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I feel like a hero in my own heart for having exposed the wrongness of violence in the family, but my extended family looks upon me as "the black sheep."
That's a sad fact, but it's a truth that I have to face & accept. It's a difficult road to take when you're ridding yourself of domestic violence in your
life.
You have to suffer more than you suffer while living in the
realm of terror. You never know what to predict living with an abusive person, but at least when you're away from the abusive spouse or partner, you know it's going to be difficult. You know that it
will be your responsibility to make things work & to make your life better.
It's doubly hard on women who've been in an abusive relationship because most of these women haven't learned any life skills to be able to support themselves. They've gone straight from the abusive household they were raised in, into an abusive relationship of their own in hopes of escaping abuse. They're sorely mistaken, because most abused children end up with an abusive spouse if they're a woman. They don't know any different. It's like you have "abuse me" written on your forehead. It just happens that way.
 My 1st marriage,
the result of my father telling me that I couldn't go to college; was abusive from day one. The time we spent together before the marriage, abusive as well. I didn't care. I figured that it was what I deserved. My father had told me go find a man, get married, have kids,
be a wife, that's what you were made for. Girls like you can't go to college.
It was only a matter of days until my father was moving
out of our house anyway. He had beat up my mother. Her face was unrecognizable. She was hiding behind the newspaper when I
got home on a Sunday night from being gone all weekend. I walked over to her, talking to her, asking her a question,
but I can't tell you today what I had said, because when I saw her face I was horrified. She was a mess. Black & blue
over her entire face. Her mouth was all torn up, her cheeks cut & bruised. He had punched her with a fist, it was obvious.
My brother had fixed me up with the teaching pro at the golf course.
He tried to sleep with all my friends. He was arrogant, mean hearted & I got pregnant. We got married a few months after we met. We traveled to Florida from New Hampshire because
that's where he was from. When we got there, he forced me to have an abortion. I left the clinic the first time.
He threatened me with my our marriage. Years later I found out he forced me into that abortion because he didn't believe that the
baby was his. That's so funny. I hadn't slept with anyone but him. I had been so disheartened by my father's words, it didn't
matter anymore what I wanted to do. I was just going to marry this guy & have kids. I was just going to be a wife. I was
just going to exist, but he traumatized me with the forced abortion. I never respected him another day after that.
 I didn't know that there was welfare until I
was over 30 years old. I was actually in my mid 30's. I didn't know that there were domestic violence shelters until I was
36. I had been married to a cop, my second husband, for 7 years and I didn't know that domestic violence shelters existed.
He didn't ever discuss it with me when we were together.
The funniest thing... I learned that there were
domestic violence shelters from my ex-husband the cop, after the next guy started abusing me. He didn't want me to know about them while I was being abused by him. None of his cop buddies told me about domestic violence shelters either when they came to my house on physical assault
calls. It was okay for him to hit me... he was a cop.
I honestly don't remember
going for my first time to the domestic violence shelter. How does one forget that moment? I've been to several shelters,
no less than ten in my lifetime throughout the states of Michigan & Ohio. I barely remember arriving at any of them. There
are even shelters that I stayed at that I don't remember what they looked like at all. All memory of the shelter itself is
gone. Amazing. For those of you that don't know why that happens, it's not my brain on drugs... hahaha it's my brain protecting
me. That's right. My brain is protecting me from remembering those horribly traumatic events.
I do remember that I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I always
have considered the shelter in Grand Rapids my "home" shelter. I was in it a few different times, for different reasons, and
the staff was always very nice to me there.
I had some of my most difficult times in that shelter and I'd like to
share some of the problems you can encounter living in one of the best shelters that I've ever been in. You see, Grand Rapids
was definetly the best shelter I've had to run to.
I believe
that I had lived a very sheltered life, although I had done many things & been many places, I wasn't ever exposed
to any other type of lifestyle besides the upper middle class. I went to high school in New Hampshire, which was a 100% white
high school at the time. My first exposure to different races was when I visited my aunt and uncle in Detroit, MI when I was
about 15. Still, I didn't have a clue as to what people lived like anywhere else. I knew in my head, or intellectually that
there were people who were poor, but I never thought about it much.
