hi guys it's Cara from health home and happiness and I wanted to talk about
domestic violence today this is something that I told myself I would
start talking about in October because - October is Domestic Violence Awareness
Month and it's something that I think a lot of people have questions about but
it's hard to find the answers to them so I'm going to start with the three most
common myths that I hear when talking about domestic violence and if you guys
don't know which most of you don't because I usually hide it just on the
Internet it's kind of taboo to talk about domestic violence or taboo to talk
about being divorced which I am both a domestic violence survivor and I'm
divorced and we've been gone for six years now and it took a lot to kind of
get past it to the point where I can talk without being crazy emotional but
we my older two kids were born into a family and I was married to their dad
and it was a violent relationship and in coming out of that I was kind of raised
a Republican raised privileged actually that's what brought on this video today
is some when you got me privileged which is fine I am I guess everyone has
different privileges it doesn't really mean it's okay to yell at people or
discount what they're saying just because you perceive them to be
privileged but in any case I was married and I think the first myth that I want
to talk about is that it's easy to leave and a lot of people think because there
are domestic violence resources I called them all and it's really hard to leave
especially if you have kids in my particular case when I left I needed to
go somewhere where he didn't know where I was which one I couldn't return to our
hometown he knew where my parents live so I couldn't return there and then so I
needed the resources to set up a whole new house calm down but um and so in our
case we chose to fly and completely start over which meant I had to have an
income and I had these two little kids and my oldest child has special needs
and there are resources available for people that are in that need help that
need help leaving there was a 30-day in the in the city that we lived in and
I did use that for a couple nights but it's a 30 day shelter and they had no
internet and really my business was on the internet and also these the shelter
there was no locks on the doors and I understand why they do this they have
people coming through there all the time they don't want people doing
who-knows-what behind locked doors which meant that the little stuff that we had
there wasn't safe like the other people that were there they can't they can't
keep control over everybody that's there and so this stuff in the shelter's would
get stolen like I just had a little flip phone and I caught the other girls there
which this is so taboo to talk about that we're all supposed to be you know
loving and uplifting and caring for one another but the other girls in the
shelter from all different walks of life and they would definitely any chance
they could steal that phone which meant I couldn't charge it because I had to be
plugged into the law so I had this so anyway so that was our shelter and
that's my first myth is that people think that there's lots of resources
available so we had a 30 day shelter which was a good shelter with no
internet access which is problematic when you're trying to build a business
um housing assistance so I applied for housing assistance because they had
these three kids and I had to provide for two kids at the time two kids and I
needed to provide for them so I applied for housing assistance
it was a year wait and I said we're like it's a dangerous situation I don't feel
safe here and again they referred me to the 30-day shelter so what do you do
between those 30 days and the year wait until you can get into housing and in my
case I built my block which not everyone has the resources available to do that
and I'm trying to think of what so the domestic violence hotlines they're very
empathetic they cared they validated my opinion they said yes that is not a good
environment for you or your children but they didn't there really wasn't anything
they could send me to there's support groups so I could go to support groups
and I tried those and it was group therapy and of course I had to bring my
children because if you've been in and this will be probably my next myth that
I talked about if you've been in a situation where your
in violent situations and you've been there long enough that suddenly you
become fearful of everybody and so there was one maybe two people I would leave
my kids with um but even when they were with those people I just I didn't feel
safe and it's kind of something in your brain when you've been in an unsafe
environment something in your brain just tells you everything is unsafe and so I
understand it was irrational even at the time I knew it wasn't rational but when
those alarm bells are going off and you feel like you need to protect your
children that's what you so we tried group therapy that didn't work I did get
a referral to a therapist who I went in there saying like I don't know why I
need to leave I know I need to leave I know this isn't safe for some reason
everything in my body says I need to stay annelids understandable and you
have two little kids and you think about trying to provide for them completely
knowing that most people that have been in violent relationships don't get child
support there's not any help going to be coming from the other person and
suddenly you're completely on your own so I did go to a regular therapist and
he did he did discount his services for me so if you ask and you really look
like you're trying and you keep asking the right people but again the only
reason I found this one guy who was really good at what he did because I've
been to probably dozens of other therapists and only two out of 12 or
maybe 15 have actually been effective so he was really good at what he did I just
happened to have a friend that was a therapist that could say this guy in our
city is the best for what you need right now which what I needed right now was
the confidence to leave so that's um that's our first myth is that there's
lots of resources available and there isn't really at least not ones that are
going to work for every person so what I would encourage you to do if you are in
a stable environment and you think someone is being abused or you think
that maybe you can help someone obviously you don't overextend yourself
like just like I'm not taking in a bunch of people into my house even though I do
have and in theory I could don't overextend
yourself but also don't brush it off saying well there's help out there if
