Special Info and Offerings (some timely, others online) from DavidAdelson.com, Safe & Together Institute (David Mandel) and More

Welcome back to September and the many special days this month holds in important traditions (Jewish New Year..Rosh Hashanah, and A Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur) and much more. Many faith communities have worth while services and programs to benefit a community and many are also online. See for instance The Brooklyn Unitarian Church or The Apostolic Baptist Church in Brooklyn NY.

That said, other events to consider working into one's repertoire for getting cenbererd and collaborating with peaceful efforts include Geozuwa (see him online and maybe in person in NYC, MA or FL), David Adelson whose offering a "heaven on earth program' (see his site soon for details and the lower pricing of about a hundred dollars for his in-person event in Santa Monica CA.

Other go-to online programs I hope to catch (when they are free especially) are on Jenn McLean, Healing with the Masters and her other programs, Marianne.com which is more about A Courte in Miracles, The Reconnection (which has an online program for Level One) and lots more... For practical things, check out the Safe & Together Institute which is run by David Mandel and his team.

Their work promotes keeping the children safe and together with the mother or victim of abuse if there's a concern about safety in a family. Holding a perpetrator accountable is not an easy or necessarily 'safe' thing to do, but the alternatives also hold no guarantees.

When there is an intervention everyone needs to be on the same page and quite blaming the victim or making her look bad even when she cooperates or cannot name all the ways a perpetrator may be bullying her with intimidating violence or threats and put-downs, or very dangerously, threatening to sever the ties between her and her children to prove he is in control and that everyone will side with him and condone such severe distorted thinking (which sadly is too often linked to an abuser harming children emotionally if not more directly physically or even mortally.)

Those are very difficult topics but ideally everyone in America and abroad would start to grow wiser about such serious matters. We rally for people who have diseases but not for the dis-ease created by domestic abuse and intimate partner violence. Another 'arena' of possibilities is held by CT Coalition of Divorce Mediators (CCDM) which offers talks and training on Collaborative Divorce, Mediation and more. There need to many ways to inform the public of these options to 'change lanes' or shift gears when in a relationship. No one necessarily needs to be blamed and harmed intentionally by someone wanting or needing a different social or romantic experience.

The financial piece and the custodial decisions can become highly contentious. Usually a divorce occurs after 2 or 7 years. If there are children it's usually one or two. So anyone who has had a child should consider they have 'gone the distance' and need to think of long term connections 'on some level' even if the person is not safe or reasonable to be around. There are laws that currently would preclude many such abusive parents (one or both as the case may really be although often one can be complicit with the demands of the other so also a victim) from having custody..and those laws are growing all the time. Then there may be 'breaks or corruption' in the systems designed to protect children.

They can go from the frying pan to the fire in terms of the harm or trapped set of circumstances they are left with. Everyone needs to be more proactive about learning the laws in their state from many systems and taking measures to have back up help for practical needs such as picking kids up from school (even if sick etc) to having them clothed and fed properly as well as supervised closely in their home or farther away.

Thanks for considering these basics as the pace of school routines and hobbies picks up during the school year, and again renew those points in the summer when many families and programs are in flux.

See more on Remembering Kaelan to tune into the 'what if's if parents break agreements with other parents about basic safety and the overall difficulty of rearing teens or keeping in touch with children during custody or transition times in their lives. Peace and good planning to all from here to heaven and back!

PS The Five Points Gallery is offering an Eric Forstmann painting valued at $15K in a raffle for $20/each. Maybe you'll get the winning ticket which supports the arts as well, Only 2000 will be sold. Drawing is early Oct 2018.