“In 2002, the World Health Organization estimated that 150 million girls under the age of 18 reported being victims of sexual violence.” Jacques Jimeno
Frightening statistic, isn’t it?
Check out what Michele Moloney Kitts has to say about prevention and how coordination is key. We couldn’t agree more.
https://www.devex.com/news/addressing-sexual-violence-prevention-and-response-86322
Can you imagine a future without violence against women?
We can.
Check out this great article on how technology can help prevent Gender Violence.
We are excited for the future!
Love & light,
Team ILF
Self-respect is defined by Nathaniel Branden as “the conviction of our own value. It is not a delusion that we are perfect or superior to everyone else. It is not comparative or competitive at all it is the conviction that our life and well being are worth acting to support, protect and nurture, that we are good and worthwhile and deserving of the respect of others; and that our happiness and personal fulfillment are important enough to work for.”
When a woman is forced into a marriage that she does not want, when she is forced to birth more children than she desires or is forced into aborting fetuses that are the “wrong” gender, that is not respecting a woman.
Some of these issues are couched in cultural language that makes it seem iron clad for women to “behave certain ways and accept traditional roles.”
I would like to float the idea that NOTHING is iron clad and traditions had to start somewhere, so we can be brave enough to make new ones.
This kind of bravery can only sprout from deep and abiding self-respect, nothing short of consistent self awareness.
We cannot fall asleep to how we live our daily lives, make daily choices and then wonder why our self-respect is in shambles.
“To appreciate why our need for self-respect is so urgent, consider the following : To live successfully, we need to pursue and achieve values. To act appropriately, we need to value the beneficiary of our actions. Absent this conviction, we will not know how to take care of ourselves, protect our legitimate interests, satisfy our needs, or enjoy our own achievements.” Nathaniel Branden
I urge you to read, no, to devour, Six Pillars of Self Esteem. It is by far one of the best books that anyone who has received abuse or is presently receiving abuse can read. It will give you the language to demand the respect you need for yourself, the respect you will expect from others and the strength to say NO, I will not accept disrespect anymore.
Love and light,
Indrani
The day started off like most days, I brew a pot of coffee
for my wife and I and she turns on the tv and gets ready for
work.
We were both in a great mood.
In an instant I was pissed off, angry and appalled.
Why?
Let me start by saying that I love a good joke, BUT this is NOT funny.
Not in the slightest.
It is disrespectful and the people that did this are gutless, cowards.
They are not men.
And when given the opportunity to acknowledge and apologize, they choose to dig their heals in even deeper.
I did not choose to wake up to this, but I choose to stand up and say this has to stop NOW.
So what can we men do?
When we hear or see something that makes us sick, we need to say and do something.
They need to know that is not cool or funny, and hear it from us men as well.
This is not a feminist “thing”…..it’s a respect thing.
We all need to Man up.
Shawn Shepheard
Author of “Life Is Sweet – Surviving Diabetes and a Whole Lot of Other Crazy Stuff!”
Self Responsibility… The “Philosophical Principle (that) entails ones acceptance of a profoundly moral idea. In taking responsibility for our own existence we implicitly recognize that other human beings are not our servants and do not exist for the satisfaction of our needs.”
The above quote is from the book Six Pillars of Self – Esteem by Nathaniel Branden.
Can you take some time to read the above sentence out loud, maybe more than once.
When I first came across this sentence in the book, I was stopped in my tracks.
If the above is true, and it is, then all of us who have been abused in one form or another would KNOW without the shadow of a doubt that we were wronged.
We would not have to ask others for their opinion of whether we were enough wronged as to take swift action and demand justice.
The married woman who is forced to be a servant to her husband and in-laws would know that she is not there for their implicit or explicit exploitation. She would know that she had the right to say an empowered NO.
If she could accept that she will not be made into an unpaid servant, how might she approach marriage differently? Might she ask the intended in-laws how they expect to treat her? Might she tell her future husband that she will not be forced into a life of servitude and sexual slavery?
I really have no answers to these broad issues but I do know that we must empower women BEFORE marriage to ask harder questions than “do you have a job and where will we live?”
The college woman who is gang raped would know that she needs to report the crime as often as she needs to until something is done. She would have to find the courage to stand against the friend circle who will most likely accuse her of being disloyal and being short sighted about her reputation.
Where did I get these examples of what the friend circle might say? It comes directly from the report of the gang rape at a frat house on the UVA campus.
