A Team

At our core, we are all members of the A Team. Put another way, "Everyone who lives in this world... they all have the basis of goodness, beauty, and truth." (from The Art of Power by Tich Nhat Hanh)

Are you on the A Team and with someone who is treating you like you are not?
Being on the A Team means that we deserve to have a loving, kind partner who treats us like we are filled with goodness, beauty, and truth. We deserve to be with someone who treats us with dignity and respect. If we are with an abusive partner, they are treating us like we aren't on the A Team. Sometimes non-abusive partners can also treat you like you aren't on the A Team.

Feeling like you are not on the A Team?
This represents the false belief that we are not filled with goodness, beauty, and truth. Sometimes we partner with someone who treats us as though we are not filled with goodness, beauty and truth. (They probably don't feel that way about themselves either.) The partner is acting as though we do not deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.

Are you on the A Team and believe you aren't?
Sometimes our belief that we are part of the A Team gets shaken by the treatment of our intimate partners. When we are not treated with dignity and respect by our intimate partner, we can sometimes begin to believe that we are not filled with goodness, beauty and truth. Sometimes we dont' believe we are part of the A Team before we ever get involved in an intimate relationship and we have found ourselves with a partner who validated and confirmed that belief.

Being on the A Team
We are all part of the A Team simply by our existence.
Seek out partners who treat you with dignity and respect.
Treat yourself with dignity and respect.
Treat your partner with dignity and respect.

Seek out partners who honor your goodness, beauty and truth.
Honor your own goodness, beauty and truth within yourself.
Honor your partner's goodness, beauty and truth.

Celebrate! Celebrate!

June marks the one year anniversary of my business, Walk in My Shoes! My business license renewal showed up in the mail yesterday and that's what reminded me. It was great timing because yesterday was also the five year anniversary of moving into my home in Durham.

Two wonderful events in my life worthy of celebration!
I have enjoyed the first year of Walk in My Shoes. I have been surrounded by amazing, wonderful people who have mentored, supported, and guided me along the way. I have also had the privilege of traveling all over NC and meeting people who are working to end domestic violence.

I have also enjoyed making my house a home over the past five years. It's been so great to be in a space where I felt like I belonged. And the best part has been taking a jungle and making it into a yard with beautiful flowers and plants. My house was empty for almost a year before I moved in and the yard was a veritable sea of poison ivy! It has come a long way in five years!

That's what I hope for Walk in My Shoes as well - to continue to train advocates across NC and beyond - to take a startup with a very successful first year and continue to work to end domestic violence. With the help of my friends, family, and mentors - all my goals are possible!

I look forward to year two of Walk in My Shoes and year six in my home, Amelia Hill. (named for one of my heroes, Amelia Earhart).

Know The Past

I like to read the Parade magazine that comes with the Sunday News and Observer. This past Sunday, I read an interesting tidbit written by historian David McCullough. In the article, he talked about how important it is for a nation to know its past.

It's also important to know about the past of the person you are dating. It's important to know about their childhood and upbringing. It's also important to know about their past dating relationships.

Background Check
I have started asking participants in workshops if they have done a criminal background check on a person they are considering dating. More and more people answer yes. That's one way to find out about a person's past. I don't have feelings one way or the other about the criminal background check. I do think it's good to do your own "background" check. Get to know this person's personal history. What is their family like? How do they feel about their mother? What is their job history (abusers often have sporadic job histories)? What do they have to say about their last partner? How did the relationship end? - these are just some of hundreds of examples.

Quick Involvement
One control tactic that abusers use on their intimate partners is to get involved quickly. If two people get involved quickly, it's harder to get out of the relationship. Abusers know that. It's also harder to deal with learning negative information about our partner. We are more likely to dismiss it or explain it away if we are deeply involved - or what has the appearance of deeply involved - expensive gifts, living together, physical intimacy, shared secrets, etc.

Examples
A person who abuses tends to want to get involved quickly. Some common examples that I hear from battered women:
Moving in after dating for 2 weeks.
Giving an expensive piece of jewelry after only knowing each other for a month.
Asking to marry after a month of dating.

