It started the way so many modern love stories do. A simple message on Facebook. A “hi.” A “hello.” Two people finding each other in the vast, noisy world of the internet. But this story began during a time that was anything but ordinary. It was the quiet, uncertain days of COVID. The world had stopped. People were home, scared, searching for connection in the only spaces that remained open. And in that silence, Momo found Soumya. He became her sanctuary, she says. A voice that made the fear feel smaller. A presence that made the isolation feel less heavy. And when her critically ill father longed to see her settled before his time ran out, it felt like the universe had sent her exactly what she needed, exactly when she needed it. She thought Soumya was her destiny. She was wrong.
The rejection, the silence, and the mistake she would come to regret
13 Jul 2026 | 13:11
What’s one stereotype about women that you’re tired of hearing?
The first crack appeared when Soumya’s mother met Momo’s family. Her words were cold and swift, delivered without hesitation or apology. “She doesn’t suit us.” Five words. And just like that, Momo and her family returned home broken and silent. For an entire year, she heard nothing from the man she had believed was her future. No explanation. No apology. Just absence. And then, one night, he came back.He arrived at her doorstep, drunk, full of promises. He would marry her anyway, he said. His mother’s opinion did not matter. Their love was bigger than all of it. Momo, who had spent a year grieving a relationship she thought was over, made the decision that she now carries with her every day. She mistook his recklessness for love. She said yes. They married in 2021.
When the fairytale became a nightmare?
Marriage, Momo had believed, would be the beginning of everything she had waited for. Safety. Belonging. A family she could call her own. What she got instead was a nightmare that unfolded slowly at first, and then all at once. She discovered he was talking to another woman. When she confronted him, he did not deny it. He did not apologise. Instead, he turned violent. He dragged her. He beat her. And he tried to force her to end her pregnancy. Let that sentence sit for a moment.Momo was carrying his child. And the man who had promised to love her regardless of what anyone else said, the man who had stood at her door in the middle of the night swearing she was worth fighting for, raised his hands against her while she was pregnant. At five months pregnant, Momo collapsed. He dropped her at the hospital. And then he vanished.
The woman who stood back up
Two years have passed since that night. Soumya has not returned. Somewhere out there, Momo later discovered, he had left with another woman. Their marriage, the promises, the late-night declarations of love, all of it had been built on a lie. But here is the part of the story that matters most. Momo is still standing. She is raising her child alone. The baby she almost lost. The baby whose father tried to erase before she even had a chance to breathe her first breath. Momo calls her little fighter, and that name carries the weight of everything they survived together. She shared her story on Instagram under the name the.phoenix.women. And the name is not an accident.
A phoenix, in mythology, is the bird that burns completely and rises from its own ashes. Not despite the fire. Because of it. Momo did not just survive what happened to her. She chose to speak about it, openly and without shame, so that other women who are living in silence might find in her story the permission to speak too.Because domestic violence during pregnancy is not rare. It is one of the most underreported forms of abuse in India and across the world. Women who are most vulnerable are often the ones least protected. And yet here is Momo, raising her daughter, telling her story, refusing to disappear. She began as someone’s sanctuary. She became someone’s punching bag. And she rose as something neither of them ever expected. A mother. A survivor. A phoenix.
