Welcome to Barnyard Language. We are Caite and Arlene, an Iowa sheep farmer, and an Ontario dairy farmer with six kids, two husbands, and a whole lot of chaos between us. So kick off your boots, reheat your coffee, and join us for some barnyard language. Honest talk about running farms and raising families. In case your kids haven't already learned all the swears from being in the barn, it might be a good idea to put on some headphones or turn down the volume. While many of our guests are professionals, they aren't your professionals. If you need personalized advice, consult your people.

Thank you for joining us again on the Barnyard Language podcast. Caite and I are excited that you're here again with us today, and usually we start off with our weekly update. Katie, what's going on in the farm these days in Iowa? I

already looked out the window, Arlene, just to get ahead of you. Nothing. What you know, nothing. It's snowing,

Yes. Yeah, I was looking at my window cuz it's snowing here too. Yeah.

Getting into that. Hopefully getting our co water installed maybe this weekend. It's that freeze free water that runs on geothermal. They, the company is based in Iowa. I'm very, I am more excited than even I would've thought was appropriate about this new water. Having spent,

it doesn't seem inappropriate to me. No, it's a seems appropriate thing to be excited about for sure. Yeah.

I the cost of a new water is high, but so are the bills from the last several years of having to have the well company come and thaw out. It's bad news when your water gets frozen enough that you have to have literal professionals come out to deal with it. Yeah, that adds up. So it offsets the price of a new water. Other than that, just getting ready for Thanksgiving next week in the girl Child's sixth birthday in another two weeks, I wanna say. I know. So big. And then Christmas, so we're

at the, how does that seem so close and yet, realistically this is coming out. Late November, it's still more than a month away, and yet all of a sudden it seems to be looming. That's a

bad way. It's six weeks from the holidays from when we're recording this, Arlene. So it is looming. Yes. Yeah, and trying to come up with good gifts for the kids that are, fun, but also have some redeeming value beyond being fun. But also with that being that parent who's here, I got you socks. And a really boring educational board game. Enjoy Abacus. Yeah. Show up. Oh, I feel judged. I bet the girl child would actually love an abacus, but there that is. Neither one nor

there. Buy one of those there. I gave you a gift idea. Yeah. Next, probably we'll have our gear and gift guide. Maybe we'll help each other with more gift ideas.

That would be good. Oh, what's going on your farm?

So we went to the Royal Winter Fair in Toronto and we came back and we recognize as always that we are not city people, but it's good to go every once in a while to remind yourself of that. And it was also a good reminder that we love Airbnbs. I know we've talked about Airbnbs, you and I before, but we were able to find a condo, which was walking distance from the grounds, which is pretty big. There really aren't there's one very expensive hotel that's walking distance from exhibition place where the rail winter fairs held every year. But other than that, all the hotels are an Uber or taxi right away. So we found a condo that was walking distance. We were traveling with my parents, so that helps to spread the cost out between us. But it had a cute little kitchen. Parking was included, which is huge in the city that. Paying for parking every time you'd turn around, we could just park our vehicle and leave it there. And so that was very nice. And then if we all didn't want to leave to go to the fairgrounds or to come back at the same time, we could just walk on our own. And that was love too. And as I think I predicted at the beginning of the year, someone's parents bought her a jersey heifer that was supposed to be borrowed for the show season. So I think it was maybe. Thursday when my husband first mentioned to me, so I was talking to the owner of the heifer and she gave me a price and I was like, oh, interesting. Are you thinking about buying it?

Had he already written a

check at that point? He had not. No. No, they were just, it was definitely, it was a mutual decision, but he had already done some pre-negotiations, so we knew what numbers we were talking about. So I was fine with it. I think she's beautiful and we know she's already in calf.

For a second. I wasn't sure if you were talking about your daughter or the cow, but since you mentioned being in calf, I'm gonna hope it was the cow. Yes. Yeah. Your daughter is also beautiful,

don't get me wrong, but that wasn't a deciding factor. And whether or not we were going to buy a Jersey bar. Yeah. So that may be a birthday Christmas, new Year's, next year's birthday present combined. But we now have our very first jersey in our Holstein herd. So my husband's. Grandmother is the one who brought Pure Red Holsteins onto this location back in the 1950s, I believe. She's the most skeptical about why this happened or why we would even consider this situation, but that's okay. We've set all along that. If we have a 16 year old who's crazy about cows, That is not a problem that we need to address. This is something that we're good with encouraging.

I feel like if you're spending your money on cows for your kid, instead of like bail money or reform school or whatever, You're doing

alright. Yeah, exactly. And all the compared to say the people, not the, sports are great too, but say if you're in competitive hockey or something, which is big around here, you're spending a lot of money on tournaments and equipment and probably your kid's not gonna be playing in the NHLs, you're not gonna see a return on investment. There's at least a chance that we will see a return on investment on an animal, or they will, they're gonna contribute at some.