Living in a domestic
violence shelter exposes you to all types of people. A large percentage of the people, women & children, that is
- in the shelter seeking refuge are of mixed races, lower income bracket and perhaps those even on welfare. I didn't know
about welfare until I went into a domestic violence shelter and I had to apply for welfare myself. I was appalled. I felt
like I was a cow, being herded thru lines, waiting to be fed, milked then let out to pasture. Take a number, you're no longer
a person. The paper work was horrendous. My memory wasn't working either. I had lost my bearings and I was a nervous anxious
wreck.
As I sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair after filling out
paperwork, I remembered my mother asking me, "Honey, doesn't the government have programs for people who need help?" I didn't
know where the government was, so I never checked into it. Sounds ridicuous doesn't it? I'm dead serious.
I was naive. I didn't know. I never had to know. Come to think
of it, I had never had to support myself, besides the few months of separation after I got divorced from my first husband
& moved in with my second husband before we got married. I didn't do a very good job of taking care of myself and my two
girls either. I didn't even know how to get divorced the first time. I didn't know how to get a lawyer!
I was never given any life skills growing up. If you remember,
up above, I mentioned that my dad said, I was made to be a wife and mother and that's all I would ever be.
I wasn't really sure that there were bills to
pay until my second husband just left one day to go live with some young cop so he could go out with other women. He didn't
give me a dime. He just left.
I didn't know what to do. I ended up sending my two daughters to their father
in Florida until I could get back on my feet.
I never got one of them back & her father's wife kicked her out when she
was a junior in high school.
I got the other one back when she was 16 & had just attempted suicide. Her
father washed his hands of her by withdrawing her from school and putting her on a plane to send to me.
Getting back to the shelter,
it was in Grand Rapids, that I was told that I made pretty good corn bread, for a white girl! We all had chores to do in the
shelter. It was mandatory. After being assigned a room, you were assigned chores. It just makes things run smoother and of
course, you have lots of time on your hands because you really need to stay in the shelter if you want to be safe.
If you did need to leave the shelter, you had to let them
know where you were going, sign in and out, and there was always a curfew. There was a bedtime curfew too. You could smoke
inside but you had to go down to the basement. If you were lucky enough to have cigarettes, you could go down to where the
washer and dryer and the furnace were and smoke.
It was there that the girls would sometimes play cards and chat after
getting the kids asleep. It was also there that you sometimes heard remnants of what had happened to different women in their
relationships. Many of them had been there before. The first time I was there I couldn't imagine how anyone would ever go
to a shelter more than once! Silly me.
I'll never forget the time it was my turn to make dinner and
I made shepherd's pie. The oven was old and I had made such a huge pan of shepherd's pie that the gravy started boiling over
when it got hot and the oven started smoking. What a disaster that was! We had to turn off the security system, open all the
windows, which wasn't safe at all and try to stay away from the windows at the same time!
It was comical in a way. I had trouble there, always getting hurt, always
being misunderstood by the other women, and feeling as though I was being imprisoned as a victim instead of the abuser being
imprisoned. I was outraged at the thought that he was out and about and I had a curfew & bedtime. My toddler son at the
time was having ear infections constantly and he needed tubes put in his ears. That was very difficult to deal with by myself
as well.
The shelter staff was also very
accomodating when it came to allowing my 8 year old son who was living with his father, my second husband, to
come and visit and play. On the top floor was a huge play room and they gave me the bedroom up there to stay in so I would
be close to the playroom. There were only a few bedrooms up there in that shelter, and one small bathroom. One night
I was cleaning the bathroom and when I was done, I packed all the cleaning bottles, mop, broom, dustpan and such into the
bucket and picked up my 18 month old son to go downstairs and put the cleaning bucket away. I tripped on the top step when
my shoe stuck on the carpeting and I began to fall.
