It's a lot to process, fresh off my Narcan* training yesterday. 

A woman put in a dog crate at a party by her intimate partner, for example. Where it got worse from there. 

A pregnant woman, trafficked, in the back seat of a car.  Every night. 

A senior disabled veteran dumped on a curb outside an out-of-Marin-County homeless shelter by his Marin County daughter. 

So I leave on a Friday, having booked a fleeing mother and her several children into a hotel far, far away, where he can't find them.

On the commute, I Vox with my posse, my Voxer** Mamas (my lifelines), three of whom are therapists, so the rest of us WIN. 

My husband has been assigned a "daily," (new vernacular for us ... which means a story assigned and due the same day), so he will be late. 

Cancel dinner reso. 

Take dog to dog park to exhale, where she is ... herself. #notperfectbutfun 

Ease in, meet other dog owners. 

Migrate to Our Favorite Place, where local creative, interesting people play live music nightly, and I am reminded how deeply. blessed. I. am. 







* ya know, for Opiod overdoses, like these:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/31/us/opioid-children-addiction.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

** It's an app. You should get it. 

*** My posts are based on composites. 

​Was her given name.**

​When she was born, her mama was living in a homeless shelter, having escaped, for the time being, the abusive husband.

Destiny was the first CIC (aka child in common) of four, with him. 

With each child, he tightened his grip -- on her relationships, her finances, her autonomy. If she "talked back," he canceled her credit card. 

 29 years later, Destiny was living in the same shelter with just two children, whose father was ... in jail. 

For domestic and family violence. 

Having come full circle. 


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Speaking of the Intergenerational Transmission of Violence ... this stat stood out: 

The prevalence of college-age students witnessing serious interparental physical violence while growing up typically ranges from 10% to 30% (Edleson, 1999; Jankowski, Leitenberg, Henning, & Coffey, 1999).



https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3705927/


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* Composite. 
**Not really. I don't use real names.

Never mind that youtube spelled her name wrong up top (pls). 

I'm sitting at a restaurant in Cambridge, MA in 2010, after a long day at a conference. I'm traveling alone for work the for first time in a decade, having raised three daughters and changed 5000 diapers. I'm disoriented, surrounded by Mass General and Harvard Med School types. I'm missing limbs. Them. Their soft skin. Their breath. I'm impressionable. Faltering. Re-inhabiting Self. 

I take the train from Boston to Cambridge because I want to see Harvard Square. I happen upon The Plough and Stars, where, to my delight, Erin Mckeown is playing live that evening. 

I'm unaccustomed to the SoloDine (which I would later, after my divorce, get used to), but that night it didn't matter. I was in an
Alt-Universe divined by Erin. 

This song broke me. I had been living a lie, an "our-marriage-is-fine" lie.

That night and until this day, I thought the lyrics were "I am aching," as opposed to "I am a king"!

I heard aching, and I was. It set off the waterworks. I cried openly in public for the first time. Strangers looked away.

It was out of my hands. 

And with that, my world, their world, cleaved asunder. 

Uncharted waters doesn't begin to describe it. 

One of the 189 questions I have to ask the homeless victims of crime I serve is: "Do you have planned activities each day other than just surviving that bring you happiness and fulfillment?" 

Many of them say no. Some of them laugh and ask, "Like what? Dumpster diving?" A few of them look down and answer softly, "not really." One said, "I do spend time with my brother." The brother who is caring for two of her three children because when she fled her abusive baby daddy, she didn't think about how it would go. She just needed to stay the fuck alive. 

The ones who flee for their lives with children usually have little to no income. Maybe SSI or SSDI. Usually less than $1000/month. They have been home with the kids, so their job skills have waned. And most important, they have no one with whom to stay because their abusers have isolated them -- covertly and comprehensively. The isolation, to my mind, is the sticking point, the biggest of their many barriers. It's emotional warfare. It leads to depression and anxiety and a crippling sense of dependence -- on him. 

I'm privileged to help them, to share and absorb their pain. I want them to offload it somewhere, anywhere, so they don't have to carry it.

So they can forgive themselves ... for that which most of them learned as a child. Dad hits mom. Dad controls mom. Mom stays. Mom endures it. 

Repeat. 

Some become survivors. Their path is uneven and daunting. It doesn't help that there is no affordable childcare in the Land of Plenty and that therefore they can't work and that therefore they cannot find stable housing and that therefore many of them return. To him. 

I'm going to do something about that. I want to clear their path, one vic/survivor at a time.

To help them remember ... there are so, so many reasons for living​. 






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