She Survived Being Shot By Her Ex—Now She’s Spending Her Career Teaching Men How To Embrace Respectful Manhood

Kimya Motley married who she thought was the man of her dreams.

After a string of unhealthy relationships, she felt she’d finally got it right. But within a year of their marriage, her husband started being financially, physically, spiritually abusive toward Motley and her two children.

“My faith is very important to me, so he used it against me,” Motley tells ESSENCE.

She said he told her that a part of her identity as a marital partner is to be submissive —that acquiescing to him was a sign of her love for him as a good wife. But what she realized was that was a form of covert manipulation that soon became undeniable.

After the first few hits, she tried to file a restraining order, but he convinced her to take him back, claiming he’d do better for his family. But like many other domestic violence cases, that was an empty promise and it lead to a near fatal ending.

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“After the constant threats and physical violence continued, I told him I wanted a divorce—and honestly, that’s the number one thing you cannot do when you’re an abused woman,” Motley explains. “It should be like Harriet Tubman in the underground railroad—you’ve got to get out in silence, in secret, and with some help to hide the trail.”

During the process of leaving her husband, Motley learned this lesson in the worst possible way.

“I put my daughter in the car early in the morning on September 20th, 2011 to take her to daycare,” Motley recounts. “He ambushed us in the parking lot, but I didn’t recognize that he was even out there because he had stolen his mother’s car so he could cloak himself.”

Motley explains that while fixing her daughter’s shoes, she wasn’t paying attention to her surroundings. He took the opportunity and stealthily walked up behind her.

I told you I was going to kill your a–, didn’t I?

“And he shot me in my face at close range—the bullet entered through one cheek and exited on the other, depositing in her car door.”

He went on to shoot her again in the neck. She heard the bones crush in her face as she fell to the ground. Looking up at him, Motley yelled no, no, no, no, no. He shot her in the back of the head. Shocked she was still alive, the only thought that ran through her head was to reassure her daughter that she was ok.

“Mommy’s alrig–…” Her words suspended in air when she saw her daughters’ limp little body; she was shot as well. Next to her was lain the shoe she was adjusting moments before the their lives were altered forever.

“Now, I could go on with that part of the story, but I won’t because the bottom line is God gets the glory. We both lived through that incident. Despite my daughter having to learn how to walk, talk, feed herself, read, write everything all over again, she’s still here and I am too. We’re here to tell our tale.”

Motley’s story echoes that of some 40% of Black women who will experience intimate partner violence in their lifetimes.

Motley is well aware of the pervasiveness of this issue, that’s why she’s using her harrowing story as a testament to educate others on not only overcoming domestic violence, but harnessing the tools needed to help uproot harmful societal ideologies that breed abusers.

Motley is now the chief communications officer for A Call to Men (ACTM), a Black-led nonprofit organization focused on transforming society by promoting healthy manhood through trainings and educational resources for companies, government agencies, schools, and community groups. Motley joined ACTM in 2021 after undergoing a self-educating journey where learned what abuse really looked like.

“Like many women, I had no idea I was being abused until it was almost too late. And then by the time I recognized it and started telling people about my {now} ex-husband, they did nothing. I told folks, the men in his life, authority figures, and they ignored it.”

This isn’t atypical.

Data shows that courts reject 81% of mothers’ allegations of child sexual abuse, 79% of their allegations of child physical abuse, and 57% of their allegations of partner abuse. In a separate 2021 report released by the National Hotline Of Domestic Abuse, approximately 82% of survivors had contacted police about intimate partner violence or sexual assault and 12% did not. Both groups shared concerns about turning to the police for assistance and were also concerned about contacting them in the future the report states.

“I made it my life’s work to try and upend this system of abuse in the home and at work,” Motley says, underscoring that abuse touch various areas of life, including the workplace. Microaggressive behaviors, sexual harassment and other harmful barriers to effective communication is addressed in ACTM’s targeted workshops and trainings including Circle of Accountability – An Affinity Group for White Men and Thinking Outside the Man Box — Innovative Ways to Engage Men

To date, ACTM has worked to spread education on respectful manhood through partnerships with a wide breadth of organizations including the National Football League, National Basketball Association, National Hockey League, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, Uber, Deloitte, Harry’s, J.P. Morgan, the United States Military, the U.S. Department of Justice, the United Nations, and colleges and universities across the country.

At its core, Motley says the organization is not about condemnation, but providing tangible resources for promoting respectful interactions and relationship building between men and women, girls, LGBQ, Trans, and nonbinary people.

“It starts with self respect,” she says. “When I see the way these men show up every day to stand alongside me and other women to say, not on our watch, {to disrespect displayed by males}, it’s so inspiring. It heals the little girl in me, the little girl that saw my father beating my mom, the little girl that was being sexually assaulted. It heals that part of me to work alongside them to end this violence.”