Mia Freedman: "I never knew human skin could turn so many colours all at once."

I began International Women’s Day by injuring myself. It was Sunday morning and I was having a swim with my kids when I slipped, crashing down hard on the edge of the top step.

Twisting in midair (sounds acrobatic but I think it was just a fluke), I narrowly avoided landing on my coccyx and my bum cheek bore the brunt of it but the agony was intense.

RELATED: “I injured my vagina at spin class”

Instantly, I cried out in pain, my face contorting while my children watched in horror right in front of me. “Mum, are you OK? Mum! Mum!” they cried, immediately swimming over to me. Through the blinding pain, the kind that takes your breath from you, I heard their fear and quickly tried to reassure them. “I’m OK,” I said in a strangled voice, hoping that was in fact true. “It’s OK.”

Over the next 72 hours, as the red mark on my bum turned into the most extraordinary bruise I’ve ever seen, I began to take a peverse pride in how bad it looked. “Look at my bruise!” I kept saying, pulling my pants down at every opportunity to show them. I never knew human skin could turn so many colours all at once.

You want to see it, don't you? Here we go (click here to see Mia's bruise in all its glory).

I was part amused, part enthralled by it, mostly because it didn't hurt very badly. Soon though, I started to think about it in a different, unsettling way.

My bruise had been caused by an accident, but what if I'd been injured deliberately? What if someone — someone who claimed to love me — had hit me or kicked me or pushed me over? Shoved me into furniture? What if my children had witnessed that instead of just me falling? They were terrified enough to see me so vulnerable and hurt. Their safety, their security, their whole lives are anchored to mine and their father's. In their minds, the safety and wellbeing of their parents is inextricably linked to their own.

What must it be like for the children of women who are kicked and punched and beaten and bashed in front of them or behind closed doors? Where is their reassurance? How do those desperate mothers feel about their bruises? How hard do they have to struggle to hide their own pain and injuries from children who have seen and heard too much? Know too much. Fear too much.

This is a daily reality for hundreds of thousands of children whose mothers are abused by their partners. How traumatised must they be, how terrified. How devastated must their mothers feel, trying to protect their children physically, mentally and emotionally from the eviscerating truth of family violence. What it looks like, sounds like, smells like.

It's worth remembering. Especially when 17 women have already been killed by their partners or ex-partners this year alone. Countless more have been brutalised.

Back in my non-violent world, I have grown even more obsessed with my massive bruise.

RELATED: One third of all injury reports in Australia are because of makeup

I've forced my family to look at it hourly for the past three days, insisting they marvel at how spectacular it is. I've pulled my pants down in the work kitchen for a showing at Mamamia, no doubt breaching 17 different HR protocols. I keep taking photos of it to send to my friends who are tragically unable to view it in person.

Frankly, I haven't been so proud of something my body has done since I grew two penises while pregnant with my sons.

This post is an extract from Mia’s weekly newsletter, Things I’d Tell You If We Were Friends where she writes personal stuff about her life, posts links to what she's reading online and shares her ridiculous outfits. To subscribe, head here.

Take a look at Mia's tumultuous hair history...