This may be my first blog that turns into a slow rant yet a testimony. I saw something today that disturbed my spirit enough to write about it.

Today I happened to see a name fly through one of my social media pages that almost made me throw-up. My regular blog readers already know that I am a huge advocate for Domestic Violence, been trained as a DV counselor, and am also a DV survivor. I was married to someone for a very short period of time who was a childhood sweetheart and who also tried to kill me twice and one of the two times held me hostage for over 4-hours. Needless to say Fam, we live & we learn. The scary part is when people don’t learn.

So I saw this guy’s name fly through my news feed and what I saw made me sad. The kind of sad you get when you KNOW something terrible is going to come out of a situation.  I saw a young lady posting all these “Free so-n-so” and quoting lines that the above mentioned nut job has been using since he & I were kids, posting jail mail graffiti name drawings (his notorious jail calling card) Surprise, surprise he was also apparently in jail … which is really not a surprise because in the 20 years I’ve known him, that’s where he usually spends most of his time. The most sickening part was this young lady post statements like “after everything you’ve been through…” I just shook my head. The person she was speaking of has a publicly known track record for beating women bloody (which of course I found out too late obviously).

Here’s my question though, if you meet a new person and you catch wind of a DV history and multiple ones at that, does it ever occur to you that that’s a warning sign? Most people will play it off and blame a “crazy baby mother/father” which is fine and in some cases true. If you research statistics though, once someone has determined that communicating with violence in intimate relationships is okay, they do it to multiple people.

My Mother used to say “a leopard doesn’t change it’s spots”, I agree to a certain degree. I’m a believer that with God all things are possible and if I didn’t there wouldn’t be any hope for me either then because nobody is perfect. However, some folks ain’t livin right and aren’t even trying for that matter.  There are simple common sense things though that we should pay attention to.

Ladies & Gentlemen (because Lord knows there are plenty of men that get hit by women and not too many people address it, but it does happen and women can absolutely be abusive. 9 out of 10 times a victim of domestic violence that is in need of healing and doesn’t get it will then attach herself to a man she can control as a way of getting back the control that was stolen, just like men with a history of child abuse statistically often grow up to become abusers) if the person your dating has a history of domestic violence, investigate. It might save your life.

Be Blessed-

Q