Luckily my son fell
out of my arms quickly and landed on the first landing, because the staircase took a sharp right hand turn there and
continued down. My face came up as I sommersaulted down the stairs and hit the wooden hand rail. It broke my nose and all
of the tiny bones in my face. I dislocated my knee and was knocked unconscious. When I came to, I couldn't move. I couldn't
focus. I was screaming for help. All they could do was to pick me up and put me in a taxi to the emergency room. They sat
my son on my lap and I was gone.
It was horrible. I ended
up having to call my ex-husband to help me with the baby because I was so out of it, I couldn't hold on to him. That was the
worst night. I'll never forget it. They fixed me up the best they could, which ended up not being very good at all, and put
me back in the taxi to go to the shelter. I was on crutches and couldn't walk up all the stairs to get to my third floor bedroom.
What a disaster. I think I was the only woman in that shelter to look worse coming out of the shelter than going in.
In some shelters, like Grand
Rapids, you only have a 30 day stay limit. I was given extra time though because of my accident there. I ended up having to
have surgery done to my nose because when it was broken, the hospital never did anything to it. It healed crooked and I couldn't
breathe. So I did stay in that shelter longer than normal.
The shelter did direct me to a lawyer. Besides that one thing, their were
virtually no resources what-so-ever offered. You had to figure out your own way. If you needed new housing, you had to get
it without help. If you needed a job, you had to get it with no help. Everything was so difficult if you didn't have a clue.
I ended up leaving without ever establishing any permanent housing, going back to my apartment where my husband at the time,
knew where I was - which wasn't a good thing.
I feel as though shelters aren't equipped to really help women who have
been abused. Maybe now, almost thirteen years out of my last shelter, things are different, I hope anyway. We did have a weekly
counseling or group therapy time that we could share our thoughts, feelings and experiences. I only got depressed going there.
The staff taught us about the cycle of abuse. That was it.
It never dawned on me that I was having trouble with my mental
health. It never occurred to me that I need to learn life skills to survive. I didn't know what I needed to survive either.
I was lost. I didn't know how to live safely on my own and how to keep my husband from hurting me again. I left the shelter
without gaining anything.
If anything, I felt as though I had been additionally humiliated by having
the strict rules, signing in and out, although I know that was for my protection, but surely, it was not easy living in there.
There were times when other women in the shelter broke into my room and stole things that were mine. I was threatened by other
women who didn't like me. The whole experience overall was horrible.
I know that it was safe being inside those walls, but it did nothing for
my sense of self or self esteem.
violence
amongst victims...
perhaps
abuse & violence involving women is a testimony of our societal values today....
kathleen
I had never been threatened with violence by a woman until I was a victim in a domestic violence shelter. If you ask me, that's a strange, but realistic dilemma that many women face today when seeking safety within the refuge of a domestic violence shelter. It's doubly traumatizing that when in such dire need of calm, safety & security one finds themselves in the midst of a very volatile, unstable & threatening situation. The domestic violence shelter always reminded me of what it would be like to be in prison.
There are some victims in those places
that are so desensitized that all they know is to react defensively & violently if necessary. If there appears to be any threat to their safety within the population of victims; there tends to be some sincere threats & misplaced anger being raged against the most violated of all victims.
What I am
telling you, my visitor, is that within the walls of America's
domestic violence shelters, one must be prepared to meet some extremely violent women.
I wonder sometimes who had really abused who (the
man in jail or the woman in the shelter) when I was listening to the stories while visiting the smoking room. I had my life threatened because I was angry about someone breaking into my room in the shelter.
Someone broke in to my room & stole
my personal hygiene items. It's bad enough to leave everything you own in the world when you've been attacked by someone you
love, but when the free personal hygiene items that you've been given in the shelter get stolen...... by other victims
of domestic violence... you have to wonder about some important details.
I believe that when a victim or disabled person is seeking
help, seeking solace, seeking understanding, it's most likely to be the people who are trying to help in some way that can hurt that victim the most. It's also a definite threat to be around other victims.
They're
in their own little worlds of defensiveness. You never know how defensive someone is. You never know if the victim in the shelter with you is really a victim or the abuser who has been able to fool the police. You are vulnerable, you're with women who might kill someone if they were pushed just a fraction of intensity more than usual.
