Right Here, Right Now

When I speak to people about human trafficking, the assumption is that it occurs somewhere "over there"--across the ocean, on some third world continent, among the poor and deviant. This assumption is not just made among "lay people", but made by mental health service providers, social service workers, and law enforcement as well. I cannot say loudly enough that it is happening RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW. It is happening in the same shopping plaza you go to drop off your dry cleaning. It is happening on the same website where you look for your next apartment or job. It is happening in the homes and businesses in neighborhoods with manicured lawns. It is happening.

Here is the mirror I am holding up for us to all look into: Sex Trafficking in Rural SD. Even in remote, rural South Dakota sex trafficking has found its hold. Events like the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and the upcoming hunting season bring in millions of dollars to the state in the sprin and summer. However, it also brings the opportunity for criminal organizations to set up shop for the thousands of men descending on the state.

http://www.keloland.com/News/NewsDetail6371.cfm?Id=100246

International Women's Day- LET'S DO SOMETHING!

Today is International Women's Day. In honor of this day, I want to highlight an organization that embodies the action required to empower women: Women for Women International. The common denominator among the organizations I support is their commitment to moving past "awareness" and pushing for "ACTION". Not just action on behalf of women or marginalized people, but action from those people. When we empower the marginalized, they are able to transcend victim/ survivor status and move on to become active citizens and change makers for others.Women for Women International believes, as I do, that if we give women access to knowledge and expression of voice along with access to and control of resources that THEY will affect lasting social and political change in their communities.

For many of women in "first world" countries (myself included), the fight for equality means breaking a glass ceiling. In developing world countries, the fight is for access to electricity and water, education and medical care. The fight is for freedom from the violence of rape, genital mutilation, forced marriage, extreme poverty and starvation. I'm not saying that the fight is an either/or battle. Break that glass ceiling, but in the process remember that there are women...millions of women...who aren't yet even in the building; they are still standing outside the door of opportunity. Remember them and find ways to push that door open.

What can you do? How can you help give voice to the voiceless? Be their audience and their witness. Advocate for them while they are learning to speak with their own voice. How can you provide access to knowledge? There are many organizations committed to the education of women in developing countries. Support them; it takes less than you might imagine. How can you help them gain access to resources and control of their own lives? Make your own powerful voice be heard by our leaders in State Department and government at large. Let them know that the status of women worldwide impacts us here at home. Countries who have the worst reputation for human rights violations against women and children are also the countries who are the biggest threats to the United States in terms of terrorism and military conflict. Lifting the status of women in those countries should be a high priority in the fight against terrorism.

What will your impact be today...and tomorrow...and the day after? You are needed!

Asking.

In August of 2009, I began talks with the executive director of Transitions Global, James Pond, about bringing compassion fatigue relief training to his staff in Cambodia in August 2010. Because I believe so strongly in the need for secondary trauma care and feel so passionately about the fight against sexual slavery, I offered these services completely pro bono.
What I am not able to cover is my own travel expenses (roughly $2,000). I am hoping that I can find 100 friends to donate $20. I would also be interested in locating a corporation or group willing to sponsor my work. In the Greater DC region, I am available to come to your organization or company to speak about this issue so you may learn more about compassion fatigue and the issue of human trafficking.
To donate to this effort, follow the Donate link to the right of this article.

New Directions

Since the start of this blog, one continuing theme has been about seeking direction and taking opportunity...even when the direction and opportunity seem daunting. I've also said that a big part of that comes from letting go of the idea that I must wait until I have it all figured out before I take action. Leap, and the net will appear, so to speak.

In the next two weeks, I will be packing up and heading across the country to start my career as a child abuse treatment specialist in Virginia. I will temporarily leave behind my own children so they may finish their school year. I am even driving solo cross country. Being in a car alone with my thoughts for two days is something I have never done...let alone live by myself for a few months. The concept is almost as foreign an idea as the concept of traveling to Cambodia. Yet, the leap feels right.

How do we know if one direction over the other is for the better? Well, we don't, I suppose. We can seek direction from family, friends, colleagues or religion. It is true that no man is an island and we make decisions based on responsibility and kinship with others. At the end of the day, however, it all comes down to finding the time to see what direction we turn internally.There is a line from a song, which I love: "One foot in and one foot back, but it don't pay to live like that."

