How a single mom overcame the odds

When Doina Oncel wakes up in her Toronto home every morning, she makes herself a much-needed cup of coffee while her children get ready for school. After dropping them off, she dives into her emails and checks her calendar to see what’s on her plate for what is sure to be another hectic day.

As a social media entrepreneur, founder of a non-profit organization and a loving single mother of two girls – Sarah, 13, and Mya, 7 – Oncel has found success wearing a number of hats. However, there was a time when her current life seemed like a very distant dream.

On June 21, 1994, Oncel immigrated to Vancouver, B.C. from a then-communist Romania, in search of a better life. She was only 19 years old and she didn’t speak English.

“I remember I was so nervous because I didn’t know anyone or anything,” she recalled.

She had experience in hairdressing and was able to find a job, but cutting hair wasn’t what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. She decided to hang up her stylist apron and enrol in a social worker program at George Brown College in Toronto. Domestic violence and women’s and children’s rights were her preferred areas of study.

Soon Oncel found a partner and gave birth to her two daughters. Together they started a very promising renovation business, with their first contract amounting to $60,000 with a 50-per-cent profit margin.

“Things were looking up and I finally felt I was on the right track with my life,” she said.

That all changed when Oncel’s common-law partner developed an alcohol addiction and started blowing all of the money their business was bringing in. To make matters worse, he began to verbally and emotionally abuse her.

“Who knew that after studying about domestic abuse and violence against women, I would experience it first-hand,” she said. “I never saw it coming.”

Dr. Katreena Scott from the University of Toronto specializes in working with child and adult victims and perpetrators of abuse and violence. She said most victims can’t foresee it and that some of them don’t even realize they’re being abused.

“There’s a public perception that physical abuse is the only form of abuse out there,” she said. “There’s economical abuse, emotional and psychological abuse and sexual abuse, and most often, one leads to the other.”

Such was the case for Oncel, who saw her abuse escalate from verbal and emotional to physical.

According to the Canadian Women’s Foundation, one in four women have experienced domestic violence and half of all women in Canada have experienced at least one incident of physical and sexual violence since the age of 16.

Despite the high number of women who have been the victims of violence, Scott said the rates of women who report it are still very low. In fact, a 2009 Statistics Canada study found only 6.1 per cent of them do.

She said victim shaming is one of many reasons women don’t come forward to get the help they need.

“When society makes excuses for the perpetrator and places the blame on the shoulders of a victim, it leads to self-blaming,” she explained. “They begin to tell themselves they did something to deserve the abuse, which is entirely not the case.”

She said it’s also common for women with children not to report their abuser out of fear they can’t support their children on their own.

This concern is what kept Oncel from leaving her partner for a full year. Finally, on April 21, 2009, she called the police and he was arrested and later found guilty.

“It’s hard to just walk away when you have children in the picture, but no person deserves to be treated that way,” she said. “I wanted a better life for myself and my kids.”

Almost immediately after, Oncel had another obstacle thrown her way; she could no longer afford to live in their house. With no friends willing to take them in, she took her children to a women’s shelter.

“A lot of women are unsure about taking their children to a shelter, but I was fortunate to already know all of the things they had to offer,” she said.

Laverne Blake is the manager of client services at Ernestine’s Women’s Shelter in Etobicoke. She agreed that there are a lot of “myths” floating around regarding the shelter system.

“People make them out to sound like they’re this awful place, when really they’re a very welcoming and supportive environment,” she said.

She said most shelters have programs and social services that recognize and cater to each family’s unique needs.

As an example she mentioned the various programs available at Ernestine’s: legal support, counselling, skill exchange and housing assistance, to name a few.

She added that they also have a child and youth program that provides children with things like counselling, reading circles, homework clubs and arts and crafts.

“There is usually no limit to the amount of time you can stay in a shelter because the goal isn’t for these families to reside here temporarily and move on,” she said. “It’s to help them and their children get back on their feet.”

Women’s Habitat did just that for Oncel. Three months into her stay she was able to find a job and started making enough money to afford her own place. She attributes her strength to the shelter’s support and some heartfelt words from her oldest daughter.

“One day when we were sitting at one of the tables in the shelter, Sarah said to me, ‘Mommy, when I grow up, I want to be just like you,’ and I knew in that moment I had to set an example for my girls,” she said. “I had to chase my dreams to show them they could too.”

She began studying social media, attending business seminars and networking with other entrepreneurs in the industry. With their support and her hard work she was able to open her own public relations company for technology start-ups, called Doina’s Infinite Solutions.

She also founded hEr VOLUTION, a non-profit organization working to make “innovative education and employment services” accessible to girls and young women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Both are very successful.

“It’s still crazy to think of all that we’ve been through and where we are now,” Oncel said.

“No matter what was thrown our way, at the end of the day my daughters and I overcame it together. We never let it stop us.”

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