Renee Mitchell didn’t have to be hit to know she was hurting. She didn’t have to bear bruises to know she was injured. Her bones weren’t broken, but she knew she was ravaged by domestic violence.
And when it was over, she knew she didn’t have to be quiet about it anymore, and never would be again.
“I’m a survivor of domestic violence and when I was going through the situation I didn’t know a lot about it,” said Mitchell, whose husband was emotionally and verbally abusive. “I didn’t understand what the symptoms were. I wasn’t able to put a definition to it and felt I needed to put a definition on it, to call it out, and then empower other women to do the same.”
So Mitchell, an accomplished poet, recording artist and columnist for The Oregonian, used her creative energy to get the word out, and applied her message of empowerment to music, theater and spoken word. She’s been divorced for two years now, and in that time has developed a theatrical presentation titled Nae!Nay!, a nickname for Renee. She’ll be performing and speaking this month as the featured artist for the 2006 Domestic Violence Summit: Speak Out Against the Violence, on Oct. 7 in Pioneer Courthouse Square. Mitchell is working on an information campaign that abuse can happen to everyone in all forms, “my shoes fit them; their shoes fit me,” she says. But people tend to dismiss it as someone else’s tragedy.
“It was never my issue before,” she says. “Even though these statistics were out there, this was not me. It didn’t draw my attention until it actually happened to me.
Through Nae!Nay!, Mitchell hopes to teach people how to set boundaries and to take their power back, to learn how to feel good about themselves as they are, she said. “I’m trying to pour back into people what’s been taken away from them through violence.”
Music and entertainment makes a difficult subject such as domestic violence palatable, Mitchell says. And in calling it out — being honest about her own experiences and letting women know they are not alone — Mitchell is continuing her own therapy.
“I do this to help other women, but I also do this to help myself,” Mitchell said. “Every time I go through this, it is more and more healing for me.”
Raphael House is hosting the summit in recognition of October as National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Raphael House is Oregon’s largest shelter for women and children fleeing domestic violence, serving more than 350 survivors each year. Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury to women, according to national studies, and one in four women will experience domestic violence during her lifetime.
“It’s an issue that even today is still so widely misunderstood,” said Lisa Marshall with Raphael House. “So many people think only of a man beating up his wife or girlfriend. Some people use the term intimate partner violence. Men are injured. It includes emotional abuse. It includes types of financial abuse — every type of control over someone you have an intimate relationship with.”
The Oregon Women’s Health and Safety Survey, published last year, found that one in 10 Oregon women age 20-55 — more than 85,000 women — suffered intimate partner abuse, defined as physical and/or sexual assault by an intimate partner, in the five years preceding the survey. Approximately 30,000 women reported such abuse in the 12 months preceding the survey.
The abused women also reported lingering problems such as depression, anxiety, and serious injuries, such as broken bones. And compared to women who were not abused, the victims reported a much high rate of the number of days when poor mental and physical health interfered with their work, daily activities, school and child care.
Through the Summit, Marshall says she hopes the community will come together over the issue and tap into the resources available, not only for victims but for people looking for the tools to help someone escape an abusive relationship. Everyone in the community can benefit from learning more about domestic violence, because everyone has a stake in ending it, according to Marshall.
“Domestic violence has a massive economic impact on the entire community,” Marshall said. “Nationally, the cost of domestic violence every year is estimated to be more than $5.8 billion, in health care expenses, loss of earnings for missing work, and much of that is borne by employers. Employers and taxpayers are paying the cost of the problem.”
In Oregon, the estimated cost is more than $50 million every year, Marshall said. And that doesn’t include costs that are difficult to quantify in terms of law enforcement and criminal justice.
But the statistic that really tears at Marshall’s heart is this: In 2004, there were more than 10,000 requests for domestic violence shelter in Oregon that could not be met because of a lack of resources.
In her column in The Oregonian, Mitchell often bears witness to the domestic violence she sees spilling out onto the streets. A lot of the youths on the streets, she says, are running away from the violence in their homes.
“I think that a lot of youths are out on the streets because of domestic violence,” Mitchell said. “A lot of it happens in homes where parents are being violent toward their children, and sometimes in the opposite direction. I think a lot of our youths, especially those in the foster care system, are experiencing domestic violence and not even realizing that that’s what it is. They are trying to figure out how to survive when someone is making them feel unworthy, calling them names, putting them down, and making them feel like everything is their fault.”
The cycle continues even after they leave the home. Youths on the streets are much more vulnerable to people who are violent, and have limited options for escaping that environment.
Statistics indicate that there’s child abuse in 70 percent of families experiencing domestic violence. A significant element of the Domestic Violence Summit is tailored for teen-agers, Marshall said. “We find it so important that we reach out to people at a young age when they’re forming their idea of what a healthy relationship is.”
It was the marriage’s effect on her three children that ultimately convinced Mitchell she had to leave. She had grown resigned to the panic attacks and depression, but she couldn’t live with the pain her children were experiencing. She left him because of them, but wants people being abused to know they need to leave for themselves – because they deserve something better.
“It wasn’t me,” she said. “I wasn’t getting out because of me. If I didn’t have any children I would have put up with it a lot longer, even though I was going under. My kids were not happy, there was no laughter, their childhood was being stolen, and I said I can’t allow this to happen to them. So as a mother who wants to protect her children, I have to have this person get out of our lives. That’s why I got out of it.”
Mitchell’s latest spoken word CD, “Tangoing with Tornadoes,” dedicates a portion of the proceeds to support domestic violence shelters and programs that empower women of color. A play of the same name, which Mitchell co-wrote, co-produced, directed and starred in, addressed her survival of emotional and verbal abuse. She’s currently working on a book about her experiences.
And she’s out there talking about it, which Mitchell says is what more people need to do if the violence is ever going to end.
“When we’re educating the children and the parents, I have to believe that we’ll have a more enlightened society at some point.”