As a child, there was nothing anyone could do to protect me. I know that now. There were simply too many abusers with too many connections for me to be safe. That being said, there are things you can do to keep yourself and your children safe.
In Compton for instance – one of a thousand places that does this – they put bars on the windows. For obvious reasons, they also do it in Bolivia, all over America, and other areas. They even have them over the windows here in Vancouver, BC.
Another way to protect yourself is to get yourself a decent alarm. Alarms will scare off would-be burglars and potential abusers. Cameras also, and I know this might make you feel like you are living in a prison, but at the end of the day you want to be safe, not sorry.
Self-defense classes are a great way to build up your self-confidence, your muscles, and your ability to protect yourself and those you love, but if self-defense is the route that you’re going to go, I urge you to take it seriously. Build a safety plan around you not having to be the fucking hero.
Work with local community groups to build your safety plan, work with your neighbors, talk to the people in your area who can help you develop your safety plan so that if something happens, it’s not entirely dependent on you to protect you and yours.
Some people recommend getting guns and having weapons in your home, but many abusers, and specifically burglars can be prepared for that, so again, you want your story to end differently than it did mine.
When the cops come to your door and ask if anyone’s broken into your house, don’t let them take your word for it, do a walk-through with them, and ask every person in the house, because this actually did happen.
One night when my abusers were trying to break in, they caught the main one because they were patrolling the fucking area, had they asked me, I’d have said he’d been raping me for weeks, but no one did, and I didn’t know until later that the cops had indeed arrested him. I spent decades thinking he’d just gotten bored and terrified he was going to come back and bring all his disgusting friends with him.
If the cops had bothered to do their jobs, they would have found out thirty years ago, that the man was a part of a massive rape gang terrorizing the fucking neighborhood, but at the time I thought I was alone.
It was only when I saw his face in the paper thirty years after everything was done, that I recognized exactly where I’d seen him, which drove me to go insane for several months while I tried to wrap my head around all the memories I’d been hiding.
I don’t think a gun would have saved me. I do think that having an alarm and having windows and balcony doors that couldn’t be popped out of place with ease, would have protected me.
I remember distinctly how they broke in, more than once, and the threats of what would happen if I ever tried to lock the door or if I wasn’t home one night when they came for me.
I tell you this because I want you to understand that trauma doesn’t disappear overnight. It can happen in an instant, it can take two seconds for a person to be traumatized so deeply that their soul cracks open, but it can take decades to figure out how to deal with it all.
For many years I ignored it, I was an angry loud, abusive person, who bullied others because I didn’t know what was going on with me, I just knew if I didn’t like you, I would go out of my way to be the worst version of myself around you.
This was often my way of protecting myself from folks that were very much like me, or too different from me for me to accept that everyone has a right to different views.
I’ve grown a lot as I’ve released so much of my trauma, I am as they say, “A Healing Bitch,” but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t take buckets of tears, and toilets filled with vomit, or exhaustion so deep you think you’re never going to want to wake up.
It takes work, self-defense classes, and the purification of the idea that you can’t protect yourself, to help you realize that you’re stronger than you know, and have the strength to fight back, being prepared and ready to fight back, stop a lot more deaths than it doesn’t.
I just want my audience, read you, to understand there are things you can do to protect yourself, don’t leave your drink on its own, is a simple one, one we’ve been teaching since the nineties.
But what about changing the locks when you move into a new apartment, or making sure that the screws in the door jam are longer than an inch or two? Did you think about that? What about a boot stopper, that prevents people from breaking down your doors?
These items – screws and boot stoppers – are all available on sites like Amazon for less than 50 dollars, which isn’t as much as you think, when it comes to your safety.
Your children, and you in particular, don’t deserve to deal with the trauma of having your personal space and your home invaded.
So the last thing I’ll say on this topic is to know the laws in your area. Know what you are legally allowed and not allowed to do to protect yourself.
For instance, in BC, it’s rumored if someone punches you, you have the legal right to hit them back 3 times in self-defense. Just three, so make em count. And also make sure that advice is legal before you get into a fight.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall, The Original Loud Mouth Brown Girl
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 