The 18 year old woman was made to question her loyalties. She was made to stay silent about the horror that was done to her body and her mind by silently suffering.
If we could get women, especially High School and college women, to respect themselves as much as they respect what their friends say, we might be able to bring more rapists to face the music.
Please do not think that I am putting the burden of this whole thing on the shoulders of the survivor of the rape, I am not. I am, however, sure that taking responsibility for extracting justice for a crime that was done is one of the most powerful ways to begin the long and arduous process of healing.
We cannot expect society to change without each individual taking a stand for what is no longer acceptable.
This is how we got rid of slavery.
This is how women got the vote.
This is how dictators fall.
It is only speaking up, as often as we can, and as loudly as we can, that will bring change. It will still be slow, but we can never. ever give up.
Ever.
Love and light,
Indrani
Let me explain to the best of my ability what the phrase “par for the course” means.
A golf course is comprised of 18 different “holes” and each hole has a number.
Golfers will always know which hole they hate the most. That would mean it’s the most difficult.
Levels of difficulty can vary from length from where the golfer begins each hole, called the TEE, to where the golfer needs to sink the putt, the green.
Often a golfer cannot even see the green from the tee. The configuration of the hole can include a huge hill, over which the golfer cannot see the green. The layout can even include an angle and will completely obscure a certain portion of that green.
Each hole must be played according to the integrity of the hole and each golfer approaches their game in his or her own unique way.
The biggest thing I learned while watching the Masters was that the length of a hole was represented by the number that came after the word PAR.
So a Par 3 hole would be shorter in length, but still have as many challenges as a Par 5.
The number ideally means that a golfer can get from start to finish in the prescribed number of holes.
I say ideally because even on a Par 3 a golfer can have a heck of a time sinking his ball in 3 strokes.
The biggest eye opener for me was that a stroke of, let’s say 350 yards, was AS important and significant as the short stroke, called a putt, of 2 or 3 feet.
Anything can happen, and as I saw at the Masters a “sure thing” was often not so sure.
How does this game of golf and the distance of the strokes apply to women who are trying to escape from abuse or women who are simple trying to set a boundary?
The significance is this….
It DOES NOT matter if you take a small, seemingly insignificant action with an abuser like staying out of his way when he is gearing up to strike, or whether you take a huge step of calling the police and getting you and your family out of danger permanently. The most important thing to do is to take ONE step towards the life you want for yourself.
The golfer must have faith in their ability to take the breath and swing his arm with the club attached and then begin to walk to wherever the ball landed and do the same action all over again. Over and over and over. And always with a calm and peaceful demeanor.
What is par for the course of a life without violence?
This is a question that is unanswerable.
We do not know HOW MANY challenges life will throw our way. We do not know how many times we will have the take the same action, the same step with the same person until we can get it thru to them. That we will NOT under ANY circumstances accept any more acts of violence.
We are not in control of whether we contract a serious illness or if a loved one will meet with an accident. As I’m writing this, a dear friends nephew was just shot.
We ARE, however, in control of whether we will accept abuse.
If we all had a ZERO tolerance for accepting abuse, the first time a person did an abusive act would be the last, because we would say “Oh no, not with me, not ever.”
Take a breath.
Take your best stroke/step.
Repeat until you have the culture of peace you require for yourself.
Love and light,
Indrani
Image by Viktor Hanacek via PicJumbo
Often in life, (at least in mine) I find myself in the midst of a conversation that started off nicely, turned a better corner and then BAM, something flies out of someone’s mouth that takes me out of my pre-frontal cortex.
What’s a Pre-frontal cortex you ask?
Well, it’s that part of the brain where language and executive function reside. When you are in your PFC, you are measured, you have the language you need at the ready, you can laugh at yourself and see things as not so personal, etc.
You do all of this and more, without even realizing all the smoothly excited dance moves you are making. It comes from a place of peace and groundedness.
When the PFC is hijacked, by an event such as physical abuse, or by mean spiritedness such as verbal or emotional abuse, the PFC goes offline. It’s like a total black out. You are left groping in the darkness without anything familiar to navigate your surroundings.
In this case it’s really very hard, almost super human, to reach for your best self.
You need some executive functioning to reach for your best self BUT the executive functions are no where to be found.
What to do?
I have seen myself make a bad situation worse, multiple times, by striking out as if my life depended on my response.
Almost as though I have my hands up and pleading for my life.