You can always eat 'em, which you really can't eat hockey gear, so Yeah. Yeah. Please tell your daughter I said that you could eat her baby. Cause

Yeah, I'm sure she'll produce lots and lots of milk, right? Yeah. And other than that, it's just been that, once you leave the farm, then you have to recover from it. So yeah, there was some extra early bedtimes and maybe a few naps got snuck in this week. As we recover both from seeing lots of people, which is overwhelming and being out late and being up early, and all the things that go along with being at the Royal. But it was really nice because we got to see lots of friends from. University and friends that we know through showing cows and all that kind of stuff. So that was pretty good. And some of my city cousins came to visit us there, so that was cute too. We got to see some of their kids that we haven't seen in a long time and lots of fair food, which is always

a bonus. Yeah, I do think it was really rude that you were sending me pictures of your snacks of clear food for me. Yeah. Although I will say the the photo you sent me of your husband and your daughter and the. Made it worth every penny of whatever that purchase price was. Cuz that was Yes, it was touching.

Yes. She was fairly happy.

I, yeah, I think so. Yeah.

And before we go into our episode, I know that we always included at the end of every episode, but I just wanna put in another plug for the Barnyard language private Facebook group, because if you're listening to the podcast and you would like to hang out with us and other listeners outside of just it being in your ears, you can come join our private Facebook group where we talk about farm stuff and. Whatever you wanna talk about, whatever we wanna talk about. Anyway, you can come and join us. The link is in the show notes because we've got that figured out and you just have to answer a couple questions and we will let you in and then we can hang out. That's all. And

it's a lot of cute children and cute puppies.

That's true. Yeah. And some And farm animals. Yeah. All the things we like. And anyway, we'll get on to our guest for today. All right. Sounds good. Today's episode will be covering the difficult topic of domestic violence. If this issue is a sensitive one for you and you aren't able to listen, please take care of yourself. We hope you'll listen again. Next episode. Today we are talking to Barbara McQuarrie, who is the community Director of the Center of Research and Education on Violence Against Women and Children at Western University located in London, Ontario. Woo. I got through that in one shot. We start each of our interviews with the same question, and this is a way to introduce yourself to our listeners. So for our farming guests, this covers crops and livestock, but for everyone else it can be families, businesses, careers, and many other things. So Barb, we'll ask our question. What are you

growing? My growing season's coming to an end, but during the summer I have flower gardens, so I grow lots of different kinds of flowers. Spring starts. Crocus and daffodils and tulips and columbines, lilacs and seeds. And then come the allium and the irises and the pennies and lupins, and then the roses and flocks and coops. And then the lavender and the butterfly weed, the daisies of lilies, dium bee bomb comb, flowers, black eye, Susan's hostas, and coming into fall, an enemy hyran Russian stage and lots of different kinds of grasses. And I grows and I patients and petunia and magon, and.

So you're one of those people who actually knows all the things that are in your flower gardens? I have. I probably have some of those things. I

don't what they're called. It's taken years. I started out as a complete amateur and I'm, yeah, I did. I just like it a lot.

That's great. And in terms of your career, are you growing. Growing something in terms of what you're growing into or how

you developing? I am. I am growing in my career my plan to retire in December got thwarted a little bit, and I'm going to, but I'm gonna reduce the time I'm working and I'm gonna focus in and I'm gonna really focus in. Research that has to do with two things. One is, and I'll mention a little bit later again, probably, but financial costs of domestic violence to the workplace. And the second area is the whole continuum of violence and harassment that includes domestic violence and how that impacts the workplace. So I'm just writing two really big grants right now.

Yeah. So getting very specific on some of those Yeah. Topics. Yeah. So like we said in our trigger warning at the beginning, we're talking to you today about domestic violence, which obviously isn't a fun topic, but a really important one. Yeah. Share some information with our listeners about who's affected by domestic violence and how rural and urban communities differ.

Sure. So the short answer is that everybody's affected by domestic violence, either directly or indirectly. So we have studies at TELUS between one in three and one in four. Women in both Canada and the US experience domestic violence at some point in their lifetime. For men, the rate is lower, but still significant. We're just beginning to look at rates of domestic violence for trans and non-binary folks and what. I'd say that we don't have really solid estimates yet. All indicators are that they experience even higher rates than people who identify with the sex and gender they were assigned at birth. Lesbian and gay people experience rates of domestic violence that are just as high, sometimes even higher than heterosexual people. People of all social classes, all races, ethnicities, all face and religion. They all experience domestic violence. It's not a problem of the poor or any other identifiable group. Factors like poverty can increase the risk of experiencing domestic violence and make it harder to escape when it happens. But poverty alone doesn't cause problem. Sometimes we make assumptions that immigrant communities are gonna have higher rates of domestic violence. Research has showed us that isn't true in Canada. If anything, most immigrant communities experience slightly lower rates of domestic violence. Indigenous people both in Canada and the US experience very high rates of domestic violence and. That's because of all the violence and displacement that indigenous communities have experienced at the hands of settlers for hundreds of years now. So those are the direct victims. Now, think about all the friends and family members who are concerned for someone they care about who might be experiencing domestic violence. That's a whole lot of people. And if you're one of the really rare people who has an. Experienced it directly or doesn't know anybody who's experienced domestic violence, you're still being affected because we all help to pay for the cost of this behavior. We pay through criminal justice system and through publicly funded health and social service social services. And then let's not forget about the lost potential of those who've experienced domestic violence and grown up in a home where domestic violence is occurring. Many survivors are just not able to contribute to society in the same way they would've if they hadn't had that trauma. So we don't even know what we've lost. And then in terms of differences between urban and rural communities rural, remote and northern communities are at increased risk of domestic violence. And there are more domestic homicides and. In rural communities in Canada, we just had an inquest into the deaths of three women living in Remit County. That's a rural area in Eastern Ontario. They were all killed by the same men. All three of the women had been in an intimate relationship with them. All three of them lived in fear after that relationship ended. So this is an extreme case, but the inquest did put a lot of focus on the need for better prevention and better response to domestic violence in rural communities.

