Tag Archives: domestic violence

The Clock is Ticking …. TIC TOC

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The countdown to the public release of her TEDx Talk continues!  Here is part four of an excerpt of Indrani’s TEDxPortofSpain Talk!

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“By the way, the clock is ticking to count how many women and children will be abused by the end of my talk.

…. Every time a hand is raised to strike someone a question must be asked WHY? Why do we insist on passing on the disease of pain and violence to the most vulnerable?

My task today, in these precious few minutes, is to empower you to go home to your communities and families and STOP the violence to women and children.

Now before we continue, please hold up your hand if you know someone who has been beaten or violated?

Please look around, to see the prevalence of abuse in our communities.”

CALL TO ACTION

We need your support! We invite you to click on the social media buttons that appear when you hover over the image above and share this post with your friends, family, and community.  Then ask them to share this blog.  Remember, there is someone out there that you may know who needs to see this TEDx Talk because they are suffering.  Thank you for considering this call to action.

With deepest gratitude,

Team ILF

Welcome to the real world…

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kid-165256_640said John Mayer in his song.

And at one of my speaking gigs, a man who wanted me to accept that we should beat our children said “join the real world.”

What is the real world?

It’s the world where you feel comfortable EVEN if it is full of violence.

I should know.

I was abused by one of my parents and when I was 21 or 22 I accused the non-abusive  parent of NOT caring enough to ABUSE me.

Yes, abuse made me comfortable. It was familiar territory.

The man at the lunch was comfortable within the familiarity of his way of parenting.

He could not imagine parenting without beating his children. He was very vocal about HIS real world.

I have no desire to live in his real world.

Just like I do not want to live in the real world of ISIS, or in the real world of the Taliban or ANY world where women are the considered the PROPERTY of men.

MY real world is full of love and acceptance.

MY real world is a world that commits to ending violence to women and children.

MY real world is a world where adults can look in the mirror and see where they can become better parents, leaders, husbands, wives etc.

It is NOT a world where adults say, “I refuse to change my old ways.”

So…

 
What world do YOU live in?

Love and light,

Indrani

Are you trading self-respect for fake protection?

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51kzKRuJCYL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_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

Self Responsibility…….

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sunset-401541_1280Self 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

Violence IS NOT Par for the course….

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golf-83869_1280Let 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

Heat stability, the power to thrive under pressure.

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I love having conversations with professionals in different fields of study. One such exchange was with a few chemical engineers, who were explaining to me about chemicals that are heat sensitive or heat stable.

This definition of chemical stability comes from Wikipedia: Chemical stability when used in the technical sense in chemistry, means thermodynamic stability of a chemical system.[1]

Thermodynamic stability occurs when a system is in its lowest energy state, or chemical equilibrium with its environment. This may be a dynamic equilibrium, where individual atoms or molecules change form, but their overall number in a particular form is conserved. This type of chemical thermodynamic equilibrium will persist indefinitely unless the system is changed. Chemical systems might include changes in the phase of matter or a set of chemical reactions.

The instances of abusers going completely crazy  and killing the individuals that they are blaming for the fury makes me think of chemicals that are NOT stable.

Abusers are NOT stable people. We never know when they will fly off in a rage, and decide that they must take drastic action and kill and maim people.

I am not an expert on what happens inside the body when people are in rage.

I am willing to guess that they feel like they MUST react and must react fast. They may feel like the other people are “winning” but if asked they probably cannot even verbalize what the game is that the other is winning!

How can we encourage abusers to learn to be heat stable?

How can we teach them that THEY are the only ones in control of their own behaviors?

How can we empower abusers who have not had any training in self management to be able to manage themselves?

We must start with YOUNG people. We must start in schools. We MUST at least START.

Here at Indranis Light, we have started. We have FREE classes.

Here is the link: http://www.liveabrighterlife.eventbrite.com/

Send the link to someone who is suffering from abuse.

Send the link to the young people in your life.

Send the link to women whom you suspect  are suffering and oppressed.

Do SOMETHING that will cost you nothing. Send the link.

If you are afraid that your friend may never again speak to you, take the chance anyway.

Take the chance. Do something. Send the link.

Here is the link again.

http://www.liveabrighterlife.eventbrite.com/

We are on iTunes. We are FREE on iTunes.

Please do something.

 
Love and light,
Indrani

Are Statistics Killing the Fight Against Gender Based Violence?

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sad-girl-236769_128030% of women who have been in a relationship report that they have experienced some form of violence by their partner…

OR

… 2 weeks after getting married Alice’s husband began telling her that she was worth nothing, no one else would ever want her, and she was lucky that he had decided to marry her. Alice finally decided to leave, 20 years later, when her husband got angry and put his fist through the wall, missing her head by inches.

38% of murders of women are committed by an intimate partner…

OR

… Ellen did not have dinner ready when her husband came home one night. He went to the shed, retrieved an axe, entered the home, and proceeded to assault his wife with the axe putting her in the hospital with multiple injuries. Years later, when Ellen’s husband was released from jail, Ellen took him back into her home to continue their life together.

Statistics or stories.

Which has a greater impact? Which makes the situation of Gender Based Violence feel more real to those who are not directly involved?

What if all of the numbers being collected, compiled, and shared, are not only, not the answer, to ending Gender Based Violence, but are part of the problem?

Numbers make things less messy, more sterile, something to read, then nod your head, perhaps making a “tsking” sound before moving on with your day. Or, even worse, numbers can be something that are misunderstood or used to minimize a problem:

“30% of women, well that is less than half of all women, so should we really be throwing more money at this problem?”

“Stats show that the number hasn’t been increasing over the years, so it isn’t a growing problem”

One of the most impactful events in the past year on Gender Based Violence awareness was not a new percentage of people affected, it was Ray Rice punching his girlfriend in the head on camera.

From Statistics to Stories

What if, instead of using calculated numbers, the fight against Gender Based Violence focused more on telling stories?

Instead of a sterile stat spoken in a news clip, 365 personal stories were collected from women about their personal experience with Gender Based Violence, and one of these stories was spoken (and witnessed) on the news every night?

What if, instead of compiling a stat like 30% of women, actual real time numbers were tracked to provide a clearer story? A website or phone number that abused women could visit or call and quickly register that they were just abused, creating an ongoing tally of how serious this problem is.

30% is a stat, knowing that on Monday 10,000 women had reported being abused, but by Tuesday 11,250 women had been abused helps numbers tell a story that people can better understand and take action on.

What if, we stop letting the numbers distance us from the problem and start to live these experiences with the women suffering on a day to day basis?

Could a focus on stories instead of statistics make a big difference in the goal of eliminating Gender Based Violence?

50 Shades of Abuse……..

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downloadThe Fifty Shades of Grey movie, which hits movie theaters on Valentine’s Day, is causing a bit of stir as some people say it glamourizes stalking and abusive behavior.

Check out this article from The Huffington Post about #50DollarsNot50Shades, a grassroots effort dissuading people from buying tickets to the movie and encouraging them to donate to a women’s shelter instead.

No matter what your stance is on the content of this book and movie, donating to your local Domestic Violence Shelter or Agency is always a good idea in our book. 

“Hollywood doesn’t need your money; abused women do.” The #50DollarsNot50Shades Campaign

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/05/activists-fifty-shades_n_6621840.html?ir=Women&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000046

 

Love & light,

Team ILF