And so it begins...

Domestic Violence: Why Doesn't She Just LEAVE????

"Why doesn't she just leave????" During my time as a therapist in a domestic violence shelter that was one of the more common questions I was asked by friends, family and co-workers of the victim. It was asked with agonizing frustration for the situation, and often, for the woman being abused. On a societal level, that frustration can turn into intolerance to the suffering: "If a woman is too dumb or lazy to leave her abuser then she gets what's coming to her" or "If she can't leave for her kids, then someone should take them away from her. She's an unfit mother." Notice how the criticism becomes much more harsh when the situation is depersonalized and the victim is nameless? These are all statements I have heard during my experience in DV work.


Is the question, though, unfair? I come from the camp that no question is unfair when real answers are being sought. Of course it is heart-wrenching to watch someone walk back to her abuser. Many times I've hung my head low in worry, self-reproach (could I have done more?) and down-right anger when a woman chooses to stay. Whenever ever I feel this way, I must remind myself why women stay. Hopefully, by reminding myself here with you today I'll also be able to answer the question for you.


Bottom line: leaving is a process, not an event. My friends at Transitions Global who work with survivors of sexual slavery talk about rescue being a process and not an event. Leaving an abuser is very much a self-rescue. Others can provide shelter, support and safety but it is the woman and her own sense of empowerment that will finally walk away. Indeed, 75% of women who experience abuse will leave their abuser. The nature of intimate partner violence, however, often makes that a prolonged departure. 


Anyone who asks why a woman doesn't simply leave is equating "leaving" with "safety." Unfortunately, this is not the case. Risk of homicide increases during the first two months after a woman leaves her abuser by as much as 75%. Simply put, threats of "I'll kill you if you leave me" are not idle threats. Even when the abuse does not result in murder, a full 70% of all injuries due to domestic violence occur AFTER a separation. Remember, a woman who has been abused has become skilled in her own survival. She can read a change in the air that most of us might never see. She has become acute in her observational skills which is directly related to her own ability to survive.


And it is not only her survival that she is ensuring. While on the surface it would appear that the only way to protect a child from harm is to remove him or her from the violent environment. Abusers often use children as tools in their system of abuse. Fathers who batter mothers are twice as likely to seek sole custody as non-abusive fathers. Even when women have successfully retained their children, they have been subject to financial abuse and isolation from friends and family which makes a successful departure often impossible. A full 50% of homeless women and children are on the streets because of violence in the home.


Among these statistics and facts, I have not even begun to account for the psychological toll that abuse takes on the victim. She has been forced to believe in her powerlessness, her worthlessness and her shame. When I meet with a woman for the very first time, I say to her: "I am so glad you are here. I am amazed at your strength to continue surviving. How do you do it?" In that, she can perhaps begin to see her story anew. She does have power and choice. If she chooses to stay, then who am I to take the power of that choice away from her? She understands better than I how to survive in her life in that moment. By honoring that choice, we have perhaps begun the process of her departure.

If you or someone you know needs help:

National Coalition Against Domestic Violence 

(for help anywhere in the country)

Colorado Coalition Against Domestic Violence 

(for help in Colorado)

Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence 

(for help in Boulder and Broomfield counties in Colorado)

Empowerment vs Rescue

I had several good, if brief, conversations with friends today that has woven an interesting tapestry of thoughts in my mind this evening. Virginia Woolf was able to construct an entire new way of writing by following her stream of consciousness. I'm setting the bar much lower for myself and am going to aim for expressing my thoughts without tripping over my own logic. The conversations were: A discussion on the nature of empowerment. A repartee on the cross section of humanity found in airport terminals as it pertain to the concept of survival of the fittest. And a rant about the Baptist missionaries accused of human trafficking in Haiti. It left me with questions. Who is in need of rescue and who is most capable of survival? Are the needy necessarily the weakest? Do they need (or even asking for) rescue or do they need empowerment? How do rescue and empowerment look different in action?

"Rescue" is a powerful word. As with anything that holds power, it can be misused. I look at all that I have seen coming out of Haiti the last few weeks--both in person and on the news. Truly, I have seen people in need of rescue. Anyone who saw the 5 year old boy pulled from the rubble eight days after the earthquake, arms stretched to the heavens, knows that he was in need of rescue. He was helpless. Without rescue he would not have survived. However, when we make a blanket statement that an entire people are in need of rescue, we make assumptions about our own superior instinct for survival and the others' helplessness. We steal their ability to claim empowerment. 

