brian f martin | "Every adversity brings with it the seed of equivalen...

This April, I was inside a high security prison.
The plan was to talk to the men there about the work cdv.org does and to educate them on the connection between childhood adversities and the potential impact.
While I believe I educated them, they also educated me. Here is what I learned....

A card for Mother’s Day takes time to pick out. For a person who grew up living with domestic violence, it takes even longer. There is so much they want to say, but Hallmark hasn’t quite captured the language.
If I were to write one, I would probably start out with, “On this Mother’s Day, I want to tell you something that I never told you. ‘I’m so sorry that you grew up living with domestic violence.’”...

I was talking with a woman I met on a flight the other day and my work in the space of Childhood Domestic Violence (CDV) came up. She told me “That’s a great cause. Child abuse is a big problem, and those children need more people to help them.”
I explained that, yes, child abuse IS a big problem, but that it’s not our specific focus. I then thought to myself, “Why is it that Childhood Domestic Violence is often confused with physical child abuse?”...

Late last night, I Googled “bulimia.” A very good friend called me extremely upset and told me he heard his daughter throwing up after dinner. He is worried but doesn’t know what to do. She is 12 years old.
I don’t know much about this topic, but I knew enough to search for “bulimia.” But then I thought to myself, “If you grow up living with domestic violence, what would you search? What if you’re 12 years old? What would you look up?”...