SOUNDINGS|
By REBECCA GUMMERE
Generation to Generation
Every year, right about this time, I used to go book shopping, in search of the best children’s book celebrating the upcoming holidays. At home, I’d inscribe the front with a note, sign it with love to my children and record the year, then present it to my son and daughter after dinner on a December night.We’d make some hot chocolate, settle in front of the fireplace and read the book together.Then we’d haul out of storage the box containing books from previous years and look through those, too. All during the month those books would be scattered around the family room or would be added to a growing pile by the bedside of one of my children. My “children” are now 28 and 24 respectively, but every year I still pull out that box of books and, while the pages don’t get turned quite as often as they used to in previous years, they’re still like old friends we get to see once in a while and they still bring back fond memories. That’s just one of our family traditions. I’m sure you have some of your own, each tradition as unique and special as the families in which they originate. Some traditions, like the holiday books we’ve collected, we create anew. Some traditions are handed down from generation to generation. Since it’s the holiday season, it’s tempting to want to see only the picture-postcard images of happy families celebrating, sharing, and caring. But there are other darker kinds of family traditions, too, that are passed on. Family violence is one of them. For the past fifteen months I’ve been working for OASIS (Opposing Abuse with Service, Information, and Shelter), Inc., the domestic abuse and sexual violence response agency in Watauga County.We are busy 365 days of the year providing confidential shelter, crisis counseling, legal and medical advocacy for clients as well as support and referrals. A lot of my job is in the area of outreach and education in the community, working to educate you all in understanding more about the dynamics and the occurrence of domestic violence, as well as how together we can look for creative solutions to this pressing social problem. One of the things we know about domestic violence is that often it is learned behavior, a burden that gathers momentum as it’s handed down from parent to child. Some days that can seem daunting and discouraging as the weight of previous generations bears down.The strongest risk factor for perpetrating domestic violence is having witnessed it as a child betweens one’s parents or caretakers. Each year millions of individuals are victimized by violence in a relationship, physically, emotionally, and psychologically. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that in 2003, domestic violence cost us more than $8.3 billion dollars in medical www.aawmag.com
care, mental health services, and lost productivity for survivors of domestic violence. But if public health organizations have learned anything in recent years, it is that the dollars spent in prevention are as important as the dollars spent in treating the symptoms. And for me, prevention is where a great pearl of hope lies. I have many opportunities to encounter hope on a daily basis – when a client proudly shares her latest educational or workrelated success, or when she and her children move into their own living space where they are safe, or when years later a former OASIS client walks through the door holding out a donation in one hand and her gratitude in the other. I also encounter hope when I’m contacted by someone from a faith community who says their members want to learn more about domestic violence, but I get really excited when they tell me they want to know how to become involved in ways to help end it. I get a rush of hope when I work with other staff to train a group of graduate students in counseling who are going out into the world and will be better prepared to recognize and address issues of domestic violence when they come up against it. And I’m unbelievably jazzed when I hear other staff members share experiences with middle-school students who can articulate what they hope for in healthy relationships with others, and when they say they will speak honestly to friends whose relationships look unhealthy or frightening. One of our staff keeps in front of her the following lines from St. Augustine.These words have become a reminder for all of us here that the work we do is large, so much bigger than we are, but that even the smallest task we do can make a difference in someone else’s story. St. Augustine wrote: “Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.” When I think about our community’s traditions that we’ll pass along to the next generations, these are the kinds of things I hope for: • that together we see the issue of family violence as one that belongs to all of us, because it affects all of us. • that we grow in compassion as we stop placing the blame on those who are being abused (“Why doesn’t she just leave?”) and start placing the responsibility where it belongs (“Why doesn’t he stop abusing her?”). • that we take ownership together of the work of prevention, committing ourselves to ending the cycle of violence so that our community can be more just and more equal. And at OASIS, we always like to remember the best family tradition of all: Peace Begins at Home. Peace be unto you and yours this season, and to our community. DECEMBER 2008 11