Sorry. So your work at the university are involved in research around domestic violence, and I apologize that I just added things to this question while I was listening. Ok. One of the things that I'm. Personally really interested in looking at rural areas and especially in indigenous areas is the research that's coming out around epigenetics and the idea that trauma actually impacts our genetic information. And so I'm wondering if you can tell us a little more about your specific research and your findings, and especially about how things. That generational trauma, cultural norms really impact addressing domestic violence, especially in rural areas because our Sure. It's in a lot of places, not culturally desirable for people to be really in touch with their feelings. Men or women, or, Yeah. Anyone else? And there's just. I honestly, I just find the whole idea that trauma actually changes our physical existence to be fascinating.

Yeah, so I would just wanna start, say, I think that's really interesting research too. And I've been working in work related to violence against women, domestic violence, sexual violence for more than 30 years now. I fe I feel like in, in a real life context, I've seen that. I'm not, I haven't delved into the research very much but I think it's really important and certainly we know that violence is a learned behavior. And we know that's why some communities experience more domestic violence, that we know that's why intergenerational families where either violence is being perpetrated or if you grow up in a family, it tends to be that boys or men are more likely to become the perpetrator. But it's not like a, it's not like a sentence. It's not, it's certainly there are men who become very nonviolent because they've witnessed violence. But there's others that learn that behavior. And then there's a lot of women that end up being victimized in their own relationships when they witness that growing up to A lot of my research it focuses on how domestic violence impacts the workplace. And so I just I just, I can't miss this opportunity just to give a little bit of information about that because I think it's counterintuitive that a workplace would have a role to play in preventing and responding to domestic violence and I know a lot of rural people farm, but also a lot of rural people do go and work in more formal workplaces as well. We learned, we did a really large national survey. First of its kind in, in Canada in 2014. We collaborated with the Canadian Labor Congress. We learned that one third of keen workers have experienced domestic violence at some point in their life. So really, that's consistent with the research is already there. Not a lot new there. This also wasn't new, that women were more likely to experience it than men. So 38% of women, 17% of men, what was really eye-opening? We had a very small sample of trans and non-binary people, but 65% of them said that they had experienced domestic violence. And then of the workers who said that they had experienced domestic violence, more than half said that it followed them to work in some. So commonly they would be getting abusive phone calls, text messages, emails. 40% of them said that's how it falled into work. 20% said they were stocked at work. Now we know that stalking is really high risk behavior. It's a sign that serious injury or even death possible. And then we've got about 15% saying that their abusive spouse or partner is contacting their coworkers or their employer usually to ask things like is she there? What time does she arrive? Who's she with? When's she leaving? Sometimes the abusive partner or spouse is trying to convince the boss that the survivor's not a good worker and trying to get them fired. Then we had 40% of those workers who'd experienced domestic violence saying that they were either late or missed work entirely, sometimes because of the violence. And I don't given all that and given just what we, know about these situations, I don't think it's surprising that over 80% of them said that the domestic violence really negatively impact their performance at work. And we ask them, do they tell anybody about it? And they're most likely to tell a coworker. So that tells us that when we're doing training in workplace, this is not enough just to train the bosses. We have to train everybody because the bosses are the least likely to know. The coworkers are the ones that are gonna get the information first. So teaching them how to respond supportive, can really help the workplace be. And I mentioned that I'm really focused now on looking at the financial cost of domestic violence to employers. So we've had some these costing studies since the nineties, and what they try to do is to estimate the financial cost to employers by looking at really large national. Data sets and then inferring costs from there, we'd always end up with all kinds of missing stats and missing data, and so we always had really underestimates of those costs. Now I have a colleague in Peru and he's come up with a really different approach that involves surveying the employees of a large workplace. But then we get an estimate of what it actually costs. That workplace. So he's done dozens of these studies in South America. We wanna bring that work to North America. We've just done so far, one pilot at a midsize university. We found. Costs are very significant between 1.7 and 2.7 of the workplace's annual wage bill. So when you're talking about a large workplace, that quickly adds up to millions and millions of dollars. My colleague had done enough workplace studies that he was able to estimate the impact. On the gross national product of the whole country. And he estimates that in Peru, domestic violence cost the country about just over 3% of its gross national product. So these are really significant costs. Now, our motivation for doing this research is to make the business case with business leaders for why they need to implement prevention and response programs in their workplace.

