Tag Archives: Intimate Partner Violence

Think Global…Act Local

 

Steven-Matt_455613_1When I think of this phrase I think it means to be an informed consumer.

  • Am I buying products made by children in the slavery mills around the Globe?
  • Am I consciously aware that what I do here in my country is negatively affecting the Amazon Rain Forest?
  • Are the diamonds that I admire Blood Diamonds?

Right?

Big thoughts.

I think I can make my buying power MAKE a difference.

I CAN make my money talk!

What IF….

The phrase “THINK Global…Act Local” could be applied to Domestic Violence and Intimate Partner Violence and Child Abuse?

What would that look like?

It might look like this…

You are watching TV on a normal day or night and you see a story of a VERY FAMOUS NFL player like Adrian Peterson being charged with Child Endangerment for beating his 4 year old son with a switch. You may or may not be appalled… Let’s say you ARE appalled.

What can YOU do?

Well you can begin to look at your own behaviors towards your kids or other people’s kids.

You can open a conversation with your kids … if you dare… and ask them what it’s like living in your home.

  • Do they feel emotionally safe?
  • Are they worried about people flying off the handle?
  • Are they afraid of anyone in particular?

YOU must be brave and courageous and really listen.

LISTEN with your ears and your HEART. (Especially your heart.)

You MUST promise them immunity from YOU flying off the handle if you hear something that hurts your feelings.

If I would have had parents who had asked this question to me and if I trusted them, I would have said something like this:

“Well you are always beating us and yelling at us. If we cry then you beat us more to “really give us something to cry about.” You tell me that I never do anything right. I am always scared of you.”

IF I had parents who were brave enough to go there, I may have had a slim chance of a happier childhood.

YOU have the POWER to give your children a bigger chance of happiness.

If you ACT LOCAL, while observing the pitiful GLOBAL state of violence against women and girls you will be making a difference.

Don’t know where to start? Start with YOURSELF, your own boundaries and awareness of shame and building your shame resilience.

START TODAY.

START NOW.

Here is something to get you started…www.liveabrighterlife.eventbrite.com

If I can do it, you can do it.

Now, let’s say you were NOT appalled at someone beating their child in that way, you can still do something.

You can begin to wonder about your own abuse and ask yourself if your parents could have been more compassionate.

If you say they did the best they could with what they had, you would be right. However, YOU can do better with all the new information that you have about child rearing. You can seek out informed guidance on how to be a better parent.

Why? Because you owe it to those kids you brought into the world.

So however you slice this Domestic Violence pie, you can Think Global and still Act Local.

 

Love and light,
 
Indrani

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Plagued by thoughts….

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Woman-with-question-marks-15742269Often times, when I least expect it, I get flooded with those questions that I have an inability to answer and they haunt me.

More often than not, those questions have to do with my mission…to end gender violence.

Some of the niggling questions have to do with the relationships between men and women and why women continue to accept abuse and why men continue to think they have the right to abuse.

In my work, my passion for ending Gender Violence, Intimate Partner Violence and Violence against Children, I have more questions than answers.

All the questions begin with WHY?

WHY would a grown man rape a child?
WHY would educated women stay in abusive relationships?
WHY would a mother-in-law abuse her daughter-in-law?
WHY is society still pretending that this is a problem for “others”?

The WHEN question is …

WHEN is enough enough?
WHEN will CEO’s investigate their managers for domestic violence before hiring them?

WHAT can YOU do?

You can begin by eradicating violence in YOUR home and community.

Here are some classes to help get you started, pass this link around to EVERYONE you know.

www.liveabrighterlife.eventbrite.com

NO ONE is immune to be on the receiving end of violence.

Share this blog with all the people you love, ask them to share it with people they love.


Thanks for taking up this cause.


Love and light,
Indrani

What we do here at ILF….

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10272679_10152456770534048_8792785988925842137_oHere at Indranis Light Foundation we want to END Gender Based Violence, Domestic Violence and Intimate Partner violence … #endGBV, #endIPV.

