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Voices of Hope Breaking the Silence of Relationship Violence
Voices of Hope Breaking the Silence of Relationship Violence
Voices of Hope Breaking the Silence of Relationship Violence
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Voices of Hope Breaking the Silence of Relationship Violence

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In this visionary and powerful work, Pamela Lassiter Cathey and Dr. Wind Goodfriend have combined the hopeful stories of women and men who have experienced domestic violence, dating violence, and child abuse with the theoretical constructs of narrative therapy and professional trauma advocacy to create a book that will change lives.

The narrative in Part One reveal the courageous voices of ten women and men who have experienced relationship violence, and have emerged on the other side as stronger and more compassionate human beings. And though the violence is horrific, the hope these writers communicate as they describe how they moved through victimization and survivorship to become the heroes of their own stories reminds all of us that even the most devastating of life's experiences can result in goodness and race.

The professional guide in Part Two offers practical suggestions for how each of us can get involved individually and collectively to respond to relationship violence in the present, and to prevent it from happening in the future. This section also includes an overview of narrative therapy protocols for trauma service professionals who are interested in supporting victims and survivors in further integrating their experiences and healing more completely.

Voices of Hope Breaking the Silence of Relationship Violence elegantly blends the personal with the political, the practical with the theoretical, the reality of where we are today with an optimistic vision for the future. The end result is a book that will ignite hope in those who have experienced violent relationships, in the friends and family who want to help, and in the professionals who offer support in healing from the trauma.

"We may not always have a choice as to what we experience, but we always have a choice in regard to how those experiences shape who we are."
LanguageEnglish
PublisherBookBaby
Release dateDec 12, 2014
ISBN9781483545783
Voices of Hope Breaking the Silence of Relationship Violence

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    Voices of Hope Breaking the Silence of Relationship Violence - Pamela Lassiter Cathey

    Copyright © 2013 by Pamela Cathey and Wind Goodfriend.

    All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher. For information contact The Institute for the Prevention of Relationship Violence.

    Published by

    The Institute for the Prevention of Relationship Violence

    Buena Vista University

    610 W. 4th Street

    Storm Lake, IA 50588

    Editor: iprv@bvu.edu or 208.340.1391

    Cover art, cover design and book design © The Institute for the Prevention of Relationship Violence

    Cover art by Reinaldo Gil

    Cover design by Michael Capell

    Interior Design and Layout by Amy GreenSky

    Photograph of Pamela Lassiter Cathey by Robin Reid

    Photograph of Wind Goodfriend by Sarah A. Curtis-Schaeffer

    Printed in the United States of America

    This book is published for general reference and is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice including, but not limited to, services from licensed counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, medical professionals, law enforcement professionals, criminal prosecutors, or civil/criminal attorneys to individual readers. This book is sold with the understanding that neither the publisher nor the authors are engaged in rendering any professional advice including, but not limited to, legal, psychological, or medical advice. The publisher, authors, and writers disclaim any personal liability, directly or indirectly, for assumed advice or information presented within.

    ISBN: 9781483545783

    Quantity discounts are available to your company, educational institution, writing group, or non-profit/governmental organization for reselling, educational purposes, subscription incentives, gifts, or fundraising campaigns.

    For more information, please contact the publisher:

    The Institute for the Prevention of Relationship Violence, Buena Vista University,

    610 W. 4th Street, Storm Lake, Iowa 50588

    208.340.1391—iprv@bvu.edu

    To David,

    My Happily Ever After

    Pamela

    To Hope

    And a World Where this Work is Obsolete

    Wind

    CONTENTS

    ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

    PART I. The Narratives

    CHAPTER 1

    Finding Our Voices

    CHAPTER 2

    Reflections

    CHAPTER 3

    A Hero

    CHAPTER 4

    The Pearl

    CHAPTER 5

    A Bowl of Choices

    CHAPTER 6

    A Mother’s Quest

    CHAPTER 7

    The Perfect World

    CHAPTER 8

    Finding Grace

    CHAPTER 9

    A Better Forest

    CHAPTER 10

    The Healer’s Path

    CHAPTER 11

    Facing the Monster

    PART II. Professional Guide

    CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES

    A HOPEFUL CONVERSATION WITH THE EXPERTS

    THE VALUE OF NARRATIVE THERAPY TO MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS

    READING LIST & REFERENCES

    INDEX

    ABOUT THE AUTHORS

    Acknowledgements

    Voices of Hope Breaking the Silence of Relationship Violence is the culmination of so many people working together for so many years that acknowledging all of those who have contributed to its development is a challenge. That said, Wind and I are going to make a thoughtful attempt, and apologize from the onset for not identifying every person who has lifted a voice to the development of this book. Please know how much we value and appreciate you individually and collectively.

    Our first acknowledgement goes to our Board: Allan Laird, Margaret Strowd, Joy Tait, Bryan Taylor, and John Thuerer. It is an honor and a privilege to do this work with you. Thank you for your insights, encouragement, and hard work in bringing this manuscript to fruition. There aren’t enough gold stars in the world to adequately recognize the work you do every day to prevent relationship violence and to make this world a better place to be.

    Our second acknowledgement is to our partner academic institutions: The College of Idaho has hosted A Frog in the Pot on its campus since 2001, and was the original host to The Institute for the Prevention of Relationship Violence. Special thanks to the College’s former president, Dr. Robert Hoover and the current president, Dr. Marvin Henberg, for seeing the vision and supporting the development and distribution of this work. Thank you also to Buena Vista University and President Frederick Moore for the unconditional support of the institute. We look forward to many years of innovative collaboration and are delighted to be hosted on your lovely campus by the lake.

    We also wish to acknowledge our production partners for turning our words, thoughts, and ideas into tangible reality for both the book and the stage production: Thank you to Joe Golden and the eight wonderful actors who donated their time and talent to the premier of the Voices of Hope performance.

    Thank you to Reinaldo Gil for the gorgeous, hopeful art that graces the cover of the book; to Michael Capell for designing a cover that does justice to the voices within; and to Amy GreenSky for creating an interior that is as beautiful as the exterior. Thank you also to Jill Rhea for your thoughtful and conscientious copy editing, and to Kelly Gibbons for keeping all of our loose pages bound together.

    Our final and most profound thanks goes to the ten women and men who so generously shared the intimate details of their lives with us and our readers. The gift of hope you have given will profoundly affect the lives of our readers, their friends, and their families for generations to come. You inspire us personally and professionally.

    ACKNOWLEDGEMENT FROM PAMELA LASSITER CATHEY

    First, thank you to all of my families for seeing me through and getting me here in one piece: Jerry and Diona Lassiter, Tammy Kinsey, Thurman and Barbara Martin, Doc and Joni Sullivan, Shannon Satz, and the Catheys. I love and appreciate you more than meager words can express.

    Thank you to the friends and companions who have been there through every twist and turn: Shelly Durcan, Sarah Filiger and The Boys, Nancy Hines, and Shelley Savage. Your steadfast kindness, patience, and support have made a difference when it mattered most. Thank you also to my colleagues-who-have-become-friends for listening to me yammer on endlessly about this project for twelve (though it probably seems longer) years: Paul Bennion, Rebecca Oaxaca-Lovelace, and Deb Vis.

    Many thanks to the talented, caring professionals who gently pushed me out of denial, firmly prodded me into reality, and kindly propped me up when it all became too much with which to cope: Starr Ackley, Chelona Edgerly, Susan Reuling Furness, Tim Furness, and John Thuerer.

    And because this is my first book, I must acknowledge the women and men who have helped me find my path as a writer: To my first teacher, Mrs. Erwin, for showing me how to love every single word. To John Rember, for teaching me to write what I know; and to Maggie Strowd, for teaching me to know what I write. And, to the three authors whose work most inspires and humbles me from afar: To Toni Morrison for showing me that artful fiction can transform the horrors from the past into hope for the future. To Annie Dillard for teaching me how non-fiction narrative can find beauty and grace in brutality. To Anne Lamott for demonstrating that not only can we think the thoughts we think we shouldn’t think, we also can write them down, and laugh a little in the process.

