Speak Up. Stand Tall.

As some of you might know, I participated in the Miss Austin Peay/Miss Queen City pageant that happened on Saturday the 22nd. I had a blast meeting so many new faces and seeing some again for a second time. Pageants really are a wonderful thing to bring young women together, but they are also a way to shine lights on topics close to our hearts. The Miss America foundation promotes service and platforms that the contestants bring with them. Our current Miss America, Nia Franklin, has the platform of "Advocating for the Arts" and has since teamed with  Sing for Hope which you can learn more about here . My own platform, as you may have guessed, is Speak Up Stand Tall Against Teen Dating Abuse . During the course of Saturday night, I was able to not only speak to the crowd but some of the contestants about what I did within the community as well as my own experience with teen dating abuse. I was met with great acceptance and praise-- and I even won the inaugural Doug Barber...

Emma Murphy isn't an example of teen dating abuse, but she is a survivor of domestic violence-- and her story tells so much of speaking up against abuse. That's why I want to share it. I've talked before in one of my first blog posts, Grow Flowers Raise Voices , but it's about time to talk about it again. As Murphy says in her video, "We all know of somebody who has been through domestic violence," and that makes talking about it all the more important. People who are going through this need to hear a voice of encouragement, to know things get better, and to know it is time to leave their abuser behind. So once again, I want to call out to any other survivors to raise your voices with me. Our stories can  make a difference-- and I have seen the results. We have the power behind us, to help those are still victims and to make those around us aware so they'll see the signs before falling into an abusive relationship. Remember: the first step to preven...

I've always been someone who likes the visuals of videos, so while I'm getting prepared for my pageant and getting into the swing of school, I thought I'd finally show this one! It was made by NoMore.org which is a website campaigning against sexual assault and domestic violence-- it has several good resources I look forward to reading and sharing in the future. One of the things in this video that really stuck out to me was the actual title "It's Just Stress." I feel like that is such a common excuse made for abusers-- they're stressed, of course they're acting like this. In the video, the girl says something along the lines of 'his coaches push him, his parents push him, his teachers push him-- so he pushes me.' I remember thinking similar things, though this video does handle more aggressive physical abuse than I was subject to. I remember thinking 'he's being mean to me because he's angry with his parents' or his teache...

I remember my first talk with a group of teenagers that wasn't just girls. There weren't many boys, maybe three or four, but when I gave statistics about women in abusive situations, I got questions I hadn't really expected: what about men? At the time, I wasn't very sure. Most places didn't give the number of men abused, or else said that it wasn't very clear as men don't report as often. Still, I felt bad that I wasn't able to give anything clear and decided from there on to try to give a better overall look at abuse, further including that facts about abuse against men. Did you know where 1 in 3 women are abused physically, the statistic is nearly the same with 1 in 4 men?  The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV)  website provides statistics such as this on both men and women. When I looked for more sources on domestic violence / abuse against men, a few different websites that it wasn't always easy to identify-- but all of th...