I believe this was the error in the missionaries' ideology when they traveled to Haiti to "rescue" children. While they are still only accused and nothing has been proven in a court of law, there seems to be strong evidence that they planned to find children (parentless or not) to save them from the ravages of Haiti. Clearly, the missionaries could not see the ravages a child would experience from being stripped away from family and community. The phrase "self-righteous" was used in my conversation about these missionaries today. It's a loaded term and so I'll take the plank out of my own eye first. I have been guilty of being self-righteous in my proclamation of who needs help and rescue. Sitting across from a client in pain, I sometimes fight the urge to say "Just do X, stop doing Y and you'll be fine." My job, I remind myself, is to help them use the tools to craft their own solution. When I allow that process to unfold, I'm always reassured when they crafted a solution or way of being that was more appropriate than my gut instinct of "STOP THAT!" That is the difference between "Rescue" and "Empowerment."

What a different story it would have been had those "missionaries" gone in like so many others there and asked "How can support you in getting your needs met" or "How can I advocate for you?" We assume...I have assumed...weakness where there is actually great strength. Who is the stronger, more powerful mother? The mother sitting in a tent tonight with her 6 children, rationing her own water so her children won't be thirsty or a mother, like myself, sitting in a suburban home with kids tucked into bunk beds. Our fortune as a nation does not ensure our survival any more than the misfortune of another denies their strength. I sat in a room with 83 Haitian children...none older than 12...every single one stronger in their survival than pampered, sheltered me. Survival of the fittest? They've got me beat. 

But truly that's not the message. It's not about who is stronger, weaker, self-righteous, or pitful. Empowerment is the process of not only recognizing our own strength, but identifying strength in others, each of us filling in the gaps where we need help. And what a weight off our shoulders to know we don't have to rescue everyone. We simply need to empower and, in turn, let others empower us. We lean in together and join our strengths. It's a synergy thing.

Heal Thyself

"Physician, heal thyself"; and while I'm pulling out parables, how about "the cobbler's children have no shoes." No, I do not miss the irony that a therapist who purports to teach compassion fatigue and resilience has run herself into the ground. What would normally have been a small cold has reduced me to a sniveling, whining creature who has slept more hours than she's been awake the last several days. The fact that I flew to Charlottesville, bought a house and had a job interview in the midst of said cold-turned-sinus-infection seems to be "blips" of activity between "ugly Nyquil" sleep. Which reminds me: my apologies to the perfectly nice gentlemen beside me in 28B on the flight back to Denver. I'm pretty sure he thought I had Ebola, as he kept his scarf around his face most of the flight.

Oh my...did I just say I bought a house while drugged on Nyquil and deaf in one ear from infection? I'm going to rely on the knowledge that we had decided on this purchase prior to my illness and that my wobbly signature on the dotted line will be minor history in the overall story of my life. I guess while I'm working on apologies, I should send a "shout out" to Realtor Lee. Thanks, Lee, for pretending not to notice when I borrowed a large sum of Kleenex from the house on Monet Hill Lane. Hey...I'm buying their house, they can spare some Kleenex.

All joking aside, it proved to me in very real ways that we all have our limits. Sometimes those limits come up faster than what we would expect. If we aren't careful, they not only impact us, but those we love. Remember when I said the "cobbler's kids have no shoes?" As I was working with kids coming in from Haiti and interviewing for a position that would have me working with child abuse victims, I had completely forgotten that my middle son, Joe, was finishing his 1st grade unit on Mexico. The end celebration involved a Fiesta and Mexican market. Each child was to bring in 10 handmade crafts which they would trade with other children. On that day, I was out of town. Joe had no crafts to bring. Those of you who are parents know how awful that feels to know I let my son down...and how embarrassing it is to admit. But I admit it for two reasons: to make sure I am accountable and also to say that even with the best of intentions, we fail. We fall short of what we owe ourselves and we owe our children.

My Joe

I told Joe how sorry I was I didn't help him make crafts. He shrugged and said, "No biggie...me and Haley and Blake all shared stuff." Good to know kids find solutions to our own, adult failures. As for me, I'm learning some important lessons.