There are women who will lose it because they have no alcohol in the
shelter, no drugs, no usual coping methods available to them & some shelters don't allow smoking rooms.... & then... they have no creature comforts whatsoever, including clothes, shoes or the most basic needs.
If you've been abused, you become another type of victim. You must repeat your story over
& over again in front of strangers. You must be treated like a criminal, kept in a shelter, with curfews, sometimes in
rooms that are the pits of hell... no sheets, no towels, no blankets, sometimes no pillows & who knows who slept on your
bunk bed mattress the night before.
If you've
been abused, you must go to court. You must deal with police officers, doctors & sometimes social workers that
don't want to be working that day. Sometimes they're just sick of victims. Sometimes they just don't want to hear the word
victim just one more time.... sometimes they take out their anger about abuse & its victims - on the victims.
As I mentioned in the first paragraph,
I had my life threatened while
in a domestic violence shelter in Grand Rapids, MI.
That's right, a 350 pound - give or take 50 pounds - black woman that happened to be about 6 feet tall, had broken into my
room at the shelter & taken my soap & a few other items.
After I
found out it was her, I reported her to the shelter administration.
When they confronted her, they of course, told her that I had accused her of the offense. Later on, after she was done dealing
with them, she cornered me in the hallway. She glared down at me, I'm only five foot, one inch & she said in her very
manly voice, "When you be outta here, out on the street, you better be watchin your back, bitch, you white ass bitch, because
I'm going to get you."
"Okay, I can understand you're pissed at me, but you broke into my room & stole my soap ..... blah blah blah...." like any normal
human being would recant.
She backed me up into the wall, I could
smell her perspiration, I could feel the heat of her foul breath & I knew I had already seen this woman on the bus line
before which meant we'd be bumping into each other soon. Okay, I came to a domestic violence shelter to be safe & someone else threatens my life... what else could happen?
So much
could & does happen to you in a domestic violence
shelter that if you intend upon retaining any sense of dignity while staying in a domestic violence shelter.... well you can think again. It won't be easy to do.
The last
domestic violence shelter that I lived in was a long 5-6 week stay. It was a long stay because in Dayton,
#1 - there is no limitation as to how long you can stay in the shelter like in other shelters elsewhere. #2 it was a long
stay because I had a newborn baby & a toddler to take care of & #3 was the fact that my ex-husband hadn't found me at this shelter, thus my action in
moving to a city where no one knew me, was successful. It made me feel as though I had finally proven myself successful in getting away from him. I felt like it was a much needed positive step.
It was horrible. I called the place, "the pits of hell." I don't
have enough space within this entire website to describe the most horrible place that I have ever had to stay in. I can tell
you that the girl that was across the hall & one door down was on the news about a month after I got out of the shelter
for killing someone.
She was a young girl, either 17 or 18,
but she had 3 kids I think. She treated them horribly. Most women with children in domestic violence shelters treat their
kids horribly. The staff at many domestic violence shelters must not be aware of this fact, unless they choose to keep their eyes closed to it.... who knows? An example of their behavior
would be the time I had just gotten the 3 of us
out of the shower at the shelter, soon after I had the baby. We had to get into the shower together, because there was no
one to watch the children while I was in the shower. You had to bring your children with you no matter what you were doing.
I was feeling
physically ill at the time, the time that we had left the
showers & naked, the 3 of us were sitting on a small towel that was still wet from drying the 3 of us off on our bare
mattress. We'd been there a couple of weeks & still hadn't received sheets, blankets or pillows. We'd been able to get
one towel though. I'd banged on the door of the floor monitor until she opened the door to hear me screaming at her. I was
so hyper vigilant at that point.
"I need a towel & I need one right now! I won't leave until I have a towel! I need the towel, please give me a towel, I will not "air dry" one more time. Give me a towel, please!"
I was feeling
physically ill because when you took a shower in this particular
shelter, (thank God above that they
completely gutted this place & rebuilt it right after I got out of there) you had to stand in the water, on the recessed floor that was full of water from the previous shower.