    And finally, to my writing and research partner Wind: None of this would exist without you. Your presence is one of the greatest gifts this life has given me. In the process of doing this work you have embodied all of the people mentioned above: You have become my sister, friend, colleague, and an inspiration to keep writing and working harder to further this cause. Thank you.

    ACKNOWLEDGEMENT FROM WIND GOODFRIEND

    Thank you to my excellent colleagues at Buena Vista University, who have fully supported this work and given me all the resources I’ve needed. Fred Moore, David Evans, and Dixee Bartholomew-Feis, your professional support has been invaluable over the past few years. I also must thank all of my psychology professors and mentors who guided my professional path, including Jeanne Tinsley, Bob Ferguson, Bob Blodgett, Chris Agnew, Ximena Arriaga, and Amanda Diekman.

    Thanks also to my parents, who taught me that love and respect should always go hand in hand. I appreciate all of my friends who have provided countless sessions of encouragement; this list is very long, but includes Jessica Kisling, Ela Morina, Jill Rhea, James and Patricia Hampton, and Swasti Bhattacharyya.

    I couldn’t do my work without the help of wonderful and dedicated students. Specifically, Stephanie Purhmann, Jalaal Madyun, Melissa Huntley, Vanessa Ellsbury, and Ashley Porter were integral in helping me gather research for this book and for helping create the Voices of Hope production at Buena Vista University.

    Most importantly, I must thank my beloved friend and colleague Pamela. Your dedication, generosity, kindness, personal strength, and passion are truly an inspiration. My life is better in so many ways because of our connection. Your work and vision are changing the world, and I count myself blessed to be sitting next to you for the ride. Thank you.

    – PART ONE –

    The Narratives

    – CHAPTER ONE –

    Finding Our Voices

    I was living in Las Vegas at the time, working for a client who needed an interim VP, and had just ended a relationship with a man who had been emotionally, physically, and sexually violent from the beginning.

    I wish that I could say that I felt frightened, ashamed, and confused. I didn’t.

    The truth is that I didn’t feel anything.

    I was still so numb from what had happened and worked a lot to distract myself from the pain I wasn’t ready to feel.

    The company with which I was contracted needed to raise money on a private placement offering, and for months I flew back and forth between Las Vegas and Manhattan. I always left late in the day on those trips so I could fly all night and land in New York the next morning in time to attend early meetings.

    On those long red-eye flights, I found myself drawn to a writing project I had been forced to abandon months before when I fled the relationship. It was a novel, a coming of age story about a girl and the two boys she grew up with on a horse ranch just outside of Sun Valley.

    The original plot had nothing to do with relationship violence, but during those long flights, as I sat there typing away in the dark, something interesting happened: My protagonist Andy, who by that point in the story had become an adult, married one of those brothers and her marriage turned violent.

    When this new twist came up on the page I knew that my unconscious was dealing with the violence in my own life through the fiction, and there was a part of me that did not want to confront it. The story, however, had taken on a life of its own, and the writer in me couldn’t help but follow.

    So one night when I was once again headed East, I found myself writing a conversation between Andy and her father Grady. She was talking about how ashamed she felt that she had stayed for so long in an abusive marriage. Her father listened quietly and then, in response, told her a story:

    Grady looked up and said, You know Andy, if you take a live frog and drop it into a pot of boiling water, it will jump out and save itself. But, he said, reaching up to turn her face toward him, if you take that same frog and drop it in a pot of cold water, and slowly turn up the heat until the water is boiling, that frog’ll die. You were just like that. You didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late.

    As the words came up on the screen I stopped typing, closed the computer, and sat there thinking back over the relationship.

    I tried to remember the first time he said something cruel, threatened me, wrenched my legs apart in the dark, or knocked me off of my feet.

