That paragraph was so fucking upsetting, just transparently laundering an abusers image and letting them paint themselves as the victim.
A writer that actually knew about abuse should have caught several things - The offered implication that literal children were at least partially to blame for the "volatile atmosphere", the idea that people leave abusers to punish them instead of simply to live their own lives free of abuse, and the focus on what the abuser feels, especially when relating to how other people see them.
This is not how a mother that actually misses her child talks. This is how an abuser talks when they're angry you're allowed to keep them out and stop them abusing you further. When they hate you because she cannot maintain that 'Good mom, sunday school teacher' image for the community anymore.
Of course an abuser that clearly is desperate to keep up the appearance of being a good person would talk to the writer of this article, so she could write exactly this. A competent writer and journalist should have seen this. Ellen Barry is either fucking ignorant about abuse or doesn't fucking care.