Tag: National Domestic Violence Awareness Month

October is Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) Awareness month (also referred to as Domestic Violence Awareness), a month dedicated to raising awareness about IPV, the impact it has on families, and how community members can work together to stop cycles of abuse from continuing and even starting. As the month ends, we are taking time to discuss the realities of intimate partner violence within the lives of families in our care and how deeply it impacts the way children navigate their healing and growth.  

October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and on our blog we’ve shared different perspectives on this tremendously impacting issue, detailing how detrimental it is to our families, communities and culture as a whole. Every instance of domestic violence has multiple victims; multiple lives irrevocably changed. Below is such a life. Tanya Winje, an FCNI Program Supervisor, bravely shares her personal story of fear, hopelessness, survival and healing. 

Recently, I pulled up a slide presentation for a training I lead for staff here at Family Care Network about Intimate Partner Violence. In my effort to refresh the slides and update statistical information,  I was reminded that October marks National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

In providing this training to my colleagues, I sometimes preface my presentation by stating that although I did not learn what I am sharing in college or at an institute, I feel that I have expertise in the subject of Domestic Violence because I lived it. As a child who grew up in an abusive home where the cycle of violence played out over and over again with the abuse becoming increasingly worse over the years, sometimes I feel as if I have earned a degree in the subject from the school of hard knocks.