The stories that are coming in to us by email are often sad and devastating in their details. We are editing them currently, and will start publishing them soon on this blog, as a record of what people in our community experience. Their testimony.
The details of the incidents and circumstances are all different from each other, but the common thread is that those who experience violence, abuse and harassment find it a disruptive and demeaning experience in the long term. Reading their personal accounts, in their own words, we see that it takes some time to heal from the damage done to their trust and confidence as well as personal safety by violence inflicted on them.
The fears, doubts and anxieties associated with the experience distort and damage the shape and quality of their lives. Often when events in the present trigger the memories they carry, they find themselves emotionally paralyzed - unable to act, or not able to respond to events in the present day with their full strength and vitality. The impairment of their capacity to trust also operates to make them cautious in reaching out for emotional connection, and affects their social happiness.
This unfortunate and debilitating dynamic, developed over time, must be dismantled in order for a person to come to terms with their experiences, recalibrate and balance their mindset, and develop a positive and optimistic approach to the happy experiences that life has to offer.
To break the continuity of the negative narrative takes commitment. Everyone deserves the right to justice - to recover what Violence has taken from them. Not only in terms of legal cases and police charges, and complaints and penalties and punishments, which are the more official, administrative aspects of the process of prosecuting violence. Today we recognize that the recovery of a human being from experiences of violence is not only physical but emotional, psychological and moral - the recovery of their personal dignity, and their capacity for joy.
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