Finally got my domestic violence awareness bracelets - Hope, Faith, Courage, Strength - right on. Honored to wear it!
Last week ballroom dancing champion and So You Think You Can Dance judge, Mary Murphy, came forth with her own horrifying experience with domestic violence.
She was repeatedly raped, beaten and even suffered a miscarriage during a hellish nine-year marriage in early '80s.
It's an unfortunately all-to-familiar story for those in abusive and violent relationships, particularly the female victims. The part that I want to focus on here though is the fact that her own parents encouraged her to go back to the relationship again and again to "work it out".
In another post I stated that let's stop failing these families and start helping them with outreach, education and prevention without regard to gender, sexual preference, cultural or religious biases.
And what's worse than our own families failing us? Really. My grandparents, who I loved dearly (God rest their souls), told my mom that she "had made her own bed" and had to deal with the abuse.
Her own bed that she made and lay battered in for 12 years before she finally found the courage to get us all out of there.
There's so much shame that comes with abuse - did we bring it on ourselves? Maybe I deserve it?
Again, I loved my grandparents and it was a different time but no one deserves to be abused. It's not okay to look the other way and say work it out.
Friends and family, help those loved ones in need to help themselves get out of hell and on the healing path - including the abuser if at all possible. (Over half of the people convicted of violent crimes are first-time offenders who commit crimes against friends or family.)
Parents, tell your children young and grown it's not okay.
Hope, Faith, Courage, Strength - right on!
Purple peace out.
This is a message we've given our girls since they could understand what abuse was. We have told them repeatedly that abuse is not okay and that they don't ever deserved to be abused, not by friends, male or female, not by boyfriends, certainly not by a husband who professes to love them. My husband would never tell them that they had "made their own bed." I hopt to God they have heard us and that they never face abuse. If they do, I hope they come running back to us.
ReplyDeleteNO ONE deserves abuse. Absolutely NO ONE!
And it not okay to look the other way.
Hope, Faith, Courage, Strength. It takes all of them to beat abuse. I hope that all who face abuse daily can find all of those attributes.