LOVELY BONES: Fighting for Control

I’m going to write about how awesome the whole NZ premiere was in a separate post, but I wanted to talk about the movie itself first.
It took me a year of the book on my shelf before I could drum up the courage to read it. In part because its chief protagonist, shares the same [...]

How do I leave my violent partner?

Im 21 and I’m stuck in a relationship that I’m too weak to leave. I have
been with my partner for two years now, this has been the first serious
relationship i’ve been in and I’m in far too deep. We argue almost four
times a week with him saying really horrible things [...]

It’s good to watch the danger signals

After posting the story of one violent relationship I was sent another story.
I wonder about publishing these- but I think it is important. We need to feel we can share our story with someone and for many there are danger signals, a gut in our stomach feeling things aren’t right, but we ignore it.
The person [...]

Shining a light on Domestic Violence

For a long time I’ve wanted to help people who find themselves in domestically abusive relationships. I say abusive rather than violent as we tend to think of violence as something that is just punches, blows and kicks. However abuse can be emotional, spiritual (using faith as an excuse to treat someone badly), or economic [...]

Airing Dirty Laundry

A really interesting row broke out on a friend’s facebook page tonight. She was talking about how frustrated she was that a guy who had deeply hurt her was still on a dating site they had met on- and that any attempt to warn people about him was met with reactions that she was being [...]

Is it ever ok to sleep with someone underage?

I’ve had one of those awful days where the same theme keeps on appearing. First a book called Where Angels Fear arrived from Hachette yesterday morning and I picked it out to rifle through during brekkie today. It’s written by two women Shy Keenan and Sara Payne about their work with survivors of child abuse- one [...]

Why do we get angry?

It can be an explosive and dangerous emotion, and for that reason we often work hard to not let it show. Anger however is a completely natural and normal reaction. Learning to manage our anger is one of the hardest skills especially if we haven’t had clear help doing so as a child.
Many people (particularly [...]

We’re all a little bit insecure

I’ve been thinking about confidence a bit recently. People see me as a confident person- and in many areas I am. Didn’t use to be of course. I just one day started a bit of a journey of “fake it til you make it”; to try and bolster my confidence, found it wasn’t as scary as I [...]

I have “fuck off” tattooed on my forehead

I was talking to a good friend the other day about why some people can feel unnoticed and passed over all the time. And I was explaining that sometimes it’s because without even realising it, we’ve written a big “go away and leave me alone” sign on our heads, which makes everyone keep their distance.
She [...]

Stop hitting me!

Above is a shocking link that Keira Knightly has made on domestic violence.
I watched this with really mixed feelings. I am honestly not sure- no matter how shocking this was, at how effective this sort of advertising is for people actually caught in this situation.
I remember watching a similar Women’s Refuge advertisement about five years [...]

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