We are inviting the Empowering + Fabulous women out to a Social & please bring a hero, 1st Responder, Veteran or Military Family Member. We will have food, drinks and music.
We will be selling raffle tickets for a $1 to a trip to an Outdoor Retreat in Bend Oregon. Winner will be announced Sept 5th.
Please go to the FB event page to let us know if you will be attending. Hope to see you there!
We need our girlfriends at every age, acquaintances with whom we share a social gathering as well as those we entrust with our hearts. It’s nice to have friendships of all kinds, but how do we know which people are part of our tribe; …those friendships that run deep and will last for years?
There is a theory that one way to choose a friend is to decide if you have 2 beers with them and let them watch your puppy over the weekend. The first thing is asking yourself “if they are worth spending your time with”, the second is “do you trust them”.
We should also ask…”how they make us feel about ourselves”. Do they make us feel relaxed and enjoy their company enough to forget feeling self-conscious? Do they listen when we talk and offer support? Do they keep our confidence? Do they avoid gossip? Are we engaging in an activity that is healthy and satisfying?
We should also pay attention to their moods and emotions to determine if they are stable. The best friendships are not demanding or clingy, but welcome others into the group for social functions. They also should have long-term close friends, and if not, you might want to find out why their past friendships ended.
Amidst all the good qualities we want in a friend, possibly the most important is grace. When we make a mistake, will they come to us and ask us to work it out? Will they give us the opportunity to explain or apologize?
A good friend will do all of the above and is worth adding to your tribe. They’ll have those 2 beers with you (or glasses of wine) And take care of your puppy. Hold them close to your heart.
“Small Gift, Big Heart $5 Can make a difference.” Please help us in our Mission to build a bridge to Hope for individuals in need. “House of Hope” in McKinney, Texas. A house of inspiration, connection, and a chance to make a real impact for someone in need. We currently are raising funds to help house a 78 yr old woman with no family, and 3 single parents that are recovering from abuse and injustice in the family courts. There is no assistance available in the local shelters or agencies. Please consider giving…..thank you!“Small Gift, Big Heart $5 Can make a real difference””
The first time I called 911 about my husband’s violence was the second time it happened. Lorin was a two-time combat veteran with severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Before he came back from Iraq, I was given a military brochure that warned about irritability and hypervigilance, and instructed me to adjust to the “new normal.”
That I needed to adapt to this “new normal” was echoed by VA personnel and TV programs. None of them mentioned that wives of veterans with PTSD are at a higher risk of severe domestic abuse and potentially lethal intimate partner violence (IPV) than almost any other demographic in the nation, particularly if the veteran also has a traumatic brain injury. Those are the signature wounds of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. To cite just one of many studies, a 2009 report from the Department of Veterans Affairs Office of Public Health and Environmental Hazards found that 81 percent of veterans suffering from depression and PTSD had engaged in at least one violent act against their partner in the preceding 12 months. The research also revealed that more than half of veterans with PTSD had performed one severe act of violence in the past year—a rate more than 14 times higher than that of the general civilian population.
The past 16 years have seen catastrophic rises in the rates of domestic violence, murder, and child abuse and neglect in families of post-9/11 veterans, evidenced by data from the Department of Justice, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Defense. Before 9/11, the Army received roughly 35 to 50 cases of domestic abuse a month. By 2005, they were fielding approximately 143 cases a week, a twelve-fold increase. The Pentagon reported that there was also a demonstrable escalation in the severity of violence between 2001 and 2005. Calls to the National Domestic Violence Hotline from people affiliated with the military more than tripled from 2006 to 2014.
Lorin had strangled me unconscious before, but I didn’t call the police. I called the military chaplain, who never called back. Nearly five years went by before Lorin got violent again, this time hurling 10-pound rocks at me. I ran into the house and locked the doors. The dispatcher kept me on the phone and I cried into the receiver, waiting for the sheriff. Two deputies arrived, along with a fire truck and an ambulance. I answered questions from the deputy I’d let inside, and looked out the kitchen window as Lorin played the veteran card with the other officer. A few minutes later, the officer came to me and said, “He told me he doesn’t have any anger toward you. He’s just having a bad day. He doesn’t feel well.”
They loaded Lorin into the ambulance and took him to the ER. I moved out within a matter of days, and a few months later Lorin got his M4 semi-automatic weapon and threatened to find me. I called 911 again, and this time they put out an APB and located Lorin, who tried to commit suicide-by-cop. The sheriff tased him and took him to the psych ward, and a deputy called me.
“You’re lucky he doesn’t know where you live, or this would have ended very differently,” the deputy said. “I strongly suggest you get a restraining order. We have Lorin’s M4 in evidence.”
Several days went by before the local domestic violence organization returned my frantic messages pleading for help filing a restraining order, and then only after I burned the ears of some congressional staffers. The victim’s advocate never showed up for the court hearing, and Lorin was never charged. No charges or lesser charges in cases of veteran IPV is pretty typical. One woman I know of spent three days in a Louisiana hospital after her veteran husband beat her nearly to death. He was charged with verbal assault. Another woman, Susan C., has endured multiple incidents of veteran violence, and she’s called 911 a number of times, but her abuser has never been charged with abuse.
