Speaking in Punjabi and English, she recounted 20 years of punches, slaps and taunts from the man with whom she still lives.
She echoed other South Asian women who rose to tell their stories, saying it's time to end the shame that forced them into silence.
"I want other women to come forward," she said. "If they don't, their friends, their relatives, their children will suffer the way I suffered."
The meeting was called in the wake of the killings of two Indo-Canadian women and critical wounding of a third in the Vancouver area in less than two weeks.
"Girls have been walking into our studios with their complaints, with their violence, with their abuse," said Ashiana Khan, the station manager for Radio India who organized the forum.
"They did not know how to get help, they did not know where to go, they did not know who to talk to."
Narinder Rihal, a support worker at Surrey Women's Centre, said part of the challenge in assisting abused women in any cultural community is their reluctance to seek help from strangers.
"They are discouraged from seeking help from outside the family," said Rihal. "The family does try to help, but sometimes the family is part of the conflict, they can't always see what the real core issue is.
"They are trained and raised to believe that if there is a problem within the family it should be talked about within the family."
Rihal said women often believe that they can't seek help from people outside their own culture because they won't be understood.
"That's not true," Rihal said. "Domestic violence is not a South Asian problem. It is a problem globally."
But British Columbia's attorney-general said there is a bias within South Asian culture that underpins the violence.
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Oppal, who is Indo-Canadian, said boys are treated preferentially to girls.
Oppal said the community has been in denial for a long time.
"Nobody likes to acknowledge the fact there may be violence in their own home," he said. "I think it's time that the community did that and for that reason I think the forum is a very good idea."
There was little reluctance among those who attended Thursday's meeting, including the family of one of the slain women.
Maldeep Sandhu, whose cousin Navreet Waraich was stabbed to death Sunday, pleaded that the victim's husband Jatinder, charged with second-degree murder, not be released on bail.
They also urged federal immigration officials to allow Navreet's parents to come to Canada and care for their infant grandson.
On Oct. 20, a nurse from Coquitlam, B.C., Gurjeet Kaur Ghuman, was riding in a car with her estranged husband when he shot her in the head and then killed himself.
She remains in critical condition in hospital.
Days later, the burned body of Surrey, B.C., teacher Manjit Panghali was found in suburban Delta. She was four months pregnant.
No one has been arrested in her death.
Generations of South Asian women rose and told stories of abuse they had suffered at the hands of their husbands.
One woman, her voice breaking, recounted how her husband choked her on the bed as their 17-day-old son lay nearby.
Another recalled being left bloodied, her jaw broken, with her two young
daughters only steps away.