Trust the Gut
I was recently discussing relationships with my brother, John. He said, "The heart is an idiot, the gut is a genius." In addition to making me laugh out loud, I also took note of how wise the statement is. It's easy to fall head over heels "in love" right away and listen to your heart over your instincts that are quietly screaming, "RUN!" And sometimes our partners are drowning out our inner voice with their own little diatribe of why we should listen to them and trust them more than our own gut.

intoxication

Meaning the sweet intoxication from the scent of a Gardenia. This is a photo of a blossom growing on a huge Gardenia bush in my back yard. The smell is heavenly.

Yesterday I wrote about some preventive strategies to deal with stress and burnout. One strategy is to take the time to enjoy all the pleasures of the Earth. Remember to take pleasure in the beauty of the world -- especially when you spend time working to stop the ugliness of domestic violence.

Everyone who has seen this plant marvels at its beauty and its glorious blooms. What a gift!

By doing something nice for yourself today and every day, you help prevent or reduce your burnout. The movement needs you! Take good care of yourself!

Self Determination and Self Care

During a recent presentation a participant asked, "How do you handle the stress that comes with working with victims of abuse?" That's a great question!

The degree of stress is related to your attitude and belief about victims of abuse. If you view the person as weak and pitiful, then your burnout rate and stress are going to be higher than if you view this person as smart and capable.

If you believe that this person needs to leave and that is the only option for ending a violent relationship, then your stress is going to be high. Violence in relationships ends when abusers stop being violent. Victims have the right to determine when they will stay or leave their relationship.

Listen
Part of what makes advocacy hard is that we are a nation of "doers." We believe that we have to be doing something to help someone. Listening is the number one gift you have to offer. When you can focus on listening and offering supportive and encouraging words, your stress and burout will be less.

Dignity and Respect
The goal of advocacy is to treat people with dignity and respect.
Listen to people describe thier experience without judging them.
Provide people with good information.
Allow people to make their own choices for their own lives.

Marie's Tips for Self Care
Assess your beliefs and attitudes about victims of abuse - are they helpful or harmful?
Get training on advocacy.
Practice your listening skills.
Find a good mentor to help guide you and support you in your advocacy and self care.
Listen to your mentor when they tell you that you need to take a break.
Take breaks from your work.

Good Providers and Good Parents

I had a great time in Nash County yesterday. I gave a presentation on domestic violence for the NC Division of Community Corrections staff that work in eastern NC. We had an interesting discussion about whether or not a batterer can still be a good parent.

My take on this is that a person who abuses their adult partner can be a good provider. However, I believe their ability to be a good parent is completely hindered by the way they treat their adult partner - even if they never commit any act of abuse directly targeted towards the child. The abuser may provide food, shelter, and clothing to their family, but it takes more than providing basic necessities to be a good parent.

Children are learning.
Children hear, see, feel, and know the abuse that is going on in their home. Abusers and victims both tend to minimize how much children are exposed to battering. Witnessing your parent abuse your other parent is confusing and frightening. Tied up with those emotions is learning. A child is learning about how to treat an intimate partner, learning about power, learning about shame, guilt, and family secrets. When the violence is not talked about and not addressed, children are learning not to trust their ability to assess reality.

Pretending is common with abuse.
The parents start pretending that the children didn't see, hear, or know what happened. The abuse is not discussed. The evidence is there for everyone to see, but no one is talking. This is the beginning of invalidation of the child's thoughts and feelings. This the beginning of losing trust in your ability to look at a situation and measure up what happened. The shame that hangs in the air is palpable. Depending on the age, children will see the world as either/or and as they try to make sense of abuse, they often end up feeling like one parent was right and one parent was wrong.

They may feel like they have to pick sides.
The abuser will feed on this and use children as a weapon and encourage them to pick sides. Abusers will use the tactic of dividing and conquering the family. One way to do that is to force children into picking sides and picking a parent who is justified and "right."