“Instead of facing charges for domestic violence, the police and sheriffs in two different states take him in for an involuntary psychiatric hold and he’s never prosecuted,” said Susan. “I’ve been trying to get divorced for a year [and] I am $10,000 in the hole … the ostracism I felt after ‘abandoning’ him was acute when I needed support the most.” Susan asked her attorneys, “Which is the trump card: battered spouse or disabled veteran?”
Usually, it’s the veteran.
Lisa Collela, founder of Healing Household 6 (HH6), a nonprofit organization supporting caregivers of veterans, said, “I had a caregiver tell me that after being severely injured by her wounded warrior, the police officer told her ‘Because he is [mentally] disabled and has no place to go, you’ll have to leave.’” The officer wrote that in his report, even though the woman was being battered and had young children. HH6 is one of only a handful of agencies nationwide serving the millions of women who are married to combat vets or are veterans’ caregivers. What those women most often want to know is: Where do I go for help around domestic violence?
Where, indeed?
Military spouses and caregivers of veterans (97 percent are women, primarily wives) are far more likely to be financially dependent upon their abuser than civilian women. The frequency of moves and deployments make it difficult for military spouses to secure and keep jobs. The stress and demands of caring for a combat-injured veteran are so significant that many caregivers wind up quitting their jobs. The Department of Defense has emergency relief and transitional funds available for spouses suffering abuse by a service member. But in practice, the military is still loath to confirm that abuse is happening, because it will, in theory, require them to address it.
The court-martial system was back-burnered while the military was conducting war on two fronts. An article in The Army Lawyer stated that, whether at home or away, “[C]ommanders and judge advocates exercised all possible alternatives to avoid the crushing burdens of conducting courts-martial…” According to a 2010 Army Report, nearly 87 percent of soldiers found to have committed spouse abuse and child abuse and neglect over a six-year period were never referred for counseling, and could still carry a weapon.
“I’m not usually one for more government involvement, but something needs to happen federally to protect our military families from corrupt practices that dismiss abusers just because they are veterans,” stated Collela.
HH6 assists military spouses and caregivers in domestic violence situations with relocation and housing, and some local shelters offer safe haven and support. But shelter services and support for DV survivors vary widely from state to state, and resources for caregivers are especially scarce in the western United States. I live in southern Oregon, and was unable to get any help finding housing or employment. There was no legal aid or emergency funds or mental health services available for me. I lost my health insurance when I left, and the pro bono providers I spoke with said my situation was “too complex” for them. But there was an abundance of assistance available for my abuser, either from the VA or local nonprofits and advocacy organizations serving veterans. And once he got out of detox and the psych ward, he could still buy a gun.
We must stand down veteran domestic violence. This will mean preventing vets with mental health conditions known to greatly increase the likelihood of potentially deadly domestic abuse—conditions that merit hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars a month in disability benefits—from purchasing firearms. It might mean disciplining the cops who don’t arrest violent veterans, and suspending the district attorneys who won’t file criminal charges until the caregiver is dead. I have written a bill, the Kristy Huddleston Act, named after my friend who was shot to death by her Iraq war veteran husband. The legislation, copying the DOD program, authorizes the VA to provide transitional funds for veterans’ spouses and caregivers to escape veteran domestic violence. My Oregon senators, Wyden and Merkley, have pledged to introduce the bill later this year. And if we really want to stop the war at home, let’s stop the socially sanctioned grooming of wives of veterans to accept this fatal “new normal.”
After losing my brother to self-harm and knowing he was in a very bad space in his mind, it brought me much anger and frustration between me and my immediate family members. Nothing is worse than knowing something is wrong with someone you love, and not being able to influence or help change the outcome of a destructive situation.
Sadly, there are generations of Oppositional Defiant Family Members , “Reprobates”, that are proud, not teachable, unmerciful, without understanding, cruel, hateful, malicious and wicked among my relatives, and maybe yours too. I didn’t want to be included on that list, so I decided to get involved in learning about the brain. I wanted to find out why people behave the way they do. Especially because my family members all confess to follow Jesus Christ, and have been baptized into the Christian faith, and their spiritual experience wasn’t reflecting being a “New person”, and it wasn’t changing there behaviors. Could it be something else….
Suicide, Suicidal Ideation, violence and lawlessness in this country is at all time highs. The Constitutional Rights of every citizen have been denied through the Unrighteous, Wicked and Unmerciful Leaders that are part of the Patriarchal Systems that oversee our communities and families. They ignore the Laws that this Republic was founded upon, and they continue to create Chaos and loose Evil through the democracy that says the majority rules whether they are good or evil. Meanwhile, America suffers as one of the 3 sickest countries in the world?! How does this happen, I wondered. I know God knew, but could I know too?
Brains run the government, your family, your city and this country that I love. May I point out that “Your mind, is not your brain.” Your mind is like a stream that runs through a valley, may I ask you is the water flowing with wisdom, or is a dam in the way called pride?
As a multi generational Military family member, a former United States Army Major Spouse and Mother of 3 Active duty children, related to 13 families on the Mayflower, a descendent of John Adams the 2nd President of the United States of America. I am determined to make a difference for my ancestors, my legacy and AMERICA. Will you join me?