That makes a lot of sense because until you can show. Why it's important. Yeah. And it's not seen, it's important. Yeah. That doesn't become a priority or they don't see the value in that training or those resources. Yeah. Are there differences that you have found so far between larger businesses and smaller businesses? Does that percentage of impact or does the behavior of people change if you're looking. Just, yeah. Picturing in my head kind of those smaller rural businesses where yeah, one employee's absence for a day is a bigger impact. A bigger impact

for sure. Yeah. We haven't gotten into looking really closely at the smaller, the differences between smaller and larger, but I can say that. If you have a large place, a large workplace, you're guaranteed you've got domestic violence. If you have a smaller workplace, you may be unsure, but it's still pretty common. Remember, we're looking at one and three across the lifespan. If you think you can avoid this, just by lack you, that's not a good strategy. But your point about smaller businesses being disproportionately impacted by things like absences, lateness, and even just somebody who's at work but can't focus in the way that they need to. Yeah I agree with you that they would, there's no nobody else to cover nobody else to pick up the slack. Every employee's like really important and small business.

And since our podcast is geared specifically towards the agricultural community, can you tell us some of the risk factors that exist for women specifically in this industry? In agriculture? I guess not just women, but people.

People. Sure. So some of the factors that. Make rural communities unique also increase the risk of domestic violence. So that includes things like geographic isolation, which means long distance, disservices, long response time from emerging emergency responders, and little or no public transportation. It might also mean there's more likely to be firearms in the home that are used for hunting or protecting livestock. And then you have tight social networks for everybody knows everyone, which can be a good thing, but it can be a problem if the perpetrator is friends with the police officer who's responding, or if the survivor doesn't want others to know about the abuse. And then many rural communities have more conservative values, which. Promote that idea that domestic violence is a private matter and not something that we talk about. And then looking specifically at farming communities there's things like responsibility for caring for animals, both large animals and large numbers of animals. So even in urban communities, can be difficult for somebody leaving a, an abusive relationship to bring a family pet like a dog, and starting. Programs for that, but there's just no way shelters can accommodate farm animals. Then there's a whole issue of joint farm ownership. So farms are businesses and the abuse of spouse or partner is also a business partner. The whole farm business can be put at risk if one of the partners leave. It can take a really long time to legal un legally untangle joint ownership, so that makes it really hard for somebody to leave quickly. And then if a survivor decides to leave the abusive relationship or just to seek out support, we have that problem still of fewer services than in urban areas, harder to get there. So a lot of factors combined to increase the risk of domestic violence and rural areas, and many of those factors are positive features of rural life. As long as there isn't any abuse in the relationship.

So how can we help folks recognize also that emotional, financial and verbal abuse are abuse? I think many of these things are seen as, as long as you're not leaving a mark. Yeah. It's not really abuse. Yeah. And I think especially when we're talking about families and children the financial control can be such a massive part of

things. Yeah. Oh, thank, thanks for bringing that up. This is an education challenge. So certain. In all of my work, and increasingly I'm seeing this across the board, we're looking at an expanded definition of domestic violence. And I think maybe even the way we name it, people associate violence with physical violence. But those really what's at the core of domestic violence is not. Physical violence, it's control. And so that's, you mentioned the financial control, but it's the emotional abuse as, as well. And if you talk to anybody who's lived in an abusive relationship, they are very likely to tell you that the emotional abuse was every bit as bad and sometimes even worse than the physical. It does lead permanent scars, at least permanent scars on children. It leave permanent scars on adults who experience it. It can be much harder to, bruises heal, even broken bones heal. But those emotional wounds, maybe because they're hidden sometimes we don't pay as much attention to them. People don't feel That they can maybe even say, I'm really hurting. And so those non-physical forms of violence are they're just, every bit is serious as a physical violence. Their impacts are. Every bit is great too. So it's we just really have to bring that into every discussion we have, I think about this problem. Yeah, that's a good

point. You sent us a couple of studies in advance of this interview and one talked about the lack of resources both for victims of domestic violence and for perpetrators. And to be honest, when I was reading, I hadn't really considered the idea of. The lack of resources for perpetrators to get help. But that's obviously a really important part of getting our communities better and getting people, working in relationships better is if both victims and perpetrators can get the support that they need. So could you talk a little bit about the programs that, that do exist for victims and children and also for perpetrators and where there are things that are working and where there are gaps in the.

