers looking for someone to live on and keep an eye on a dairy runoff block in exchange for rent. She rang and explained her situation.

“I said, ‘I have a baby and a toddler, but I’ve owned my own farm. I’ve run farms before.’”

The opportunity allowed her to move south, back near Tapanui, an area she had known as a teenager. She went to playgroup, reconnected with people she had grown up with and gradually found her place in the community again.

She picked up part-time artificial insemination work on farms and applied for job after job, without receiving a single interview.

That experience still frustrates her because she sees women discounting the skills they have built outside a conventional career path.

“You’ve got financial management skills, you’ve got people management skills, organisation, working under pressure. All of those skills.”

Yet women themselves, she says, are often the first to underestimate what they have to offer.

“They really don’t see that.”

Money was still extremely tight.

Kylie remembers one of her sons wearing through the front of his school shoes. Today she could replace them without giving it much thought. Then, she had to work out what else the family could go without.

“I would have to save and not buy a coffee, or buy the budget brand of everything and not have ice cream for a week so I had enough money to buy those school shoes.”

It is a small detail, but one that says a lot about how quickly financial security can disappear.

Kylie’s way forward came through another seemingly ordinary conversation when a farmer complained about the cost of getting his cows pregnancy scanned.

“I said, ‘I know how to scan cows.’”

He told her that if she bought an ultrasound machine, he would pay her to scan his cows and let her practise on them first.

A family friend loaned Kylie the money to buy the machine, and she began practising before offering the service to other farmers.

At the same time, she asked her mother if she would move south to help with the boys while Kylie tried to build a business.

Her mother initially said no, but a week later called back to say she was coming.

That small scanning operation grew into Southern Reproductive, Kylie’s livestock reproduction business. Today it employs more than 20 people and has grown well beyond Kylie and a borrowed ultrasound machine.

From a distance, it makes a tidy success story. Living through the years in between was anything but.

Getting back on her feet relied on more than determination. There was the sole-parent benefit, her mother’s support, a farmer willing to let her practise on his cows, a family friend who loaned her money, part-time work and a community that welcomed her back.

None of it happened because Kylie suddenly became fearless. She says she has been frightened and uncertain plenty of times.

People now regularly ask how she manages everything.

“How do I not?” is her response.

“I have the sole responsibility of raising my children and I take that super seriously because I want them to not continue that pattern.”

Her boys are now 10 and eight, and Kylie talks to them in age-appropriate ways about kindness, respect and healthy relationships.

She once believed keeping the family together was the best thing she could do for her boys. She sees that differently now.

“The best thing I did for my kids was leave.”

If she could reach back to the woman she was when things were at their darkest, Kylie says she would tell her to keep going.

She does not say that because leaving is simple, or because determination alone fixes the financial and practical realities that can make it so difficult. For Kylie, it is about doing the next thing she can.

“I could have quit so many times,” she says.

“I have two choices. I can sit and I could dwell and I could blame me not being where other people around me are because of what happened. Or I can just do something about it.”

For Kylie, “doing something” did not start with building a successful company.

It started with getting home, accepting help, finding somewhere to live, going to playgroup, taking some part-time work, saving for a pair of shoes and borrowing enough money to back herself again.

Those things, one by one, became the foundations of a life that was hers.

Need help?

Family violence can include physical, emotional, psychological, sexual, financial and controlling behaviour. It does not have to involve physical violence.

If you are in immediate danger, call 111.

Women’s Refuge: 0800 REFUGE (0800 733 843).

Are You OK: 0800 456 450, with free family violence support and webchat available 24/7.

Shine: 0508 744 633, free confidential family violence support and webchat, 24/7.