Yeah, you had to stand in someone else's dirty water to take a shower. It was totally disgusting. And to top it all off, I had a toddler standing in there with me to keep extreme watch over so that he wouldn't
sit down in the water & start drinking it or anything. I also had a newborn in my arms. I had to watch over her as well,
to be sure she was okay.
So we were
all sitting in our room, on the bunk bed, with the door
locked when suddenly without warning there were 3 very loud sharp knocks on the door and then it flew open. No space
in-between the knocks & the opening of the door - for an answer as to, "who's there?" or no time to yell out, "we're
all naked!" The woman just stood there staring at the 3 of us. Her eyes wide open, we sat there embarrassed once again, humiliated
once again, forced into a victimizing situation once again, there is no safe place within the confines of a domestic violence
shelter, ironic, isn't it?
The last shelter I stayed in was the
domestic violence shelter in Dayton, Ohio.
It was about 12 years ago.
And while it's a nicer place now, structurally
anyway; I wouldn't know what the place was like to live in, beside that fact. I used to go back & visit the staff, but
I don't anymore. I try not to think about my days living there. It's just kind of hard to forget.
I have
post traumatic stress disorder. I get triggered every time I go downtown & see that
building. I get triggered every time I see the hospital downtown. You see, my last daughter was born just 2 days after arriving
in Dayton.
I was abused not only by the those in the shelter, but also at the hospital - yes that's right; the doctors, the cab driver & countless others perpetrated even more types of
abusive measures towards me continually, while I endured this humiliating situation.
The doctor
wouldn't examine me when I went into the hospital clinic
at the request of the emergency room doctors. He threw my large manila envelope of all my medical records down on the counter
in the examining room, while my toddler son, stood by helplessly watching the idealized image of a doctor & I was in paper
gown, with monstrous belly pointed straight up to the ceiling, full term that very day, with my legs propped up in the stirrups.
He ungraciously ordered me to go back to the shelter & wait to go into labor. Then he yelled at me,
"You have a lot of nerve coming here this far along. You want someone to take responsibility for your baby now? What is the matter with you?"
Maybe what
he was concerned about was valid, but what was I supposed to do? Did he
believe I should have stayed in my room at that shelter, to give birth to my baby there, on the stained mattress of
my bunk bed, that had no sheets, no blankets, no pillows & no crib for my 18 month old toddler son that was with me.
We'd been in our clothes for several days
without being able to wash them. I arrived in Dayton 2 days
before my due date. I'd fled Michigan because the courts
wanted to give my abusive, drunk,
prescription drug abusing husband liberal visitation with
my 18 month old son... I wouldn't allow it.
It was
my due date. It was a Monday. My toddler had an ear infection.
There was no one available to take my toddler when I was in the hospital. I had to make my own arrangements for him. The doctor
who yelled at me in the hospital's clinic that Monday morning, caused me to get so upset that I went into labor.
It would
be my fifth child. Any normal generally educated person
would know that a woman who had 4 other children, would have a faster labor than the 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th labors were; but
I was told to go to the emergency room when I went into labor. So, after I could stop crying, they made me see the hospital's
social worker. I began to cry again. I couldn't stop sobbing. This wasn't supposed to be happening to a girl who was raised
in a decent home.
This wasn't
supposed to be happening in a reputable hospital. This hospital
had a new birthing center. They were so proud of it. Yet when I appeared later that night after being in labor all day, the doctor, a woman who examined me
- didn't want to take responsibility for delivering my baby either. She sent me away because I was only 3 centimeters dilated. I was going fast though.
I had been
in labor since the early morning hours when that doctor
had screamed at me, causing me to be totally humiliated. My last labor had only been a few hours, but as I was breathing, huffing & puffing thru contractions, I
was forced to leave the hospital grounds. I called the cab company for a ride back to the shelter. I was breathing thru contractions.
They were getting worse. The same cab driver who had taken me to the hospital showed up & looked at me, "You've gotta
be kidding me!" I just shook my head & cried. He didn't want to take me back to the shelter. He told me that I'd have
to get out of the cab if I thought that I was going to have the baby.
