October is Domestic Violence Awareness month, a time for advocates to raise awareness and offer information to the victims. (Photo courtesy of Metro Creative Connection).
October is Domestic Violence Awareness month, a time when advocates, survivors, and communities across the country unite to share difficult conversations about domestic violence victims and bring hope to solving this serious problem that spends most of the year in the dark, shrouded in fear and shame.
It has been nearly a year since Hegira Health’s training manager and widely recognized domestic violence prevention advocate, Kelly Ann Mays, was murdered by her estranged husband at her apartment in Westland. We reeled in shock, despite being well aware of the long-standing violence in their relationship. I wrote about it and spoke about it, privately and publicly. Shamefully, when the immediate trauma subsided, we all let the horror of domestic violence in and among us, find its way back into the closet — where adults are regularly harmed, threatened, even killed, and where our children learn that violence is normal, are emotionally and, in many situations physically, scarred for life only to repeat the cycle of violence in their own adult lives…