    And as I sat there on that plane, the memories I had so studiously avoided for months slowly began to trickle forth, and I found myself sitting in the audience of my own life watching a woman I barely recognized do things I couldn’t imagine doing, and I struggled to make sense of a timeline that was random and confused, dialogue that was splotchy and disjointed, images that moved in and out of focus.

    It felt like watching a movie of someone else’s life, and it took a long time that night to think my way through what had happened.

    By the time we landed I was acutely aware of how divorced I had become from my own story, how being in that relationship had anesthetized me so completely that at some point I had stopped living my own life, and had started watching myself live a life that was unimaginable.

    And as awful as that realization was, there was a flicker of hope around it: Maybe I wasn’t fatally flawed. Maybe getting into that violent relationship and staying in it hadn’t entirely been my fault. Maybe there was a way to sort through those blurry images and disordered details and once again create a life that made sense and had meaning.

    I don’t remember the rest of that trip.

    I don’t remember the meetings I attended or what I accomplished for my client, which, given my state of mind, probably wasn’t much.

    What I do remember is coming home and pulling up the Clark County business directory on my computer and looking for shelter and domestic violence and making phone calls; and finally, after a fair amount of heel dragging, I started attending a battered women’s group at a shelter in North Las Vegas.

    The group was colorful and diverse. Some of us were there voluntarily and others were court ordered. Some of us drove up in Mercedes, and others stole change from our husbands’ pockets in the middle of the night for months to get enough bus fare to get to the shelter. All of us were hurting and confused.

    In classic Las Vegas surreality, the leggy facilitator of the group was working toward a Masters Degree in social work and spent her days working with battered women and her nights dancing in one of the casino revues.

    There was a script each of us had to follow at the beginning of each session: Hi, I’m Pamela and I’m a battered girlfriend/wife/mother. I left my abuser X months ago.

    We then had to describe one incident of violence.

    I hated those introductions. I hated saying that I was battered. I hated feeling like a victim, but I kept going, and every week I listened to those stories and sat in my chair with tears running down my face and was amazed at how we could finish one another’s sentences.

    It didn’t matter what our background was; we all knew what the abuser was going to say and do, and we knew what the victim was going to say and do in response.

    This intrigued me. If the dynamics of relationship violence were this common, this formulaic, why hadn’t we been taught how to protect ourselves from it? In junior high, high school and college we had endured the drug and alcohol talk, the abstinence talk, the sexually transmitted disease talk. Why hadn’t someone made us endure the relationship violence talk?

    I kept thinking that if someone had taught us how to recognize the early warning signs of violence that we might have been able to make changes before the abuse became so entrenched and debilitating, before the pot, so to speak, began to boil.

    I became mildly obsessed with this thought. Well, actually, I was more than mildly obsessed; I became completely obsessed and started coming home after each group session and writing copious notes about patterns and parallels.

    I dusted off my novice college research skills and started spending time in the UNLV library searching for articles and books about the dynamics of violent trauma and the warning signs of relationship violence.

    My academic pursuits were balanced by my own painful, personal therapy as I began sorting through the past, trying to create order out of chaos. And what helped most during this process was, once again, my writing.

    By that time, I had stopped writing about Andy’s experiences and had started writing about mine.

    It still felt like fiction in my head, and there were times when I tried to convince myself that maybe it hadn’t really happened. When that wasn’t possible, I tried to talk myself into believing that it hadn’t really been all that bad. My heart, however, knew the truth and with the help of the therapist, the facilitator, and the women I came to think of as sisters in that group, slowly I confronted what had been my own story.

    When I first started attending the group, I felt like I was stepping into a cold, dark tunnel that was filled with terror, nightmares plagued by men trying to kill me with knives, unpredictable moments in the car when I would look up and suddenly feel my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest, humiliating screams at the office when a colleague would walk up behind me and say something before I knew he was there.

    In the early months of the work, I kept telling myself that I just had to keep stepping forward and feeling my way along the walls of that tunnel, and sooner or later a light would appear and I would find my way out.