I was a victim. I'd been abused by my husband. I'd been abused by husband #1, husband #2 as well as by the husband behind the curtain, husband, #3. This #3, he'd tried
to kill me. I had almost lost my baby in the 4th month of my pregnancy when he had put me into the hospital. I was treated
like dirt.
I was legally abused by the system. I had been for the last year, actually almost 2 years. I'd been abused by the
clergy who told me that I wasn't walking with God because I had left my husband. It didn't matter that he had been hurting me. I had to get back together with him in order to be, "right in the eyes of God." It was during that time
that I had gotten pregnant.
I can imagine those of you who may read this & shake your head & say, "oh,
that's so smart of you..... you stupid woman! Why did you get pregnant?" I can only say that here it goes again, being abused once again, by yet another stranger, not knowing my situation, not knowing what it's like to be the victim of domestic violence.
Not knowing what it's like to be forcibly isolated..... Many people abuse the people who
are seeking help from being abused by someone else. It happens continually. Just when you think you might
be able to have faith in someone, when you're looking for help, when you're
the absolutely most vulnerable, ("Why would you even
attempt to have faith in anyone," I ask myself)
they do it to you again.... they "stick it to you."
What am I
trying to say? Maybe I'm saying, "Do you see why women go back to their abusers?"
Why do I keep rambling on with all of this accusation & negativity? Maybe it's because, America has no
idea on how to treat an abused person.
Why do I
say that this was so unfair?
No one
told me that it would happen to me. I think part of being so critically traumatized was that I had the misconception in my brain, being of slightly higher intelligence, that when someone abused you & you were given the phone number of a "relief agency" that it was "relief" that you were seeking out & expecting to get. WRONG.
I believe that I expect to be abused at any given moment in my life. I expect it although I haven't been with an abusive husband in 12, almost 13 years. No one
told me that the people who were supposed to help you get on with your life, would cut you the most. They never told me that
in the end, it was only the help that you offered yourself, would be the most dependable help you could look for. No one ever told me....
And all
those nice church ladies that volunteer at domestic violence shelters & donate all their old (very nice) clothing, (maybe last season's fashion statements) who honestly believe that they're helping those poor women who've been hit, slapped, shot, stabbed, injured some severely, some only
slightly, but all emotionally raped, devastated... by offering them some clothes to wear...
wouldn't they
be nuts if they knew that because the shelter didn't have enough staff to supervise the distribution of those clothes that some
women would be verbally & physically threatened & traumatized by the actual victims of domestic violence within the shelter!
I'd seen
many women fighting over clothes in the clothing closets.
I'd seen women on the floor, rolling around pulling each other's hair, slapping each other, scratching each other with their
4 inch long fingernails, over something as trivial as taking the only orange toothbrush in the toiletry closet.
Being a victim
is traumatizing. No one thought that because I was alone, having my baby in a strange place, not knowing any of the doctors, but knowing all too well that no one
wanted to deliver my baby - that I might be upset.
No one thought about being with me from the domestic violence shelter. No one thought about my previous mental state throughout the day after being yelled at by the doctor.
No one thought about my thoughts that were flooding my mind about my husband, not being able to be there with me, not being a part of all of
this because he chose to be abusive. I was devastated.
When they told me it was time to push, all I could do was cry. I began
to sob hysterically. I refused to push. I didn't want to push. I was exhausted. As soon as I had gotten back to the shelter I had
the urge to push. The paramedics had to come get me. I was blowing as hard as I could all the way back to the hospital. When
I got there, they took me to a birthing room. They asked me to "walk" to my room from the hallway. (Yes, I said I was having the urge to push & I was blowing air out to keep from
pushing for at least 1/2 hour.)
If you have a problem with body image or weight that is associated with past or present abuse - click here!
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My personal pre-conceived notions
of women who would live in an abusive relationship were more like the movies I watched, "The Coal Miner's Daughter" & such. I didn't consider my own family
to be an abusive household. I don't know why. I watched my own uncle kick my cousins across the ground with his heavy boots on, I watched
him ridicule them, humiliate them, intimidate them, pull their hair out of their heads, but when I thought of my aunt & uncle's household, their family... I didn't
think of it as an abusive situation.
