Passionate and Dedicated, Lynda Monks Helps Survivors of Domestic Violence

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and this podcast honors survivors and victims and seeks to raise awareness. The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence published these statistics: in the United States, more than 10 million adults experience domestic violence annually. If each of these adults experienced only one incident of violence, an adult in the US would experience violence every three seconds; one in four women and one in 10 Men experience sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner during their lifetime.
From 2016 through 2018, the number of intimate partner violence victimizations in the United States increased by 42%. Domestic violence is prevalent in every community and affects all people regardless of age, status, sexual orientation, gender, race, religion, or nationality. Physical violence is often accompanied by emotionally abusive and controlling behavior as part of a much larger systemic pattern of dominance and control. Domestic violence can result in physical injury, psychological trauma, and even death. At the end of this episode, we're going to share some resources with our audience so we all know where to go and what to do if faced with domestic violence.
Lynda Monks is a social worker who works with people, day in and day out, who are affected by domestic violence. She has been a medical advocate at a level two trauma center outside of Philadelphia for the past 20 years. She specializes in working with victims of domestic violence, elder abuse, and human trafficking. Before her work in Pennsylvania, she worked at domestic violence programs in Colorado, California, and Pennsylvania. As an advocate, counselor, and community educator, Lynda, we are so grateful to have you in the app to your own studio.
Highlights include:
“The big picture is, and we do it in the county that I work in, I think you need to teach kids from K to 12 - what a healthy relationship is age appropriately.”
“...make sure you're doing something that feeds you, either spiritually or creatively or whatever. Because there's enough hard stuff out there that we're all going to have to deal with. And we can't rely on other people to give us our nuggets. I don't know. But you got to kind of give it to yourself. And, and I think, bringing it back to kind of the topic that we're talking about when it comes to domestic violence, victims of domestic violence that's taken away from them. Right, that's taken away what they need, but what feeds them all of that stuff? And it kind of erases your spirit a little bit. So making sure that you can feed it, you gave yourself a little time every day to feed it. Make sure you're taking care of yourself, no matter what you're doing, or no matter what your next move is that you have to take care of yourself first.”
“I love being on the front lines, I've never really aspired to kind of going up administratively or anything like that. I think my wheelhouse is working with victims in a crisis. It's kind of where I thrive. So I think I'm gonna stay here for a little while.”
Websites:
https://www.thehotline.org/https://humantraffickinghotline.org/https://ncea.acl.gov/