    The group, thankfully, dragged me out of that cold, dark place and gave me a new metaphor. Eventually I realized that healing wasn’t a linear process wherein I would walk from Point A to Point B and then it would be over. Instead, healing was an onion that was going to peel away a layer at a time as I remembered and felt for the first time what it was like to have someone I loved and trusted try to destroy me; and every time a new layer came away, I cried until it felt like my eyes were going to shrivel up and drop out of their sockets.

    The onion theory wasn’t comforting or comfortable.

    It was, however, accurate, and slowly I realized that feeling was actually a good thing.

    The numbness I had experienced all of those years hadn’t discriminated; it had blocked out not just the pain, but also the joy, and for the first time in a long time I had moments when one of those layers fell away and I genuinely felt happy.

    And so I kept writing and talking and peeling and sobbing and it was really hard; and as hard as it was, I couldn’t stop because the hope that had been ignited that night, when Grady told Andy his frog story, had burst into flames. I found myself charged with the thought that the violence I had experienced all those years might serve a purpose.

    The strategist in me knew instinctively that there was a way to teach others how to recognize the early warning signs of a violent relationship so they could prevent what had happened to all of us in that group from happening to them.

    Eventually, I contacted an accountant and an attorney and formed A Frog in the Pot, a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing violence, one relationship at a time.

    I had no idea how to run a non-profit. My career to that point had been spent in the for-profit arena. Fortunately, personal ignorance and lack of skills had never been much of a deterrent, so I kept doing research and my own therapy, and eventually I peeled back enough of those layers to stop feeling like a victim and start feeling like a survivor.

    So while the personal side of things was going relatively well, the business side was not. I couldn’t find enough information about the warning signs of violence through my own research and eventually realized I was going to have to get help from people who knew a lot more about social science than I did, which amounted to pretty much nothing.

    When the interim position with my client in Las Vegas ended, I decided to devote myself exclusively to the non-profit. I contacted my alma mater and started making plans to move A Frog in the Pot to the College of Idaho, a private liberal arts institution just outside of Boise.

    From the very beginning, the professors at the College were excited about what I was doing, and with their support I completed the first draft of the novel and a literature review on the warning signs of relationship violence.

    That review resulted in a clear, concise list of warning signs that could be used as a tool in outreach programs that taught primary prevention to students.

    One day I received a call from the VP of Student Affairs at the college who said that he had heard about Before the Boil: The Warning Signs of a Potentially Violent Relationship and wanted to know if I would be interested in presenting the work on campus.

    Thrilled with the opportunity to have the work get out of my head and into the real world, I collaborated with the fraternities and sororities to put together a workshop. That night almost two hundred students showed up to hear about the warning signs of violent relationships, and nothing I had researched or written prepared me for the reaction of that audience.

    As I stood there at the lectern, I could see the imprint of the violence they had experienced, or were experiencing, on their faces and was overwhelmed by the sheer number of students who were viscerally responding. I was equally overwhelmed by what happened after the lecture ended.

    Students stood around waiting to talk and ask questions for almost two hours. They told me about their fathers sexually violating them while they were growing up. They confided in me that they were afraid of their boyfriends and girlfriends. They wanted to know what they could do to help their mothers and roommates who were being abused. One of them even told me about how his father had been violent with him as a child and admitted that he was doing the same thing to his girlfriend.

    I had no idea how to help them.

    I did, however, know how scared they were and how hard it was for them to acknowledge the violence and ask for help. So I did the only thing I could think of to do: I gave out my cell number and promised that I would find answers to their questions.

    That night initiated two years of me voluntarily being on call, day and night, as a trauma advocate.

    I had no clue at the time what a trauma advocate was or did, I just fumbled around and asked a lot of questions and cared about the students, staff, and faculty who came to me for help. And every time I heard someone’s story and helped them connect to resources, I felt one more tiny, thin layer of my own trauma fall away.

    It didn’t take long to realize that the people with whom I was working needed more than just referrals to counselors and law enforcement and medical professionals. They needed someone they trusted to go with them.