Sure. So to be honest, there are gaps in the system at every point, but I don't wanna be discouraging for anybody who's seeking help or thinking about seeking help because at the same time, the people who work in any kind of support program often go above and beyond to try and respond to the needs of individuals and families who experience domestic violence. So in Ontario, the programs for perpetrators, and this, I think this is probably a Canadian term, we call the programs for perpetrators partner assault response programs. In the US I think the programs are more likely to be called batter intervention programs. So what they do is they work on having perpetrators recognize their behavior as abusive and then being accountable for. Behaviors taking responsibility and then they encourage behavioral change. So most of these programs work with perpetrators in groups and the groups are gonna involve both psychoeducational and therapeutic interventions. One of the big gaps in these programs is that they're funded to respond to perpetrators after they have a criminal charge. So some programs are fundraising so they can offer services to voluntary clients to people who see that their behaviors are abusive and who are asking for help to change them. Those are exactly the people that we should be working with. And certainly there's a good chance of success when somebody says, I wanna change. But there is a lack of funding to include these people in programs right now. So when it comes to support for victims, or I've sometimes been referring to them as survivors women shelters are, they're at the core of the support system. Most regions will have at least one women's shelter that's intended to serve the area. As I mentioned before, that can still mean traveling a distance to get there if you're living in a rural area. So women's shelters have been around for a long time. The first ones were established in the 1970s. It's really important to know that they offer more than emergency accommodations, certain. Those emergency accommodations are important and they can be life saving. But shelters offer outreach services too. It's not necessary to live in a shelter to get support from one. They'll help with safety planning. And whether a survivor is staying in an abusive relationship or leaving a safety plan is absolutely critical. Shelters can also support survivors with system navigation, so everybody's journey out of an abusive relationship or some journeys involve Having the relationship become more safe, but everybody's journey is different and often you have to. With systems that could be family and criminal legal systems, health systems for mental health or for physical healthcare, and they might have to interact with immigration services or child protection services. It can be really confusing and really overwhelming when somebody's faced with all of these agencies and all of the demands that each one has. So shelters can help survivors to understand what they have to do and what the timelines are. And sometimes if it's needed, they can act as advocates for survivors within these these systems. So some shelters also offer programs for children who have been exposed to domestic violence, or they might partner with another agency that offers supportive programming for children. So I would, it's just a, it's a good place to.

So that brings us to the next question here, which is learning more about the education and prevention initiatives that you're involved in knowing obviously that you're in Canada what programs are being developed and. I guess I'm particularly interested in how we use programs that people are already involved in to do outreach, especially with young people. If they're already in four H, they're already in ffa, they're already in scouting. whatever. It, to me, it seems like it's, More efficient, certainly to reach out to people where they already are than to have to go. Looking for them, especially in rural areas where they're maybe not Yeah. Likely to show up for something that says, domestic violence Yeah. On a poster. Nobody's gonna walk into that and take Yeah. So I'm wondering what, where your work is headed on.

Okay. First of all, I great point. I, and I really agree with you about trying to go to people rather than having people come to you. So the core education program that I work with is called Neighbors, friends and Families. The first thing that it tries to do is to teach everybody how to recognize warning signs of abuse and how to recognize the signs the dangers increasing so that somebody might be seriously harmed or worst case scenario even killed. And then we teach about having a supportive conversation with somebody, and that's really important because we've all been socialized to basically mind our own business. A supportive conversation is not about solving somebody else's problems, it's more about being open about what and expressing your concern. And then the really important part is just like letting that person know that you care. You, I suppose at the core, it's about validating somebody else's experiences, and the final part of what we teach is how to make an appropriate referral. So that means that before you have a conversation with somebody that you're concerned about, you do the work to find out what supports are available locally, so you can share that information. So we encourage people to have these kinds of con conversations with somebody who is experiencing domestic violence. But if you feel ready and you feel safe to do it, you can have the same kind of conversation with somebody who's behaving abusively. So your point about you, you can't just stick up a song and have people come to you, I think. The kind of information that we offer it. Great information to introduce within the context of a scouting meeting or a four H meeting. Got an hour, great. Here's a PowerPoint and let's go through some of the, these things and let's have the discussion while you're already at the meeting. It really, it, this program really works well for being able to be integrated into. Other kinds of activities. And if you got an hour, great. We can talk to you for an hour. If you got a day, wow. Even better, we can, we could do a whole day with you on this. And so that's exactly was our motivation for adapting this program for workplaces. Again, you're gonna start to hear a theme of what I'm telling you, but I do a lot of work in workplaces we've got a training module for, like I said, everybody in the workplace cuz you can ignore the coworkers. And then we've added on a module for managers and supervisors. But it doesn't have to be a workplace, it can be any place where people gather that kinds of presentations can roll out.

So if we have a listener who is in a situation where they need help but don't know where to start, you talked a little bit already about women's shelters and some of the services that they offer and the idea of safety planning. What are some safety planning strategies for people who are trying to keep themselves and their kids safe but are just in the beginning stages of figuring out what that looks.

