October Is Domestic Violence Awareness Month

Written By: Alexandra Calzadilla

Photograph taken by Sydney Latham

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and to wrap up the month, I want to shed light on the issue through one of my all-time favorite series. From the start of October, I had planned to write an excerpt on this topic. After receiving an email from Miami Dade College encouraging students to raise awareness and share resources, I began brainstorming which specific book could best represent this issue.

The first book that came to mind is from a series I’ve written about a few times. Yes, I know I’ve mentioned it a lot! However, this book series by Chloe Walsh encapsulates many important topics that are often brushed aside. She pours so much passion and emotion into her writing, and it’s truly remarkable. Previously mentioned in my Bullying Awareness Month post, Binding 13 delves deeply into the mental struggles individuals face when they experience domestic violence. Joey and Shannon Lynch’s father was extremely abusive when he consumed alcohol. He would degrade them, along with their mother, because they were the oldest. They experienced physical and verbal abuse from a young age—about five years old—until their late teens.

They promised each other not to tell anyone, because if they did, they risked being separated in foster care. They had previously been placed in foster care, but their eldest brother, Darren, had a traumatic experience there, so they didn’t want to risk it again.

As a result of this abuse, each of them developed different coping mechanisms. Their mother, Marie, started taking sleeping pills and became emotionally unavailable to the point that she couldn’t even care for her newborn son. Joey had to step up and care for all of his siblings, considering them more like his children than his brothers and sisters. He suffered the most, developing a drug addiction at a young age to cope with the emotional and physical pain he endured. He had to take on so much responsibility so early in life that he felt drugs were his only escape. He became someone everyone relied on—his siblings looking to him for protection and his mother depending on him to care for her children. Shannon didn’t develop any negative coping mechanisms, but she did develop extreme anxiety, which affected her daily life and interactions with others.

Learning about the different struggles the Lynch family faced due to this abuse provides perspective on how domestic violence can impact a person. They didn’t feel safe in their home—the one place they should have. Chloe Walsh brilliantly and effectively portrayed the struggles they endured, as well as how their lives changed after escaping their abusive household.

Other books that shed light on domestic violence:

Trigger Warning: Mentions of physical violence

• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

• A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara

• Normal People by Sally Rooney

  
  

Resources from Miami Dade College:

• To report domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, or stalking on campus, call your campus Department of Public Safety or submit an anonymous Silent Witness report at www.mdc.edu/silentwitness.

• For more domestic violence statistics, visit The Domestic Violence Awareness Project and Break the Cycle.