DOMESTIC VIOLENCE MONTH

So as we bring the month of October to an end, we also bring a close to Domestic Violence Awareness month.  What have you done?  Have you ever experienced domestic violence first hand?  Have you ever witnessed someone else be damaged by it?

I have, and I'm not afraid to say so anymore.  I am not ashamed anymore.  Pity? No.. while that could have helped then, it is rather useless to me now.  That season is now over, to never happen again.  How do I know that?  I know that becasue now I see the what the red flags are.  Now I know what signs to look for.  Now I know that I don't have to be married to raise great kids.
I had no comparison, growing up.  Having parents who both hurt themselves, eachother and the futures of their offspring, it is safe for me to say that I didn't have parents for the most part.

I didn't know what signs to look for.  My sense of the norm was warped.  I thought that it was normal to get beat for x, y and maybe even z.   But something deep down, told me that I was not normal.  Something told me that there was a whole better place in life, and that I didn't have to die to get there.  There was this little voice inside of me that said to go away, and my eyes would be opened.  I did... and they were!

What I saw was that there were people trying to protect people like me.  Although I didn't know how to get that help at first, I figured out how to help myself.  And with the assistance of many others, I was able to make the necessary changes.

Now, my new dilemna was that I had just become a mother for the third time, and was in a bad situation to do this on my own.  But now that the bus is rolling, there's no sense in putting on the brakes!  So off I went, with my three children.

So my personal story is out there.  What did I do to make a change in the lives of others?
At a young age, when I should have been in foster care myself, I became a member of a Youth Advisory Board at a runaway/throwaway home.  I was a throwaway.  I knew how these kids felt.. I could relate.  So our team built programs to support these kids: support groups to deal with home issues, peer education on many topics including peer pressure, we even built a support group for gay, lesbian, transgendered, bisexual, and confused teens.  Eventually, I served a term in every office position: secretary, treasurer, vice president and president.
From there, I moved onto the Youth Panel Against Inner City Violence and served as a panel member on the Toni Nash Show and several news conferences.  We also did our own fundraising for expenses incurred on these adventures.
As my job there was coming to an end, I moved on to an "Aftercare Program" where I assisted my peers in their efforts to re-enter society after adjudication.  We addressed the root cause of certain behaviors and how to avoid negative situations.
Having gone through much personal drama within my own family, I took some time away from my efforts to clear my own head.  During this time, I persued my music career and fell in love with Shadow; who shall forever be known as my one true love.  The night we had gotten engaged, he was brutally murdered.  Five months later, I was to find out that we would be parents of a beautiful boy.
At this point, my attention had left the music, as I had to suddenly prepare myself for single parenthood in an instance.  There were only a matter of weeks to go.  There was no support in place for this situation.  Neither family was suitable to ask for any assistance.

My idea of feeling good, only started as planting a garden with my son.  It evolved into 365 Earth Days per year, with media coverage on a few of them. This would continue until I had to run for my life.  About 5 years in time, dedicated to the environment.

Three years later, I was to go through one of the most scariest storms in my life.  There was a mutual friend of Shadow and myself, who had helped me get through it.  He fell in love, and I simply outweighed my pros and cons... "Hmm.. He wasn't the type to do this or that... I'll take him!"  Once we were living together, he began to change.  This was the beginning of a nightmare that lasted 7 years.

Yes I admit that I was not "in love" with this man!  This eventually broke his heart and turned him into the wretched beast that I would soon get to know very well.  I don't think that either of us began that journey with malice in our hearts, however it sure did end that way!  Although I don't doubt that he loved the kids, I know that his problem was losing me.  He knew he had a trophy, so to speak, and that made him very proud.  What he didn't realize was that his "trophy" was a living, breathing human being, with three children to care for.  When the relationship was long over, he began to act very erratic.  This eventually led to my children and I moving 1200 miles from home, just to survive him.

We currently assist other families in finding the help they need to make life altering positive changes such as:
- leaving abuse physically
- recovering from the physical and emotional aftermath
- job retention
- job invention (how to invent a job when you can't find one)
- replacing addiciton with positive behaviors
- fundraising for causes
- working with children, through tough times