Okay, so I wanna answer your question in two parts. First, if somebody listening needs help and doesn't know where to start, I'd say, is there one person that you can trust and you can tell what's going on? Isolation is a really big problem for most people in abusive relationships. No, that person doesn't need to be an expert. Just somebody that can give you some emotional. As you go through the process of leaving an abusive relationship or making changes so the relationship can become safe, then I would say reach out for more formal help. So if you're in the US you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline. I'll say the number, but. There's a website that just Google National Domestic Violence Hotline. The number's 1 807 9 9 7 2 3 3, and there's more ways on the website that you can connect with them. Now, if you're in Canada, we don't have a national support line. But we do have a website called Shelter safe.ca. What that will give you is information about all of the women's shelters in Canada, and I was saying this before, but that's a good place to start looking for help. Even if you're not a woman, they'll be able to tie you about what other service. Are available in your area, so that's like a starting point. You also asked about safety planning strategies. For women and keeping themselves and their children safe. And so the first thing I would say is that if it's at all possible, do contact your local women's shelter for help with a safety plan. They're experts at this. Remember, you don't have to go there. You don't have to live there. They'll help you even if you're staying in your own home. If you're not ready to call a women's shelter for some reason, you just can't get there. The neighbors, friends and family's website has some safety planning tips, and so to find that it's neighbors, friends and families.ca. So some of the tips are plan where to go in emergency. Teach your children how to get help. Tell them not to get between you and your partner If there's violence plan a code. Word to signal that they should leave or go and get help. Don't run. If violence is erupted. Don't run to a place where your children are, as your partner may end up hurting them as well. Think about how you can get outta your home safely if there's a violent incident, and practice that with your children. If you have children, you can ask, you may, this may not work if you're in a rural area, but. But if there's somebody close enough that might hear the, or somehow be alerted to the sign the violence, you can ask them to to call the police in an emergency. If an argument is developing, try to move to a space where you can get outside easily. Never go to a room where there's access to a potential weapon. And this may be something like the kitchen where you have knives or workshop or the bathroom. Avoid those rooms. If you're being hurt, protect your face with your arms around each side of your head with your fingers locked together. Don't wear scarves or long jewelry. Don't wear your hair in a ponytail that your partner can grab. Park your car by backing it into the driveway and keeping it fueled. Hide keys, cell phone, and some money near your escape route. Have a list of phone numbers to call for help. If it's an emergency, call the police. If possible, make sure that all weapons and ammunition are either hidden or removed from your home. So like I said, if you're getting ready to leave an abusive relationship or if you're already left you need to. Keep updating your safety plan to meet your specific circumstances so there is more information on the neighbors, friends and family's website. And as I've said, shelter staff can help you.

So I'm gonna go ahead and add a question here. Just listening to you talk about that. I'm wondering how you do this work. And how you deal with the level of burnout and compassion fatigue. And, I'm exhausted just hearing you talk about this list of safety concerns because it is physically painful to think about having to protect your children in those circumstances and ugh. that's that. So I'm wondering how you, how folks can take care of themselves when they're dealing with. This sort of

crap. I think less polite wording. Yeah. Yeah. You don't need to be polite about it for sure. I'm gonna say that what's kept me in the work is because I've learned that so many people really do care. And that despite how widespread this problem is, I think people don't do anything. Because they don't know what to do. And when you start coming to them with suggestions for doable steps they can take, they'll do it. There's, since I've been training in workplaces, we've really had a chance to see like the whole cross section of of humanity. And I have been humble. Over and over again by the level of care and compassion. And oftentimes after I leave by the concrete actions that people will take, like people will come up to me at a break and they'll say, oh my God, there's this woman and I've been really struggling with her. We know We can figure out why she can't get her work done, why it's not going well. Now I'm hearing all this this could be it. We're gonna have a different conversation. Even being asked to do this podcast, you care and I know it's gonna reach pe other people that care. So that's what keeps me in the work.

So one of my other questions is maybe more so in rural areas, just because of the generally more conservative values in that and knowing how endangered gay and trans youth especially are in a lot of households. How can. Support children and young people who aren't safe at home or with their own domestic partners. Because I think we tend to only think of abuse as happening between married adults or certainly, yeah. Long term adult couples and not to younger people.

Yeah. I. The first thing we have to do is start talking openly about this, because when we don't talk about it, it makes people feel like nobody cares. Or maybe that they've done something wrong or maybe that, that Yeah we really just have to acknowledge that there's violence happening. That violence is not always physical. And then I think. Once we can talk about it. The conversation is gonna be a little bit specific to each of our communities, where is the place in my community that somebody can go either, for emotional support if they need to leave the home they're living in, what does that look like? What can we do in this community? So it's a, it's always a two part, right? Bring the problem more out into the open and then it needs to be talked about in schools if we're gonna reach young people. It really does. Young people are on social media a lot, so let's figure out how to. Operate on their social media platforms and give them information that says, this behavior is not acceptable. You don't deserve it, and there are places you can go for help.