It feels that urgent….but it has never been that urgent.
I am fortunate that my life has never been threatened in real life, however, the life I have lived in my head sometimes feels like it is being threatened.
Those times, I now realize are the times when my PFC is offline.
I have been training myself to be quiet in those times.
I have been practicing silence in those times.
I offer my practice of silence to you and it needs to be followed up with introspection after the incident.
Introspection can take place with a coach, a therapist, a non-judgmental friend or with journaling.
Write down the incident as you remember using as much detail as you can.
Then also write down a measured response firmly standing in your PFC and replay the scene and SEE yourself delivering the measured response.
Notice if you feel like you want to have many responses, all of them from your best self.
Try this technique out in a few situations over the course of 30-45 days.
Then begin to notice if there are certain people who are likely to hijack you.
Take note of who they are.
The next time you are with them, begin to notice how they are with others.
Do they pounce on others they way you feel they pounce on you?
Study these people like a private detective.
Begin to speak their words even before they say it (silently in your head).
I know a person who is so very oppositional that if they hear the sky is clear they will immediately try to prove the sky to be cloudy. They LOVE to rile people up….it’s their sport of choice.
When I am in such a situation I have started to say, “Nope, not playing this game today.”
Then I leave the room.
The first few times I did that my heart felt like it was trying to escape my chest.
I was sweating like I was running a marathon in 100 degree heat.
It took a while for me to TRAIN myself to deal with this person in these situations.
I am very good at it now.
Know that new behaviors take practice. You have to be patient with yourself. You have to practice in your head and out in real life.
Practicing in your head is like rehearsing for a part in a play. Your part, your play and YOU are writing the new script.
You know the famous William Shakespeare quote “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
Play your part well. Write your own script.
Love & light,
Indrani
I am sitting with a bunch of guys in a dressing room at the local hockey arena. Everyone is taking a break from a game of men’s floor hockey, drinking a few beers, and telling tall tales.
Then it begins…comments about the wives and women in our lives:
“I came home the other day and the house wasn’t even clean. What the hell is she doing all day while I am at work? Sitting around growing her ass or what”
“I told her I was coming here and it was blah blah blah, you never spend time with me. Of course I don’t, all you do is nag”
“Did you see that girl in the bar Thursday night….she had huge guns, they were amazing”
“I totally took her home, banged her, and showed her the door…”
And so it goes. Degenerating into inappropriate jokes and comments that no one in that room would say in public or outside of a room of a bunch of men drinking beer and kidding around.
Now, with my new realizations around Gender Based Violence, and the treatment of women, I need to stand up and say:
“Ummm….hey guys…this isn’t cool, you know. Aaaahhh…talking about your wives this way isn’t helping how your son sees women. That, ah.. that girl in the bar is someone’s daughter. Do you want someone talking about your daughter that way?”
Silence.
Dumbfounded silence mixed with shock, and looks of “who the hell invited this guy?”
Jackson Katz, in the Ted Talk below, clearly explains why focusing on women when talking about gender based violence is wrong, and why this focus needs to shift to men, and what men are doing (and not doing about it). He also clearly explains that men need to become leaders around this topic, and that the true battle will be won, not in public, when we are openly defending women, but within the small groups of men where so much of this harmful talk continues in a “safe zone”.
I hear what Jackson is saying, and it terrifies me. I want to be this leader. I want to make sure my son’s view of women is healthy. I want to protect all the daughters out there. I want to help eliminate violence against women.
Writing for Indrani’s Light Foundation – check.
Helping train others to help women in shelters – check.
Speaking out about gender based violence in social media – check.
Share the message with local schools and other people – check.
Stand up, in the moment, in a group of guys, and call them on their bullshit statements.
Gulp.
That one I NEED to work on, and it isn’t going to be easy.
But I am going to try.
If you are a man, or have men in your life who could use help developing this leadership, and taking this plunge, share Jackson Katz’s video and let’s get started.
Link: http://www.ted.com/talks/jackson_katz_violence_against_women_it_s_a_men_s_issue?language=en#t-284753
A young lady in her mid-twenties is being beaten black and blue by a strong, well-built man as 50+ people stand by and watch.
What would you do?
How would you react?
Visit the following link to read the entire story and let us know what you would do in the comments below if you found yourself in this awful situation.
https://www.facebook.com/indrani.goradia.5/posts/792430934181717?notif_t=mention
Love & light,
Team ILF