    So I ended up sitting in court with my clients, trying to get civil protective orders. I attended counseling sessions with them both on and off campus and held their hands during long, difficult sexual assault exams. I worked with special victims detectives to catch offenders and spent hours on the phone with parents, especially fathers, trying to convince them they needed to let the police do their jobs.

    It was both rewarding and draining and by the end of two years, I knew I couldn’t keep doing the work by myself. So I went to the student government association at the College and asked them for five years of funding to put together a student-led advocacy program on campus. They agreed, and together we created an on-campus Women’s and Men’s Center and 24/7 crisis response hotline.

    I contacted the local women’s shelter and asked them to conduct a training workshop on campus for students who wanted to become advocates. The shelter did an outstanding job; but at the end of the twenty-five hours of training, I still didn’t feel comfortable sending those student advocates out on trauma calls.

    So, I reached out to the professionals who had been so helpful over the previous two years: detectives, prosecutors, judges, victim witness coordinators, trauma counselors, suicide response experts, sexual assault nurses, shelter directors and advocates, etc., and asked them if they would be willing to come to campus and talk to a class. They all were more than generous with their time and what resulted was almost three hundred hours of training for advocates through two 3-credit courses: Trauma Advocacy Theory and Practicum.

    While all of this was happening, there were times when I felt worried that I had fallen away from my original commitment to primary prevention; but as we started using those warning signs to work with clients, I slowly realized that even the advocacy work was prevention oriented.

    By that time, we had started handing out an excerpt of Before the Boil, the book with the warning signs to clients who revealed that they thought they were in violent relationships. We would sit them down and ask them to read through the excerpt and highlight or underline anything that felt familiar. At the end of those meetings the clients were astounded by how much of what they had just read applied to their relationships.

    Most of those clients then felt empowered and supported enough to end their violent relationships. The surprising part, however, was that they kept coming back to tell us excitedly that they had started seeing someone new and had noticed Warning Sign #3, and #5, and #7. We heard story after story of how they had seen the warning signs and ended the relationship. And though each story was unique, the one thing all of those clients shared was a feeling of pride that they had been able to protect themselves from getting in another potentially violent relationship.

    This work helped us understand that by intervening in a relationship that was already violent, and using the warning signs to help victims understand the dynamics of violence, those victims had the knowledge and skills they needed to prevent the cycle of violence from repeating itself in their lives.

    Eventually, it became clear that the mission of A Frog in the Pot included more than primary prevention, and we became more committed than ever to doing advocacy intervention and going into the public to talk about the warning signs. This secondary and tertiary prevention work was so rewarding; people were understanding the dynamics of relationship violence, many for the first time, and were walking away feeling motivated to do something to prevent it from happening in their own lives and in the lives of those they loved.

    All of this was positive, but something kept nagging at me. Even though the warning signs were grounded in the research literature, and validated by our own field work, we still didn’t know for certain that they were accurate. We lacked empirical proof.

    Doing original research required us to enter a whole new world. This time, fortunately, my ignorance and lack of skills were a deterrent, and I approached the President at the College of Idaho about creating a research institute. He arranged a meeting with the Board of Trustees’ Governance Committee and within two months we had unanimous approval from the Board as a whole to move ahead on forming the Institute for the Prevention of Relationship Violence (IPRV).

    Our next step was to hire a Principal Investigator to oversee the research. After a lengthy search, the name Dr. Wind Goodfriend came across my desk. Wind, at the time, was a tenure track professor at Boise State University. She had started doing research on relationship violence while she was still a doctoral student at Purdue, and her CV was voluminous.

    So I invited her to my office for an interview, and within the first thirty minutes I knew she was the researcher for whom we had been searching. She was, and is, talented, intelligent and passionate about the issues we were working to address, and when I explained that we were still writing grants to fund the project, she volunteered her services so we could get started right away.