Think about it. Feel about it.
The impact of witnessing battering is complex. The child's age, developmental stage, sibling relationships, outside supports, and general disposition will all influence how a child copes with witnessing abuse (to name a few examples). Think about your own parenting style and your own childhood. What was most important to you when you were a child? What is important to you now as a parent? What are your feelings about your childhood? What are your feelings about your parenting?

To learn more about the impact of children witnessing battering, I recommend the book by Lundy Bancroft, The Batterer as Parent.

LIft Up the Curtain on Domestic Violence

To learn about the history of how the US legal system has handled violence in marriage, I recommend a great journal article written by Reva B. Siegael, "'The Rule of Love': Wife Beating as Prerogative and Privacy," Yale Law Journal, 106 (June 1996), pp. 2117-2207.
http://womhist.alexanderstreet.com/vawa/prologue.htm#endII

An interesting piece of NC history relates to how wife beating came to be viewed as a private matter - one not to be handled in the court system. In a case that went before the NC Supreme Court in the late 1800s, the court ruled that a wife could not take out criminal charges if her husband beat her. This is a quote from the opinion of the NC Supreme Court offering a reason for why a husband should not be criminally charged for beating his wife: "'it is better to draw the curtain, shut out the public gaze, and leave the parties to forget and forgive.'" (citation is in The Rule of Love)

So, here we are in 2008, well over 100 years later, still trying to lift the curtain up on domestic violence. Domestic violence does belong in the public gaze. In the public gaze, we can remove the secrecy and offer victims the support and safety that they need and we can hold abusers accountable for their violent behavior.

Do your part to lift the curtain on domestic violence. I'm off to Nash County to do my part!

Heading East

I'm going to Nash County tomorrow to present one more workshop for the NC Division of Community Corrections. This will be the third workshop on domestic violence for their staff. Most of the participants work inside of prisons across NC and thus work with many victims and abusers. We have had lively discussion in the previous two workshops. I'm looking forward to tomorrow - even if I'm not so excited about getting up at 5:45am!

Connecting

Sometimes people believe that women pick violent men as partners. Almost every woman who has been battered that I have ever talked to has said that the person she fell in love with was charming, fun, exciting, or some other positive adjective. I've never heard a woman tell me she fell in love with a man because he was violent. Most women didn't know the man was violent (emotionally or physically) until after they were connected. I use the term "connected" because, really...what is love? In spite of sonnets, poems, books, films, and personal experiences, it's hard to find 2 people who agree on what love is - and don't even get the 2 people started on talking about "healthy" love.

What I do know is that some people are living their love life in a fog. If you are living in a fog, then your ability to pick a mate is not at it's optimum performance. You are missing major signs and signals of what lies ahead with a particular mate. This fog comes in many forms including a person's personal experiences and upbringing as well as cultural beliefs. Is someone in the fog of believing they have to be married before they turn 30? Is the fog alcohol or drugs? The fog might be a childhood of being told you are no good. The fog might be a belief that all people are abusers and therefore, you don't have to discern one mate from another. The fog might be a tendency to ignore your gut feelings about someone. The fog might be lust. The fog might be the belief that this person is the most wonderful person on the planet and you cannot hear one negative word uttered about them. The list is long. Think about the fogs that you have been in or the fog of your friends as you watched them stumble around in their personal fog - right into a bad or abusive relationship.

That certainly doesn't make abuse a victim's fault. It does mean that we all need to work on coming out of our own personal fog so that we can go into our relationships with clarity and conviction in our choices.

I've had the joyful experience of running across the Golden Gate Bridge. In the span of 30 minutes, I ran through fog, light ran, sun, wind, and cloudiness. It was all very fascinating, but the greatest joy was running in the full sun with a clear view ahead and at all sides.

Lift your fog and here's to improving the ability to have healthy, loving connections!

A Few of My Favorite Things

I'm doing two of my favorite things today and tomorrow - training on domestic violence and traveling across North Carolina (in spite of how very expensive gas is). I was in Salisbury all day today and I'm headed to Whiteville in about an hour. I had to take a little stop at my house in between trips so that I could pack, visit my flowers and plants, and give them a drink of water.

