I stood outside in the brisk October air, wearing my pajamas and no shoes. My brother ran in circles screaming — his ear bleeding — while my mother caught her breath now that my stepfather’s hands had released her neck.
I held the phone to my ear, remaining as calm as I could as I spoke to the operator waiting for the police.
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, a cause that hits close to home for me and many others.
According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, one in three women and one in four men have been physically abused by their partner.
With the recent #MeToo movement, issues such as domestic violence have been given more attention — a great start — but there is still room for improvement.
A topic as huge as domestic violence has so many different areas to address, ranging from victims’ rights to funding the organizations that help begin the process of healing.
Unfortunately, many of these conversations fall by the wayside.
At the moment, society is so wrapped up in discussing the rights we should give to victims that we have not even begun to talk about helping them heal and find their status as a survivor.
The Monday after my stepfather was arrested, I went back to school and everything had changed. I felt like I was walking around with a giant sign across my forehead reading “VICTIM,” an eternal symbol of what had happened to me and my family that would set me apart from everyone else.
It took years for me to process what happened. It took years for me to realize that instead of fearing the word victim, I should embrace my label as a survivor. It took years of counseling for me to open up to people again — it’s something I work on every day. But many survivors don’t have the resources given to me.
After we left, my mother, brother and I were able to stay with my grandparents in Boise. We finished up the school year at our same schools and we had insurance that could cover the cost of therapy, but many survivors rely on services from organizations such as Alternatives to Violence on the Palouse (ATVP) — a local organization focused on providing resources to survivors — for access to the same care I received.
However, all around the country domestic violence shelters struggle to find enough funds and room to support the needs of their communities.
Before we moved in with my grandparents, my mother applied for shelter housing through the Women’s and Children’s Alliance (WCA) in Boise. We were put on a waitlist and they called two years later to let us know they had a spot available for us. By then, my mother would have died.
Organizations like the WCA are doing everything they can to support survivors, but without the proper funds, they’re unable to expand their facilities or provide the care survivors need.
If more members of the community donated funds or items such as clothing and food to organizations like the WCA and ATVP, they would have so much more room to help those in need.
Society has begun to move in the right direction, but believing survivors should never have been an idea to contest. With the bar set so low on the expectations set for society, how will we ever begin to address the bigger issues?
This October we need to go beyond just seeing domestic violence as an issue and begin doing the work to truly help survivors.
Brianna Finnegan can be reached at [email protected]