We don’t just want to end GBV (Gender Based Violence), we want to see your HOME be your place of safety and solitude.

We want to provide tools for you and your family members to work through normal conflict and find new pathways to familial peace and security.

We know that being human means having conflict and differences of opinion.

We also know that every point of conflict is a point of connection if you know how to navigate the challenges and not just lash out while you are in pain and needing to hurt others.

We publish two unique blogs each week and we search the Web for stories that are of use to you and serve as examples for what we are trying to teach.

 

Please take some time to look through the past blogs and see if you can find some answers to your questions.

 

We love to hear from YOU.

 

Love and light,

Indrani

BANNED for LIFE…

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Image-1BANNED for LIFE…..the newbie NBA commissioner tells the racist tenured Team Owner!

Now that’s HUTZPAH!

I was in the middle of the first ever Train-the-Trainer Master Class for the foundation when I saw the headline…

NBA Commissioner speaks for nation in banishing Sterling!

When I turned the page I read:

“Stanley places himself within a culture that rewards a man who publicly owns a team made up of mostly black men but privately wants blacks to stay away from his team’s games.”

I am intrigued.

I am further intrigued that the newbie commissioner of the NBA’s name is SILVER.

In this case Silver and Sterling is not Sterling Silver but Silver VS Sterling!

Who could see that one coming?

For centuries we had the marriage of the words Sterling Silver that meant purest silver available. Now we can use those two words in a new and beautiful way to mean Nasty OUT/ Civility IN!

I am taking a BIG leap here and I would like to see some of the following:

If a male CEO makes a sexist comment about a woman’s place at the board table I want to see the CEO FIRED for sexist remarks.

I want to see headlines like:

CEO of XYZ company was fired on the spot yesterday for banning women from the the Board room. (When he is all too happy to have them slaving away on the shop floor!)

I want to see abusers taken to prison when they abuse someone else’s daughter as they cherish and put their own mothers on pedestals.

I want to see WOMEN STAND UP to abuse and tell the abuser that THEY too are human beings that deserve respect and honor.

I want to see women GIVE themselves the honor they deserve by speaking UP and OUT about the abuse that happens in the privacy of their own torturous prisons.

I want to see women record and video what the abuser is doing and play it for the lawyers and the the judges and I want to see the judges take the threats seriously enough to issue protection BEFORE a woman is killed or maimed.

I want to see society stand up to Gender Violence and Intimate Partner Violence as OPENLY as NBA commissioner Silver stood up to racism. The same racism that had been going on for decades and everyone turned a blind eye and a deaf ear.

Let us OPEN our eyes and CLEAN out our ears and let us speak UP about the abuses that are being played out in our families, in our communities and in our places of business.

Take a lesson from Commissioner Silver:

YOU are BANNED for LIFE!

Please speak up about your abuse. Please do not allow yourself to be lulled into yet another trance of a fake apology.

Please help us to help you.

 

Love and Light,

Indrani

The cost of higher education……

A new study from Population and Development Review finds that educated Indian women face a heightened risk of Intimate Partner Violence.

According to a Population Council Journal Article, Abigail Weitzman, a graduate student at New York University, found that compared to women with less education than their husbands, women with more education face 1.4 times the risk of IPV, 1.54 times the risk of frequent violence, and 1.36 times the risk of severe violence. She found a similar pattern for women who were better employed than their spouse. And women who were the sole breadwinners in their family faced 2.44 times the risk of frequent violence and 1.51 times the risk of severe violence as unemployed women whose husbands were employed.

“In global development efforts, there is a large emphasis on women’s employment and education. My research suggests that there can be a backlash, including violence, toward women who attain greater education or earnings than their husbands,” says Weitzman.

This article is available free of charge for a limited time at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1728-4457.2014.00650.x/pdf.

Education and employment for women is so important for cultures and nations to thrive….but the result of a backlash of increased domestic violence is not acceptable. What can YOU do to help move us to a world free of such violence?

Our free Live a Brighter Life Empowerment Program for Living is a great place to start.

 

Love & light,

Team ILF