I'm conducting training for the NC Division of Community Corrections. Today was an audience of about 50 people. Half had never been to a workshop on domestic violence before. They were a wonderful audience with caring and thoughtful questions.

Moving On

I gave a presentation on "Ethics and Family Violence" for the UNC School of Social Work on Wednesday. The feedback was very positive! This is a workshop that I will be offering and will add the description to my website.

I am going to Salisbury and Whiteville next week to give presentations for the Division of Community Corrections. But, before I pack up for those trips, I'm headed to Baltimore, MD. My neice is graduating from high school and the family is gathering to celebrate her.

Remember to celebrate your life and the lives of those you love. It's especially important for women who have left abusive relationships to have time to celebrate their joys and successes. It's a part of healing and it's a way to keep from constantly looking at the horror and sadness of abuse.

Have a fabulous weekend! If you are anywhere near the Triangle area - stay hydrated and stay cool!

NC House of Representatives Needs Some Training

According to today's News and Observer, NC House Minority Leader Paul Stam wants to double a proposed increase in the filing fee for a divorce in NC. Why? Because he doesn't want to increase the filing fee for a marriage license. The money is supposed to generate $900,000 for domestic violence programs in NC.

He's quoted as saying, "At least there's some connection between divorce and conflict, although not necessarily violence," he said. Wow. Where does an advocate begin?

Connections
There is a connection between abusers and marriage. I have heard many battered women tell me of abusers beginning physical abuse or escalating to physical violence the day of or the day after their wedding.

For battered women, there is a connection between divorce and violence because there was a connection between their marriage and violence. That's part of why they are seeking a divorce. And leaving can be the most dangerous time for a battered woman. I also have to wonder who is paying that divorce filing fee? Is this punishment to battered/formerly battered women for leaving? She is finally getting away from an abuser and now she is probably the one paying the filing fee - that's now $20 higher.

The N and O further stated, NC "Rep. Mickey Michaux, a Durham Democrat, later joked about the change. 'The Finance Committee decided they would make it more costly to get out than get in,' he said." Except who is laughing? The "cost" of domestic violence to battered women and children - and all of us in society for that matter, is higher than a $75.00 filing fee for a divorce.

Outside the Box
How about if they made abusers pay an "insult to marriage" fee when filing for divorce and charge them double?

Find the full story here: http://www.newsobserver.com/politics/politicians/legislature/story/1095656.html

Thin Line Between Love and Hate

All genres of music include songs about domestic violence - rock, rap, blues, country, soul, R&B, etc. Finding domestic violence songs in all of these genres speaks to how you can find domestic violence in all walks of life.

The song, Thin Line Between Love and Hate, was originally performed by The Persuaders. They sing the song from the point of view of the man in the relationship. Annie Lennox does a re-make of the song and she sings the song in the perspective of the woman.

It's a rich song to mine about the impact of emotional and psychological harm in a relationship. Is the song about emotional harm where the woman seeks revenge in the form of physical harm? Is the song about a woman (who in her mind, not necessarily from a legal perspective) is defending herself against emotional and psychological abuse with physical harm?

Annie Lennox alters the original lyrics at the end of the song. The original line says, "Actions speak louder than words." In Annie Lennox's re-make, she says, "Accidents speak louder than words." She then ends the song with the line: "Come on, Come on, baby, you don't give a damn about me."

To hear The Persuaders version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnQGQEZMAlo
To hear the Annie Lennox version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxhB5ikAxR4
To read the lyrics: http://www.lyricsdownload.com/persuaders-thin-line-between-love-and-hate-lyrics.html

In the movement, we don't talk much about a victim's use of physical violence in intimate relationships, even though victims do sometimes use it. They do not use physical violence the same way an abuser does. They do not get power and control the way abusers do when they use physical violence. Many victims get hurt worse if they attempt to use physical violence in an intimate relationship. And ultimately, more violence is not the answer to ending domestic violence.