Ink Palpitations

poetically speaking...

Hello Poets, Poetesses, and Lovers of Words!

As some of you may, or may not know, the issue of Domestic Violence, is a travesty that is taken very seriously by me and has been the subject matter of many of my pieces of poetry. Which leads me to letting you all know that October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Domestic Violence Awareness Month evolved from the first Day of Unity observed in October, 1981 by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence. The intent was to connect battered women’s advocates across the nation who were working to end violence against women and their children. The Day of Unity soon became a special week when a range of activities were conducted at the local, state, and national levels.

These activities were as varied and diverse as the program sponsors but had common themes: mourning those who have died because of domestic violence, celebrating those who have survived, and connecting those who work to end violence.

In October 1987, the first Domestic Violence Awareness Month was observed. That same year the first national toll-free hotline was begun. In 1989 the first Domestic Violence Awareness Month Commemorative Legislation was passed by the U.S. Congress. Such legislation has passed every year since with NCADV providing key leadership in this effort.

In October 1994 NCADV, in conjunction with Ms. Magazine, created the "Remember My Name" project, a national registry to increase public awareness of domestic violence deaths. Since then, NCADV has been collecting information on women who have been killed by an intimate partner and produces a poster each October for Domestic Violence Awareness Month, listing the names of those documented in that year.

The Day of Unity is celebrated the first Monday in October. NCADV hopes that events in communities and regions across the fifty states will culminate in a powerful statement celebrating the strength of battered women and their children.

In honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, I will be featuring poetry pertaining to this problem plaguing our communities. I invite anyone who has poetry to share that they would like to feature to contact me @ inkpalpitations@aol.com.

Love & Light to all of you!

Heidi

www.ncadv.org

Beauty from ashes

I have spent the past few months working on my memoirs, "Beauty From Ashes". With October being Domestic Violence Awareness month, I found it fitting to offer the first page of the book here:

Chapter One:

July 12, 2007

I prayed silently within my head to the Creator, supplications whispered mentally:

“Please… just let one of these blows be the kiss of death for me. God… please… PLEASE… let him just kill me.”

I felt the zipper of my hooded sweatjacket digging so deeply into the tender ivory of my throat… not unlike the teeth of tiny creatures ripping at my flesh. His left hand gripped the hood, holding my 5’2 frame approximately a foot off of the ground. My esophagus was seizing each and every time I struggled for an inhalation. His right hand kept pummeling blow after blow into the temple of my head. How could the very same hands that loved me so passionately deep into the midnight hours of so many nights be the same hands that were now beating the life from my body?

The pungent odor of sweat mixed with stale beer and cigarette smoke infiltrated my nostrils… and I found myself praying once again while fighting back the bile rising in my throat. Vehemently asking God to allow me to simply breathe in the scent of lilacs. I tried to will my mind to go back to my childhood…when I loved the smell of them in my grandmother’s yard. I would go and simply bury my face in the beautiful lavender blossoms…and breathe. Maybe… just maybe if I could take myself there, the chokehold on my throat would be something I could rise above.

With each word he spoke, as he continued to beat me, came his saliva spewed into my face.

“BITCH…LOOK…AT…ME…O…PEN YOUR…EYES….AND LOOK….AT…ME”

He was syllabically battering his words into me…literally…with each few syllables… the pain seared through the side of my head, rattling the membranes of my mentals. As hard as I tried to focus on his eyes and see him, I could not. Everything had become a haze and all I could see was the outline of his stocky frame before me. I never knew, until that moment, that haze has a sound. It sounds a bit like when the television set is tuned into a channel with no broadcast. Fuzzy… a steady wooshing playing on an endless loop inside of my head. I could barely hear his words, and the last bit of my energy seemed as though it would be spent struggling to obey him…even in my moment of death. Subservient me…dying to humble myself to my man.

Something inside me kept fighting… battling to simply HEAR him so that I could just do what he was telling me to do. Thinking just maybe if I was compliant, he would stop. I found myself teetering between wishing for my demise to come more swiftly…and adamantly denying him the capability to crush me. I felt myself slipping closer and closer to the brink of death… wondering if each barely beneficial breath I was breathing would be my last. Then I heard it. I could hear the sound of my children screaming and crying from inside of the apartment, their mother on the other side of the door being beaten to death… their young spirits being crushed along with bones in the cranium of the woman who was the vessel that brought them into this world…and I realized something at that very moment in time.

I had become my mother. My son and two daughters were my brother, my sister, and I. I had allowed my father’s lies spoken into me as a child to be embedded in me so deeply that I was now living his fallacies. I spent my adult years refusing to speak to him because of all the things he did to kill the spirits of my mother, my siblings, and I…and here I was…a 36 year old version of her…my Mama…being beaten to the edge of insanity… beaten to the limits of her life… and the children’s eyes were witnessing it all…

The book then takes the reader back into my childhood, and shows the history that bound me in the chains of a generational curse that brought me to the point where I was on that day...and then details my victory as each link of the chain is slowly broken, and I...and my three children are set free.

Keep your eye out!

Be sure to tune in to Pam Osbey's show "In Praise of Those Who've Conquered Domestic Violence"!

From Pam's BTR page:

We'll discuss celebratory stories of those who have over come this horrible abuse that women and men have dealt with. Listen to representations by authors Almari Jonson, Felicia Madlock, Sunida York as they come with musicality of words and prose. Panel discussions about resources available to women and children with Touching Heart founder, Brooks J. Young, and others as we provide a safe space for all to interchange positivity for those who may not be able to speak their voices. There will be a short open mic so come with verse, poetry, songs, and or your own testimony. We will discuss prevention tips and also talk about community resources available in Chicago, New York and Atlanta. We offer you a place to begin your healing, and great conversations for your inner soul. Being the renewal process, today!