Why is that?
I can remember watching
my uncle. It was like I was watching from above the whole horrible picture. Slow motions, the boot moving back, the
boot hitting the back of my poor cousin, I could hear the crying, the yelling & then I would
hear the boot hit one of them again... I was numb to it. I had no feeling. I disappeared into myself for a short while. I was aware it was happening but I couldn't
cope with what was happening.
My uncle was always sweet to me.
He always called me his favorite niece. He always hugged me. He was nicer to me than my own father was. It didn't make any
sense. My father acting like he hated me and his own brother, my uncle, was like my best friend.
No one ever said a
word to my uncle about what he was doing to his kids. I couldn't say anything because when it was all over I felt like
it was a nightmare & I wasn't sure if it really happened or not. It played games in my mind with me because I wasn't sure
if it was real or not. I knew I had seen it, but I couldn't remember when it was.
What was I supposed to think about this? I didn't know so I didn't think about it. It just was & I just tried not to remember it. It made me
uncomfortable. It made me anxious. It made me feel like spiders were crawling all over me. It was really sad but I couldn't cry. I didn't dare cry because I thought he might flip out on me.
I think that many of the
women who end up in domestic violence shelters experience at least this amount of family violence growing up, perhaps most
more than this. My own experiences were a combination of this family violence & other traumas that remained unexplained,
unresolved as far as my feelings & emotions concerning how they affected me & much more.
As I've learned more
in my recovery, I've realized that if domestic violence shelters could only offer a program, a recovery system, per se, that a women was immediately thrown into upon entry into the shelters, perhaps the statistics would change concerning
how many times a woman must leave her violent situation before she finally stays away for good.
There are so many factors:
- mental health including the different types of mental illness:
depression & anxiety disorders/ mental health assessment for victim & children
- physical health assessment for both victim & children
- unresolved emotions & feelings education
- lifestyle factors: what being sleep deprived can do to you,
eating poorly, living in a stressful lifestyle at all times, no relaxation
- what domestic violence does to children
- generational information concerning domestic violence as it
has been accepted throughout the years
- life skills training: what does the victim need to learn to
survive
- legal information
It must be made clear to the victim that there's a way to recover from this situation, as well as a clear cut plan that the victim can participate in without much effort to begin with.
If a victim can understand the recovery system, it can be much easier to stay within the confines of the shelter. Too much idle time in the shelter can escalate anxieties,
fears & depression!
Another resource that must be added to the domestic violence
network is immediate counseling for the victim and children. The sooner the victim is aware of their mental health needs the
better. I personally went to counseling at the YWCA thru a special program and I remember it well. The counselor asked me,
"What makes you think that you don't deserve a peaceful existence?" It wasn't much but it stuck with me.
When I came to the Springfield, OH shelter, and then the Dayton,
OH shelter I was very pregnant. In fact, I had my daughter two days after arriving in Dayton after staying at the Springfield
shelter for two weeks until there was a room open in Dayton. The entire time I was at the Springfield and Dayton shelters
I only had one outfit. It was summer and it was a red, one piece shorts and sleeveless top. It was hideous.
In order for me to wash that outfit I had to sit in my room
naked while my clothes were in the washer and dryer. Once I was doing just that. Sitting on the sheetless bunkbed in my little
prison room, an 8 x 10 bare room except for a bunkbed, and someone opened my door. It was one of the staff. I went ballistic.
I couldn't believe that they could invade my privacy like that. Their reason?
They could do it so they did it. It was happenings just like
that one that caused great humiliation and anger to being a victim of dometic violence.
There needs to be an instant, upon arrival, offering of sheets, pillow cases, blankets, and
a change of clothes, a bath towel and toiletry items. Anyone, even a prisoner in jail would receive that much. It was very
difficult to sleep in a cold room, with no blankets, no sheets, my face on a pillow with no pillowcase that who knows how
many other women had their faces on. It's demeaning.
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