Translator: Esra Çakmak Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Everyone has heard the old cliché:
Never take life for granted.
But as humans,
we become complacent.
And we often take chapters of our life for granted.
Even the ones that we haven't been able to read yet.
On September 30 of 2006,
that all changed for me.
That was the day that I lost my mother,
my three brothers, and my sister.
They were taken away because of two words: domestic violence.
They were murdered by my mother's husband.
And those chapters that we take for granted,
such as me being able to see my brother graduate,
me being able to see my other brother play football,
me being able to teach my other brother how to drive,
me being able to see my sister go to prom,
or my mum even being able to see me get married,
or being able to even meet my son.
Those are chapters of my life that were basically erased from my book.
And so after that,
when I lost my immediate family,
I lost my identity and who I was.
I had to rediscover who I was.
So, I had to find out who was I, who am I going to be,
where am I going, why did this happen to me.
And it took me on a journey
where I had internal warfare going on within me.
Because that was the first time in my life
that I experienced what hate really felt like.
And I understood why we are not supposed to hate,
because it can consume you.
And so on that journey, I always ask why.
Why did this happen to me?
And one day, I woke up and I went to church,
and the sermon that day was about asking for guidance
and asking the right questions.
And so I left there,
and I knew that I needed to ask something different.
And so I started to ask for guidance.
And three months later,
I hosted an event in honor of my mum
and my four siblings to bring awareness to domestic violence.
And -
(Applause)
Thank you.
And on that day,
with three weeks of planning, we had over five hundred people show up that day.
And at the end of the event, we saved six victims.
And ironically, to me it was like saving my family and saving myself.
But at the end of the event, even though it was a great event,
and we saved people,
it still felt like something was missing.
It felt like something still just wasn't right,
something still wasn't there, there was more to the story,
there was more things that I needed to accomplish.
And so a senator invited me to a high school to speak to some kids
in an auditorium.
And I had two sessions with 600 kids.
And I spoke to the kids about dating and domestic violence,
spoke to them about the signs, and told them about my story.
And afterwards, I had a line of kids that wanted to talk to me about my story,
tell me about their personal stories at home,
and also tell me about the personal dating issues that they have themselves.
And the last thing that someone said to me was,
"I wish that someone would come in
and talk to us about dating violence and the signs."
And that's when it was like I had an epiphany and everything became clear,
and I knew what my mission was, and I knew what I was supposed to do.
And I knew that education was the key
to shake up the culture of domestic violence.
And there is three points in that education that we have to hit on:
The first thing is that, instead of eliminating gender roles,
we have to teach and establish healthy ones
for our young men and our young women.
For our young men; they grow up,
they play with toys such as action figures,
they play with toy guns, they play with trucks,
they play with all these aggressive components.
That's why they go into certain job fields,
that's why you have a majority of men, such as firefighters, military, police,
and mechanics.
They go into those job fields
because those are the things that they play with when they were young,
and they see those things on TV, so that's how they get their identity.
When it comes to women;
when they are young, they usually play with doll babies,
they play with easy bake ovens, they play with, you know,
"girl stuff" as they say.
And, you know, that's why they become the nurturing type,
and they become nurses, they become teachers,
and they follow those kind of job fields
because that's what they are kind of brought up to do.
But, as a man, it doesn't mean that you can't have a nurturing side.
When I was 14, my mom taught me how to do my sister's hair.
Not because I was less of a man,
but because she said that,
"In case anything ever happened to your wife, if you have a daughter,
I want you to be able to take care of your daughter.
These are not boy skills, these are not girl skills; these are life skills."
And so,
I know how to do hair, but does that ...
(Laughter)
but does that make me less of a man?
And it does not.
I don't do hair for a living, but if I had a daughter,
I know that I'd be able to provide and take care of her.
And so, sometimes as men, we put ourselves inside these boxes.
And we say, this is what it means to be a man.
And that can create a lot of pressure,
and without the proper guidance, men become very aggressive.
And that's our culture.
Our culture is aggression, we feel like women should be submissive to us.
But there is a lot more that goes on with relationships,
that is splitted 50/50.
Because behind every strong men, there is a woman supporting that drive,
and making that drive happen.
And so ...
The next thing is that ...
for ages, women have always been at the forefront of domestic violence.
They have been the voices,
they have been screaming their lungs out about domestic violence.
And we as men - and they accept their role,
and they take action as victims of domestic violence.
But we as men, we never join the conversation.
We never speak about domestic violence,
we never accept our role,
we never even admit that we have a part to play in it.
And as men, we have to start accepting that role,
and take responsibility
for the actions that we can attribute to women losing their lives.
(Applause)
And as men, we have two different roles that we have to accept:
we have to accept our role as abusers,
and we also have to accept our roles as victims.
Because men are also victims of domestic violence,
but that box that I talked about,
we don't break outside of that box to go tell our best friend, our co-worker,
"Hey, my wife abused me last night. Our things are getting crazy."
Because we're still stuck inside that box,
and anything outside of that box is what we don't consider to be "a man."
And so,
the third, and the most important point to me,
is age-appropriate proactive education.
So,
over this summer
we taught over 600 kid, ages 5-12,
about bullying and power and control,
which are the same behaviours that transition
into dating and domestic violence.
So, we feel, like, if we begin a culture this low,
and tell them this is what it means to establish friendship
and a healthy relationship, and these are the unhealthy things.
Because 85% of kids who experienced domestic violence in the home,
they either become the abuser,
or they become abused.
It's learned behaviour.
So, we have to take action to teach them
what a healthy relationship looks like, give them that example.
Because they might not always get that opportunity at home.
And so, when we into high schools,
this year we surpassed 2,500 kids
that we are teaching about dating and domestic violence.
(Applause)
And the impact that is having on kids is just incredible.
A student came to me and told me
that after our first session,
that she went to her boyfriend,
and she told him,
"Some of the things that we are experiencing in our relationship
is considered dating violence, and power and control."
And she said,
"If these things do not change, we can't date any longer."
(Applause)
And to me, that speaks to the power of saving a life.
We don't always have to be reactive to save lives.
There is a lot of organizations out there that are reactive to domestic violence.
And I realized that my mission is to be proactive and prevent it from happening,
and to save lives by being proactive.
And so,
my challenge to you today, especially to the men in the room,
is to look at yourself in the mirror.
What kind of an example do you want to be?
For your sons, for the youth.
Do you want to be a father
that handles conflicts by talking calmly?
Do you want to be the father that handles conflicts by yelling and cursing?
Do you wanna be the father that punches holes in the sheetrocks?
Do you wanna be the father that punches someone in the mouth when you are upset?
Because your kids are watching.
And the examples that you set today
are the same way that they are going to handle a conflict as adults.
So be the great example, and be a part of that change.
Because you don't want to wait until it is your family,
you don't want to wait until it's your mother, your sister, your daughter,
your son to decide that "it's enough."
Because by the end, it is too late.
And those chapters that you'd look forward to read,
and those chapters that I wouldn't ever get to read in life are gone.
Thank you.
(Applause)