As the month of October ends and the leaves are falling off the trees, breast cancer events are wrapping up, homecomings have run their course and now it’s on into the holiday season for most of us.

However, for far too many of us, we continue on a journey of falling down the steps at the hands of our intimate partners. We are busy wrapping up knives to put under our pillows in case he starts to strangle us in our sleep.  We put on our running shoes and sleep in them in case we have to escape at a moment’s notice and go back home to Mom’s ranting and raving about why we stayed with him. 

The holiday season is not a fun time nor a joyous time for those of us who live under the guise of a smiling face that pains every time we try to put on the “happy face.”

October is many things to many people but for domestic violence/abuse victims, it is a time for us to have a voice.  We don’t want to be tricked nor mistreated.  Why don’t we get the purple ribbon tribute or the walk for the cure or counseling sessions (if you will) or the women bonding together for a common goal under a purple banner?  While we would never minimize the horror of anyone sustaining breast cancer, we should also recognize that Domestic Violence is claiming too many victims just like breast cancer.  While Domestic Violence is not a disease, It is an epidemic.

As a faith community, we have been much too silent to the atrocities that are associated with DV.  From the laws that are still in effect against women to the horrible statistics that exist in plain view, is a piece of a man really better than no man at all?  I remember the mommas of old telling their daughters that.  “Baby, a piece of a man is better than no man at all! You don’t want to be alone, so stop fussing at him and maybe he won’t hit ‘cha no mo’!” 

Have we as a society and a faith community (especially) deteriorated to such a low level of attributing worth towards women that we sign off and give the go-ahead to those abusers who also attribute little or no worth to their intimate partner?

Well, I’m sure that the 1 in 4 families whose daughters died at the hands of a DV abuser would not agree with you.  Or perhaps the mother who knows that every minute that passes by there is the prospect of her and 19 others being the target for some type of abuse might say, not so!!  Are we comfortable with a N.C. law that charges a person with a felony for hurting a dog but that same person can hurt their wife/girlfriend and walk out of the courthouse with just a misdemeanor? 

Or can we swallow that fact that in S.C., you can still kill your wife on the lawn of the State House on Sunday before sundown and nobody can charge you with a crime?  Wake up people.

Minister Belinda Jackson Colter is a psalmist/songwriter at the Worship Experience Ministries in Charlotte.

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