    Wind became my writing and business partner the day of that interview and for the past seven years her strengths have complemented my weaknesses. She is a true social scientist, one who is masterful with numbers and statistics and approaches the work with a keen objectivity that constantly sharpens it and makes it better. I, on the other hand, have a mild anxiety attack any time the numbers in front of me require more than a solar powered ten-key calculator and approach everything with an enormous degree of subjectivity; something, I have learned, is not conducive to empirical research.

    From that day forward we wrote together, spoke as a team to audiences about relationship violence prevention; and, in spite of constant debates about the value of quantitative vs. qualitative research, collaborated to develop original research that tested and refined the warning signs.

    When the work with A Frog in the Pot and IPRV grew beyond our combined capabilities, we carefully selected a Board for both companies. These amazing professionals, whose biographies are included in the Professional Guide, were chosen for three reasons: First, they are consummate experts in their fields. Second, they have devoted their careers to working with people who have experienced violent trauma and are committed to the prevention of such trauma. And finally, they are good people who do the right things for the right reasons.

    All of them brought different skills and perspectives to our collective mission; and under the steady hand of this team’s leadership the work has grown and matured to the point where today we are working to launch an international Voices of Hope initiative to prevent relationship violence.

    Two years ago, we made the decision to move IPRV to Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa, in order to expand our consulting services, offer a fully accredited online certificate in trauma advocacy, and launch a publishing company that specializes in the literature of relationship violence prevention.

    This move has enhanced the capability of the two sister companies: IPRV does the research and program development, and A Frog in the Pot distributes those programs to non-profit service providers, academic institutions, government service providers, and for-profit companies.

    Our next goal is to use the royalties from the literature IPRV publishes to allow A Frog in the Pot to offer scholarships to victims who have left violent relationships and want to devote their careers to trauma advocacy, and grants to researchers and service providers who are doing innovative work in relationship violence prevention.

    When I think about how far this work has come, I feel overwhelmed with gratitude. Every time we have needed anything, there have been so many good people and companies who have stepped up and offered to help.

    I also feel grateful for all of the work that has come before us. Everything we have accomplished, or aspire to accomplish, rests on the shoulders of the women and men who, for decades, have fought for the rights of victims and for resources to help those victims become survivors.

    The field of relationship violence services is filled with some of the most talented, dedicated professionals I have ever met, people who constantly raise the bar on what can be accomplished when we all focus and work together.

    The non-profit service providers, government agencies, academic institutions, and for-profit companies who are tackling these issues are doing amazing, innovative work; and it is a privilege to partner with them to create primary, secondary, and tertiary violence prevention programs.

    The collaborative effort between these four sectors is what will allow us to take on relationship violence prevention on a wide-scale public health level and eventually create a world where such violence is unthinkable.

    Doing this work has highlighted for me both the darkest and the noblest aspects of human nature, and I feel incredibly lucky to do what I do.

    When I think back to how isolated and shut down I was when I first happened upon that frog metaphor, it is hard to imagine that who I am today is the same person who sat in her seat on that plane typing away in the dark.

    The work saved me, and I pray that I have enough time in this world to give back to it all that it has given to me.

    And what motivates me most to repay that debt is the clients with whom we work.

    Whenever I hear someone talk about the victims of child abuse, sexual assault, dating violence or domestic violence in a way that portrays them as weak or helpless, I am truly astounded.

    The women and men I have met who have experienced relationship violence are some of the strongest, most compassionate, and most capable human beings anyone could ever hope to meet.

    They have taken one of the ultimate betrayals in life, violence from the hands of those who should have loved and protected them most, and have alchemized their pain and suffering into kindness, respect, and a commitment to do good in this world.

    They are miracles.

    Over the years I have also developed compassion and respect for the people who have been violent in the past and have confronted their own behavior and changed.

    Working with self-disclosed offenders has shown me how modeled relationship violence is for most people; how it is learned behavior that passes from person to person and generation to generation until one individual finally takes a stand and says, This stops here. I refuse to do to what was done to me to anyone else ever again, and I will do whatever it takes to change.

    Sometimes my attitude angers and confounds other activists in the field who think that all of our focus should be on victims, not offenders. I understand and appreciate their points of view. I have just worked with too many clients over the years who were victims of relationship violence long before they were offenders, and I have come to believe that none of us are going to get what we want until all of us are treated with dignity and offered choices.

