Happy New Year to you all and thank you for taking the time to read my blog post, it really means a lot to me. 🙂
Ok! I am sure everyone has heard so much about the abuse rate in relationships going high, especially because of the pandemic so I guess the news is not new to us all. However, this post focuses on the abuse currently rising among our young people, our girls, daughters, sisters and loved ones.
So, I stumbled upon this video about a young girl, let’s say she’s about 20 years of age or even less and she talks about this guy she was dating who could not control his anger and occasionally would hit her. One faithful day, on her escaping his anger as she did not want to experience what he might have done to her, as she ran away from him she fell off the stairs. This led to her breaking her leg which resulted in surgery, and she had to be on crutches for a while.
For some people, their thought could be ‘This can never happen to any girl, because she definitely knows her worth. While bravo, am happy that you have raised a confident and strong girl. However, we still have cases of girls who seem strong and confident on the outside but on the inside, a lot is happening that no one knows about. For this young lady, she hid what was happening to her from the people closest to her. Ok, after her story you’re definitely thinking she broke up the relationship, well sorry to burst your bubble she did not but eventually, the relationship had to end.
I shared this story to make awareness that abuse among young girls is real and the numbers are rising. One of the reasons why we might not hear a lot of these stories is because young girls have ways of keeping such experiences as secrets. She might just tell a close friend who has no idea what to do with such information.
Personally, I do not judge young girls in such positions, because as a young person I experienced emotional abuse in relationships and did not openly speak about it. As, we are aware that abuse can vary from emotional, physical, sexual and so on. So, rather than being judgmental and rendering negative comments like she is not smart, she lacks love, craves attention and bla bla bla, its time we as a community build honest relationships with our girls. Let them understand that no one is perfect and we all have made one or more mistakes at some point.
Let us create an atmosphere of openness, love and honestly. Every girl will handle a situation differently depending on her upbringing, environment, choices and values instilled in her. However, they can choose to learn from our experience if we are willing to be honest about our imperfections and mistakes. We need to tackle abuse among our young girls urgently by creating moments to bond with them with the assurance that you are willing to listen and work through things together.
Also, remember that you are communicating with a young person, so if you come across judgemental she will eventually lock up and say nothing to you. So, be a mother, a friend, a role model and a mentor.
xoxo
bbbempower