Happy Halloween!

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Good evening, all. October 29, 2021.  A fine Friday night, just 2 days from Halloween.  The past couple of years have certainly had peaks of fear and scare, who needs Halloween? Well, a lot of us do!  

A number of years ago there were news reports of poisoned candy, razor blades or needles embedded in treats, kids getting seriously sick — and some died.  The news media jumped on these incidents and pointed fingers at evil strangers adulterating treats for their own perverse pleasure.  But, as you may know, initial reports are usually highly speculative and often wrong.  Remember, one goal of news media is the “breaking” story, and being the first to report is generally regarded as positive.  Whether the information presented is accurate seems to be beside the point.

Studies of kids admitted to emergency rooms around Halloween have shown these reports greatly exaggerated.  Further investigations often came to different conclusions.  One child who died had gotten into another family member’s heroin, and the rest of the family covered by afterwards sprinkling heroin on candy and blaming strangers.  Another child was poisoned by a parent to collect insurance.  (Who takes out an insurance policy on an elementary school age child?  That’s a red flag right there.)

Now, all these stories are between 20 and 40 years old.  I first looked at this issue probably about 15 years ago.  I thought it time to update my info, so went online.  I checked on Snopes.com, and most of their articles are from  about twenty years ago.  Then I went to PubMed.  If you’re not familiar with PubMed, it’s a database of peer-reviewed research.  I was hoping there were more recent articles, but no there were not.

Seems this issue’s shelf-life was limited.  Which brings up the issue Pumpkinof what’s news-worthy, and what’s in the news cycle reflects more a cultural fear than real trends in events.  Was there a cultural zeitgeist at that time, a sense of worry that one’s social environments were changing, that your neighbors came from different, strange, backgrounds, and the unknown was less certain?  And this is how it got expressed?  A time capsule, so to speak, of social concerns indirectly expressed.  We do discuss mass media and its impacts in our six week Self-Defense 101.

Even though these stories are decades old, they still pop up every year, seems the initial reporting became the real story and subsequent investigations and conclusions didn’t exist.

What is a real danger this coming weekend?  Cars hitting pedestrians.  That rate JUMPS on Halloween night.  More people out on the street, maybe excited and not looking, and drivers not taking extra precautions on streets they routinely use.  

Stay safe, stay aware when trick-or-treating (and driving!), and live life.

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October and More Domestic Violence Awareness

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We’re already half-way through October.  This very month, not just this year but a few years in recent history, has been designated Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Last week I wrote about DVAM and Halloween, and today’s related topic is one I always find interesting. About 9 years ago I went through a DV training. Not a one-day workshop, but a whole course on domestic violence. The purpose of the course was to educate community members about DV, also train people who worked in other agencies about best practices when their clients were also struggling with DV, and to help the agency running the course develop their volunteer base. It was something I’d wanted to do for years, because the single biggest risk of physical harm facing women is DV.  Just over half of murdered women are killed by a current or former intimate partner. As a self-defense teacher, it seemed important to understand more about that risk and the social dynamics around it.

So I went through the course, and spent about 4 or 5 years as a volunteer. For the first year I staffed the crisis line. The crisis line is a great resource for people needing some immediate help. The single most common call we got, the most common question question asked, was “is there room in your shelter?” And the single most common answer we had was no, please call back later today or tomorrow. Because there was usually no room.  That was the answer, while I was there, almost all the time.

What I find interesting was that there was such a large demand for shelter, yet the vast majority of time we turned people away. It didn’t make a whole lot of sense — if there’s such a demand, why is there so little supply? I don’t know the answer.

When I think about self-care — and finding a safe place to stay certainly is self-care — I see five levels. The first is self-soothing behavior, what you can do to help manage the way you express or experience emotions (such as fear, anger, worry, sadness) to calm yourself. There’s resiliency activities, which have a large overlap with self-soothing behavior but they’re generally done on a regular basis to help the future you become more resilient; this often includes regular exercise, healthy eating habits, meditation, and creative activities. The third level is when do you seek the support of a professional: therapist, doctor, attorney, victim advocate, law enforcement.

The final two levels are not immediate personal self-care, but they create the conditions that determine what self-care options are available to you. Institutional support generally backs your professionals and volunteer advocates. And structural/societal care is the bigger picture of what projects are deemed by “society” as more important. That’s where we find, relative to need, few resources allocated to domestic violence agencies in terms of budget that could fund it, such as for real estate, salaries for staff, food and clothing (not just shelter), legal aid, and programming to help clients get back on their feet.

How do we change that? We in Washington State have our voter pamphlets, and ballots are on their way. Do your due diligence. Make it a resiliency activity, which means you’ll do this every year. Which candidates are supporting funding and programs you care about? Support them, and vote.

You can also take our six-week course, Self-Defense 101. We go into on the dynamics of domestic and dating violence, on recognizing the red flags of abusive behavior how to navigate some of the landmines around DV and our legal system, because once you get into it, it’s not pretty at all. Next 101 classes will begin in January/February 2022, next year already!

Stay safe, live life!

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October: Halloween and Domestic Violence Awareness Month

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Good morning!  Today is Wednesday October 6, 2021.  The touch of the autumn air is chilly and wet, a relief after this summer’s record heat. Leaves, turning brilliant reds, yellows and orange, are just beginning to drift to earth. Halloween, just one evening of ghosts and ghouls, spirits and spectres, will be here in the wink of an eye.

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Unlike Halloween, though, domestic violence is not limited to October, nor should we be aware only these 31 days.

Domestic violence is a wraith that stalks its prey all year long. Abuse victims can be haunted even after the relationship ends: they are more likely to suffer depression and anxiety than are others, less able to form long-term loving relationships, and more likely to engage in harmful, high-risk behaviors, according to the DHHS Office of Women’s Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.   Life during this pandemic has exacerbated incidents of intimate partner violence.

In the 1960s/70s the phrase “the personal is political” gained traction among feminists as women recognized that October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month - learn some of the warning signs!individual incidents and abuses were commonplace, even routine, and were socially OK and supported by legal conventions, which is what is meant by systematic. Women put up with them for various reasons. We heard that’s just the way it was, or that’s just life as a woman in modern America so deal with it. Or “boys will be boys.” Or there would be consequences, such as sexual assault, physical battery, or even murder (even today half of female homicide victims in America are killed by a current or former intimate partner). Those possibilities would hang in the air, unseen and unnamed, a vile apparition always making its presence felt even if invisible.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are also significant financial costs of intimate partner violence. They estimate the lifetime costs for women IPV survivors can top $100,000 (the estimated lifetime costs for male IPV survivors is $23,000).

We touch on this issue in our self-defense classes, especially the six-week course, as women’s single largest risk of physical assault is from domestic violence.

If you know a someone in an abusive or unhealthy relationship, download this info flyer and send it to them, if it’s safe to do so (remember, abusers often try to monitor and control all communications). If you are into planning and lists, take a look at this inventory for safety planning. Send it to their friends also — they probably feel like they’re watching a bad horror movie, powerless to intervene. In fact, send it to anyone you know. It may save them from this nightmare later. Do your part to exorcise this demon now, for the whole year.

Stay safe, live life.

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