"Today Hurts"

Today I am proud to offer a guest post, written by my daughter Joanna. 

“Today hurts.” 

I saw that on someone’s Facebook post the other day. Such a short statement, but such a powerful one. And as I’m writing this, I can honestly say that: today hurts. This week hurts. Let’s be real, this whole year hurts. Recently, we all woke up on what should have been just another Sunday to discover that there was a man disguised as an RCMP officer who was making his way through Nova Scotia, killing innocent people as he travelled. Gabriel Wortman killed 22 people in the span of about 13 hours, in various communities, by setting their houses on fire, or by shooting them. It was, and continues to be, tragic.

 

People say that it is senseless and random. I see where they are coming from, but I disagree. It was not random. It began as an act of domestic violence, and that in and of itself is never random. Perpetrators of domestic violence are manipulative, calculating, and often get away with what they are doing by exerting control and power over others. Domestic violence is never random; it is an intentional act.

 

Gabriel Wortman was a perpetrator of domestic violence. I do not know much about him, and it will not do any good for anyone if I sit here and attempt to figure out what he was thinking, what his partner has endured, or any other specifics about this mass murder.

 

Instead, I want to urge you, PLEAD WITH YOU, to not ignore domestic violence. I work with survivors of domestic violence and I have seen things and heard stories that absolutely break my heart; some that have shattered my view of the world as a “good” place.  Sometimes I wish I could get on a rooftop and scream some of the things that I’ve heard, so that others can know how truly horrific domestic violence can be. Of course, I cannot. However, I can say that the effects of domestic violence continue to be swept under the rug by society as a whole, and it needs to stop. Survivors feel ignored and invisible; they feel unimportant. Domestic violence is not something that people want to talk about or address; it is a family problem, or an individual problem, and society should not get involved, right? WRONG. Domestic violence affects everyone. We can see this by the fact that a perpetrator of domestic violence just took 22 innocent lives. It is not a private matter, and it is not something that we can ignore any more.

 

This is it. This is the moment. This is the turning point. This is where we, as a society, get to decide whether we are going to continue allowing domestic violence to happen, or whether we are going to come together and put an end to it. We can support the women in our lives by knowing where to go for help; but more than that, we can educate the boys and the men in our lives to understand that masculinity does not rely on toughness, on violence, or on having power over others. This is a big change, a big shift, and it will not happen overnight. But we cannot ignore survivors anymore; we cannot say that it is too hard for us to hear what they have been through. As a society, it is time that we open our eyes and open our ears in order to know and recognize the signs and the effects of domestic violence.

 

In the last couple of weeks, Nova Scotia has been described as a peaceful, quiet, idyllic place in which people never suspected that a tragedy like this would occur. It’s described as a corner of the world where violence is unheard of. I love Nova Scotia, and it is a beautiful and unique province. But let me shatter your rose-coloured glasses and say that there is violence that occurs in this province, in supposedly peaceful, quiet, idyllic places on a daily basis. Nova Scotia is not exempt from domestic violence. We may not want to hear about it, and we may have felt as though we are able to ignore it because it happens behind closed doors. No more. Open your eyes.

 

The superintendent of the RCMP stated in his most recent press conference that “Violence against women is intolerable. It’s real, it exists.” He’s right. It’s intolerable. And yet, it is being tolerated in our society and that needs to change. And this is the moment that we, as a society, as proud Maritimers, get to decide whether we are going make that change, or whether we will continue to allow domestic violence to be tolerable, simply because it’s not happening to us.