I think that's a really important point because that, for kids who have maybe grown up in an environment that isn't safe for them. Knowing what's normal is harder, right? They haven't lived in another home maybe, or this is what's normal to them. And they just see that as what their parent or what their guardian is like. And that's just the reality. But hopefully as they get older and start to see. Other dynamics and the way other families function that if they see that their situation is unsafe or is violent, maybe not physically, but is what is violent in other ways in terms of control that, that isn't just what parenting looks like and that isn't just what family life looks like, but then we have to be able to let those kids know where they can go and where they can be safe. Yeah. Yep. So I guess we've have already talked about this in different ways, but if we had a listener who suspected that a friend or family member was in an unsafe situation How can they start to help? And I'm also curious about, that those discussions where you feel like you're trying to help, but the person doesn't just leave. You want them to, you wanna have that conversation and they'll just be like, you're right now I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna go. But, it doesn't always, it's not always a one and done situation. So how can we be so supportive and also acknowledge where people are and where

they're. So my advice is to start out by preparing yourself to have a conversation. Good intentions are really important but they're not gonna be enough So just do a little bit of homework. And so whether you are in the US or whether you are in Canada, I'm gonna say again, the neighbors, friends and family's website. It's a really good place to start cause it's got really basic information and you may wanna go well beyond that and I hope you do. But there's just some some tips there about, why, how to have that conversation and then, You wanna make sure that you know what supports are available locally, so that if somebody does open the door just a little bit, or maybe they're not ready, but at least you can say, when you're ready, there is help. And here's how you're gonna find that help. You know what you said about. Having a conversation with somebody who either just brushes you off or says, listens to you, and then just doesn't make any changes at all, just expect that. Just expect that. It's gonna be extremely rare that the first time you have a conversation or the second or the third time that somebody's gonna. Gosh, I hadn't thought of any of that myself. And thanks. And, I'm off and I'm gonna make a plan. Change is a process. Change takes time. We've done some research at my center here with survivors who were in very seriously serious situations who were actually almost killed. Looking back on that, and we said what advice would you have for family members or friends that are trying to help you? And one of the most important things they said would, was, Don't abandon me, don't give up on me. Keep coming back. The conversations are likely gonna be difficult. There's probably gonna be times when I'm even gonna push you away, but I need you in my life. I'm not gonna get through without your support. So please stick around, keep trying. I do know how hard that is. I do know how frustrating that is, but there's, I don't think there's any other way than, and maybe it makes it a little bit easier if going in, we know that change is probably gonna come slowly. There might be, one step forward, one step backwards. It's gonna be uneven. Stick with that person. That's the best thing you can do. That's a good,

I know in the states we like to think that Canada's a a better place than we are, politically, legislatively, whatever else. I know at least in the US there are a lot of places where there are things like, if a victim refuses to press charges, there are no legal repercussions. Even if there are other witnesses that if a victim won't press the charges, that just nothing happens. And a whole host of horrific things of that nature. How can. Effectively encourage legal changes to reduce the level of bullshit around this It's we're, we teach our kids that if they report things, if they call the cops, if they follow the right steps, someone will take care of it. And yeah, that should be true. Yeah. Long story

short on that, I guess I, I agree with you and I, yeah. And even though, our laws on paper might be better in Canada, they're still not perfect and things still go wrong. But I, my approach to trying to change things is you start by understanding the problem and then you do research because decision makers they, I think they try to be evidence based. But it, even if you can partner and there's, there's lots of academics that are really happy to partner with community organizations or just a group of people that has a good. Good idea, or that has a situation that clearly needs to be addressed. Find somebody to do some research with you and then it'll become, not just a problem anecdotally, you've got evidence. When you're doing research, you can certainly flush out what does the problem look like? What are all the. Angles, but you can also start to get at what are people's ideas about how to make this better. You can do that through research and I think it just gives you a stronger voice and a better platform when you're trying to lay out what needs to happen in the future when you've got that evidence base behind you. That's why I work at a university. I started out my career at a sexual assault. Still really believe in the work that's being done at sexual assault centers, across Canada and the us. But I felt I could do more to. Push change forward. If I was working in collaboration with academics and I could talk about evidence we have, we've had some success in not haven't changed criminal law, but we've changed employment law here to get paid leave for victims of domestic violence. We've got. Domestic violence recognized in occupational health and safety legislation, which means that employers, it's not a, it's not the only, the good employers who care that do something. It's like you have to do it because it's your legal responsibility. So that's my approach.

It's really interesting to me in that evidence based way that this research you're talking about how much. Cost the country. Yeah. To not be addressing this, that it's, yeah, there's a lot of sticking points around I think you should do this so that we can be nosy about other people's families versus I think we should be doing this because it's costing us a crap ton of money. It would be nice if people could just be concerned. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A solid number is easier to defend.

That's pretty much what I've concluded to at this point. It's gonna help. Yeah.

I guess we're like at the end of all the big scary questions. good. So we asked all of our guests, if you were going to dominate a category at the county fair, what would it be? And categories can be actual or just totally made up to ensure that you win.

Okay, so I'm not sure if my category exists, but I spent a lot of time this summer trying to perfect my barbecued ribs. So I use a Greek marinade. It has lots of lemon and garlic and herbs not the traditional barbecue sauce. And my family and friends, they may never wanna see another batch of barbecued ribs for me. But I think they were turning out pretty well by the end of the summer. So my category would be barbecued rib. That's, I like

that's delicious. Yeah. I know some folks who'd be willing to judge that one. Okay. I feel pretty good. It got

Yeah. If your family and friends are done, then we'll it to you

Yeah. I don't how well they'd do get mailed down here. If you

figure it out, might know you well, you might have to make a

road trip. Yeah, I worked about it.