    I do not, however, believe that a history of being victimized justifies becoming a victimizer. No one has a right to hurt another person, not unless it is in utter defense. I just think that acknowledging how the cycle of violence is perpetuated helps us know how to fix it; understanding is an explanation, not an excuse. Anyone who violates another must be held accountable for her or his actions, and if that person won’t take responsibility, and do the hard work of change, then we as a society have a responsibility to protect others from their potential harm.

    I have been one of those people who needed protection and didn’t get it, and there is a part of me that will always carry that scar.

    Most of the time I’m not even aware that the scar exists; but every now and then something will remind me of the past: lyrics in a song, the smell of Scotch whiskey, a certain tone in a stranger’s voice, and I have to remind myself that I have confronted my broken places and have moved through being a victim and a survivor of violence; that my life is not defined by the fact that a person I once trusted not to hurt me did; that I am the person I am today, in part, because of those experiences, not in spite of them.

    And again, I am reminded that healing and making peace is a process. I am still peeling away layers of that onion and suspect that I always will be, and that’s okay because even though my story still occasionally feels like someone else’s, I know that the author of that story is me.

    And deep down, beneath even that, I know that it isn’t really even my story, it is our story.

    Mine is just one of the millions of voices that have something to say about this issue, something important that will change all of it for all of us.

    Together we are the Voices of Hope, and what you are about to read are the stories of ten of those courageous women and men who have experienced relationship violence and have emerged on the other side as strong, compassionate human beings.

    And though the violence they have experienced is truly horrific, the hope these writers communicate as they describe how they moved through victimization and survivorship to become the amazing people they are today reminds all of us that even the most devastating of life’s experiences can result in goodness and grace.

    The writers in Voices of Hope tell their stories anonymously, not because they feel any sense of shame, but because at IPRV we are committed first and foremost to protecting our writers from those in their past who, unfortunately, may still wish them harm.

    We are also committed to focusing on a singular perspective in these stories. The narratives are not intended to be an indictment or an accusation. Thus, the identities of all persons in the stories are protected.

    Our writers tell their stories because they want to help; and together they deliver a compelling message: Even though relationship violence is endemic in our society, each of us has a powerful voice that can break through the silence that allows this violence to continue and help create a world where every child, woman, and man is treated with kindness and respect in their relationships.

    They offer their stories as a gift with the hope that if their voices speak to you that you might in turn feel inspired to get involved by passing the book on to another person, volunteering with a local service provider, talking to your employer or local school administrators about doing violence prevention programming, sending a donation to one of the agencies in your community that is doing good work, writing a letter to your state legislators, bringing someone who needs support to a Voices of Hope Breaking the Silence of Relationship Violence performance, or simply sending a warm thought or a prayer to the millions of children, women, and men who at this very moment are suffering.

    Between the writers’ heroic stories I will do my best to point out nuances, make connections between the different forms of relationship violence, and identify advocacy issues; and in the Professional Guide at the end of this book, Wind and our Board offer an in-depth discussion of the dynamics of relationship violence, and offer practical suggestions for how each of us can respond proactively to prevent such violence.

    We invite you to get personally and professionally involved in preventing relationship violence because if each of us can find our voices, and create peace in our relationships, eventually, and inevitably, we will create peace in our world.

    Pamela Lassiter Cathey

    – CHAPTER TWO –

    Reflections

    Dear K:

    Even though you told me your room was packed with flowers, cards, and other Valentine’s stuff, I thought I’d give you a card anyway.

    So…Happy Valentine’s Day

    The card was dated February 13th—our first date.

    I wouldn’t have remembered when our anniversary was had I not found a stash of old letters during a mass spring cleaning attack on my closet. I couldn’t find a spare hanger that day and suddenly, there they were, hidden behind a pile of sweaters in a shoebox. I must have kept them after the post-breakup purge because they were the only evidence I had that there were moments when

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