they wanted help they would go get it so our second myth is that once once you
get out everything's okay and it's really not so we left six years ago and
I just now I'm kind of feeling okay and that's something that a lot of people
aren't you don't expect you don't expect it to take that long to get over like
just that adrenaline then not trusting anyone and then having to do everything
on your own is something that it takes a long time to get over and to learn how
to feel your feelings and stop running for them because for so long if you're
in a danger situation you have to push aside your feelings and you can't be
giving in and listening kind of to your body and your intuition you have to just
keep going and a lot of you know so I started health home and happiness my
blog when I was nursing like right after my now eight year old was born and I was
I needed something to do so that's and it's hard if you're in a violent
relationship a lot of times there's a lot of control going on so you can't
usually work outside the home you can't do something like sewing or something
that they could sabotage so for me having the Internet was an amazing help
and I was able to put together a website and start getting an income from it and
there's someone amazing bloggers that have helped me from the beginning learn
how to monetize and learn how to make money from my website so yeah there's
the like there's only so much you can do with two kids so my oldest child had
special needs she couldn't have gone to daycare that's another thing that people
oh well you need to put your kids in daycare I need to go get a job we need
to apply for housing well first of all we just talked about that housing takes
at least in our state was taking a year to find housing um my child that has
special needs like she was she screamed all the time she couldn't gone a daycare
there's no daycare that would have taken her especially on our best beginning
scholarship is the scholarship for low income Baker that we
here if he is $22 a day there's no day care provider that I know of
that would take a screaming child and at the time she had full-blown autism we've
done dietary intervention and stuff and she's a lot better now but um the time
she had autism she was screaming and she was opening a closing doors and she was
poking at eyes that was not a child that could go to daycare so yeah there was
the work piece and that's something that's really hard and that's another
thing that people like to say they like to say lots of things they like to say
well if you cared you'd go get a job you need to put your kids in daycare go to
dump was not possible for anyone or not possible for everyone to do that to go
get a job and then the third thing that I'd like to talk about is that kind of
the dynamics the family dynamics after you leave your abuser in hallmark movies
and stuff you show orphanages and everybody is so happy to be away from
the bad people that they're so thankful to do chores and all of that well that's
not the case in a lot of families that have been subject to domestic violence
those kids it's not like a homework movie those kids have been around a mom
that's amped up they've been around chaos just there's just so much
adrenaline and chaos and lack of security in their household even if it
was the abuser only blowing up once every two months it's likely that
whoever was there and taking care of the child it wasn't the abuser was so on
edge waiting for that next blow up that they weren't able to adequately attend
to their children's emotions and so that's a whole thing that honestly we're
still doing you can look on my blog and I recently wrote a post about hold on to
your kids attachment theory is I'm working with an attachment theory
specialist right now who's kind of going back and helping me to make those
attachments with my older kids that didn't get made how they should have
been because we were so enmeshed in the chaos the cycle my priority was that kid
safety my priority was not their emotional needs and so now we need to go
back and do that so like I said we've been
six years now and we're still I just put my eight-year-old out and there'll be a
post about homeschooling him right now because there's just the kids can't
mature how they need to and it's called it even we left when he was two
it's called pre verbal trauma and so the zero to two is when kids learn how to
form relationships learn how to form attachments and you can still do it when
they're older than that but it's a lot easier before they're two and so that's
what we are working on now I'm still six years later and that's just something
I'd like to bring awareness to is you might see me and think out in public not
any of my readers you guys are amazing you might think I'm being harsh you
might think I'm not attending to what they need or you might think I ignore
them when they're home it's not that we're dealing with something that
happened years and years ago as well as my own mental health issues that I
mostly got under control now I'm eating well exercise all helps with that the
self-care stuff that we've just started talking about on the blog eventually we
do need to get off the adrenaline roller coaster and start taking care of
ourselves again and that's something that's kind of hard to learn it's like
all three of us my little guy if you're doing the math he's not from my
ex-husband time um he seems pretty he has normal attachments everything is
pretty easy with him but my older two kids and I were still kind of rebuilding
um what it's like to be human learning
self-care learning stuff like that so I just wanted since it is um October is
Domestic Violence Awareness Month I wanted to talk about this because it's
something that's important to me and I thought that I'm in a kind of unique
position where I have this platform I can talk to a lot of you and then dispel
all the myths that I see coming out just in talking to people like most people
don't guess that that's they know I'm divorced in our community but they don't
guess that it still affects us that six years later it's still affecting us so I
would encourage you to kind of start the discussion
and dispel the myths and educate yourself a little bit better and that's
really all it is is bringing awareness and I'm really glad I can see a lot of
you guys are on right now thanks for joining me and if there's anyone else in
that situation I just really hope that you can get out reach out to people that
can help there are good people out there it's just hard to find them and just
have the perseverance you need to get what you need you and your family need