All right, so we'll move into our cussing and discussing segment. We've registered for an online platform called SpeakPipe, where you can leave your cussing and discussing entries for us, and we'll play them on the show. So go to speakpipe.com/barnyard language and leave us a voice memo. Or you can always send us an email@barnardlanguagegmail.com and we will redid it for you. Katie, what are you cussing and discussing this week?

Charging cable. In, in North America at least you guys have the same sort of outlets we have, right? With just like two prongs or three prongs. Yeah, we're not, so we've had we don't need to. What I know about Canada is how much I don't know about Canada and since I live in a place where they gave me shit about having to get a passport to move two hours across the same state. All bets are off at this point. but, so we've had electricity for what, like a hundred, 120 years Pretty consistently in a while. Yeah. Yeah. And there's two or three basic kind of outlets in North America at least. Why the fuck do I have 8 million charging cords with different ends and different amounts of power and half of them don't work because my kids chewed on 'em or bent them too much, or col, like I literally. Like five gallon rubber made tote. I don't know how many liters that is. My apologies. It's great. It's more than anyone reasonably needs of charging cables and cables to go between electronics and dongs. That is the correct word for them. And just random shit. And it's just, for people who are like, this is such an advancement over paper. Like really? Cuz I had as sheet of paper, I had a pencil, like I was good to go and I could try

a pen. You might switch back and forth. Yeah. A highlighter. Sure.

Ooh, get real crazy. Arlene, get a fountain pen or something real wild, and then you get

Those like battery operated kids toys that then have a, they then have charging cables because they're like a wireless, remote control something. And then the remote control has batteries and the thing has batteries, or you need one to charge the other. And then there's a cord that runs between the remote and the thing, it, it just keeps getting worse.

I feel like you've been over here watching the Kindle charging situation. we had quite a serious conversation with the kids. Actually. They each got a Kindle tablet at Christmas last year, which has been a lifesaver for us on a number of occasions. But my mother told my children that they need juice. To run and we had a real narrow close call with the boy child, actual dude trying to provide his Kindle with juice. Oh no, because Barb, my kids are four and five. Like they don't, we need to use, so yeah, we try to be real. Precise. Like I said, something about giving the kids Kindles a bath the other day and my daughter was horrified. Oh mommy, you don't. No. No baby. I mean with an alcohol wipe. But thank you for yeah. Stopping tell young little brother.

So

Barb, what do you have to cuss and discuss?

I'm gonna cut and discuss about I live in a for Canada, a midsize city, large enough. And we don't have a green bin program. It's a, it's, you put your green bin out with your compost and we were supposed to get one. It was. And we were like, we're way behind other cities our size. Having this option of, it takes all the garbage out of the waste system, which is good, but then they, they take it to a facility, they make compost, and then you buy your compost back. When you're in, I know you're in a rural area when you're in the city, this is a really good system. Yeah. That's exciting stuff. Yeah, exciting stuff. We got our hopes all up that we were gonna have our green bins and then something went wrong. I just feel anything that you can't quite get done, you can blame on covid these days. And so covid related delays Sure, yeah. Means that for another whole year and we're, we don't have our. Green bin system in place, and I just think, come on folks.

Let's a municipal election so that they'll devote on it again, probably. Yeah,

let's just get it together. Let's get the green bins, let's, get that food waste out of the garbage system. Yeah. Yeah I do backyard compost, but lots of people live in apartment buildings. They can't, what are they gonna do?

I'm wondering. It's a big family. It's a lot of food waste. You can't, yeah, you don't always have room to compost everything. Yeah.

Arlene, what do you have to cuss and discuss

today? So this week I'm cussing and discussing people who don't call me back. Yes. I'm specifically talking about the body shop where my van is supposed to be getting repaired after hitting a deer more than a month ago. Oh, and. you don't already know from the podcast, I'm a bit of an introvert, so actually going to the effort of making the phone call and leaving the message at the place is a pretty big deal. So

me back, do they have your van now, Arlene?

They don't. I'm still driving a busted up van, but then I, after three or four tries, I finally drove to the location to talk to the person, and find out what was going on. This is after just over a month. He said, oh yeah, I'm gonna get the parts ordered And the reason I was calling was to make an appointment because I was hoping that he wasn't gonna tell me there was some Covid related delay on the parts that he had ordered a month ago. But no, they weren't even ordered. So I do have an appointment now, but I'm not so happy and I don't think if I hit. Creature that I'll be going back to this particular body shop

I know obviously that our listeners can't say this, but this whole. Thing has made my eye twitch just thinking about it, Cause same with the phone calls. Really like now it's just not gonna happen. Ugh.

Hopefully that lighten things up a little bit for our listeners. We weren't start ending the episode on all the really heavy stuff. But thank you so much, Barb, for talking us today about a really important topic. And if people want to get in touch with you specifically, where should they go online? And we will definitely include all the resources that you mentioned in the show into the show notes.

Great. So if you wanna find me, go to Learning to End Abuse all one word.ca and that'll take you to my center's. And you can find a link to me there, but you can find all kinds of other useful information too. Learning to end abuse.ca.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Barbara.

Thank you.

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