This is not another “issue” “agenda”
This is not another “issue” agenda” sounds good/looks good/do good “enlightened” FB Post!
This is your grandma’s soul/her crinkled face – your aunt’s joy-passion radiating out, the sun in her eyes. This is your mother, her lemon joy smell/her healing touch. It is your daughter’s milky breath as she snuggles against you…your baby girl – still delicate, unlined…
And this is You, all you were and had yet to be.
Each day “the creature” comes (also know as darkness, the evil of mankind.) He strikes, rips, then terrorizes HER, THAT Child/Mother/Friend – rips another bud, tossing it aside like garbage. Always hungry, he’s getting closer to your vine.
But we are NOT that damaged piece of him…We are not our circumstances. We are not our past…not that “thing” others have done to squash us. We are life, art/poetry – all beauty.
April is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
Take a stand my friends. Speak for those who dare not. Especially if you are a writer, artist, have a voice that carries to the public…Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light.
Yolanda Haywood, a practicing emergency physician & associate dean at George Washington School of Medicine and Heath Sciences, shared her harrowing story of being treated for a domestic violence-related injury over 30 years ago. (It really can happen to our best and brightest)
She said she made a late-night emergency room visit after her husband punched her in the mouth. While she encountered many medical professionals in the course of her visit, no one asked her what happened or if she was safe.
Finally, she said, after her doctor had sutured her lip, he asked her who caused her injury.
“I became hopeful,” she told the audience. “I answered, ‘My husband.'”
His reply: “‘You need to learn how to duck.'”
Haywood said she spent the next several years learning to duck instead of finding support to leave. She said providers should be trained to educate patients about domestic violence so that they can make wise decisions.
“What was lost that night in the ER was the opportunity to offer hope and compassion to a young woman who needed help,” Haywood said. “Hope and compassion are great medicine, not just nice words that pacify.”
With DV, anger morphs into desperation, desperation to shame, grief/depression rises up and over you – sometimes the pain turns inward. We become an enemy onto ourselves.
I know. I have been there – a fragile wisp of self, half a breath away from extinction. Please become aware, educated yourself about warning signs of DV (It’s not all physical) and then look again…using your eyes/mind, your empathy…
& reach out, help…do NOT walk away.
There are also many great organizations that are working to help abused women/children…rescuing them from an early death. I thought I’d seen the face of God, when in Ghana a year ago. James Kofi Annan, International Child Rights Advocate, sees what we refuse to, does the right thing & saves, grows, nurtures lives…rescues children from traffickers…kids that are being brutalized.
James was a child slave himself – escaping after seven years. He fought to live, fought to learn/earning multiple degrees then dedicating his finances/future for those still suffering.
If you carry away anything from this post, please go to his site. James is known worldwide…
Then help. James is a man that does not have rest in his vocabulary.
Donate a month/year of education (a pittance really). We all know “EDUCATION is the key long to change.
I’ve met the rescued. I’ve seen the light…
There are also many DV organizations you can donate to as well. We have one in Santa Clarita that I feel is especially commendable. http://dvc-scv.com/
Hugs/love/prayers to those still suffering. You are not alone.
High fives to my friends that are making a difference.
Sending encouragement/support/gratitude to those of you that are about to tip the balance towards good.
Love and light.
Sheree
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