After over 20 years of working with people surviving, perpetrating, witnessing, and parenting through the experience of domestic violence, I still wonder — why are families still wrecked by abuse? We’ve had the awareness campaigns, the data is gathered and published, and most people no longer find it taboo to talk about it. Yet, abuse persists.
I can offer this partial reason: when it happens to you, it always feels like the first AND worst time. Like no one has ever felt how you feel right now. Victimization is devastatingly lonely.
AWARE helps survivors by showing them that they are not alone. And you can imagine — if it helps to have AWARE’s support, how it must feel to have support everywhere you turn? To find hope in the homes of friends, in businesses where you shop, in churches where you worship, and in agencies you visit as you rebuild your life.
In honor of Domestic Violence AWAREness Month, AWARE will be hosting a “Lighting the Way to Peace” campaign. Lighting the Way involves homes, businesses, agencies and churches choosing to display a purple lighted element in their windows. These small symbols are a kind of code. They let survivors know that you value their peace and safety, and that your home or business is a safe place for them.
Find more information about Lighting the Way at www.awareak.org, and be on the lookout for purple lights in your neighbors’ windows. Together, we can Light the Way to Peace in Juneau.
Mandy Cole
Executive Director, AWARE
