The Niles Star

The other night, a co-worker asked me if I ever planned on having children. Let me put the fears of what I imagine would be many to rest: Not at the present moment. In my head, however, my immediate answer was more like: Are you kidding? I'm on the verge of turning 30 and I still feel like that gawky, awkward 15-year-old kid who often fell down stairs. No joke. I have many childhood and adolescent memories of tumbling down stairways. The main stairs in my old house, the grand stairway right in the center of my junior high school, right in the center of the building...as everyone was headed to class.

By admin

Jessica Sieff: Watch that first step – it’s the steepest

Published 2:20pm Thursday, October 8, 2009

The steps outside my apartment… Just last year. It would suffice to say, I’m still trying to get both feet firmly on the ground.

And I’m beginning to think most people are.

In life, we are lucky if certain issues provoke us enough to take the time to become more educated, maybe even more involved in our own worlds. For me, the issue happens to be domestic abuse. Between talking to the two survivors of domestic abuse – and the term “survivor” could not be used more appropriately – reading and researching, it occurred to me just how lucky some of us really are just to fall down. We have that immediate opportunity to get back up.

But there are some who don’t have the luxury of falling to the ground.

Because they’re pushed. And they’re held there.

If that is not disheartening enough – there is also the knowledge that in these domestic prisons, because so many of us do not understand the world they live in, so many women feel so completely alone.

And nobody should feel alone.

We can voice only so much of our opinions, try to bring the hostile and possessive behavior of these offenders to light – but all in all even experts say it is the woman’s decision to make. A shove off of the weight upon them, a step up on their own from the ground.
When I think about that, I think about my niece and the young, wide-eyed and curious daughters of my friends, even my friends themselves and I wonder where it is exactly that we in society routinely fail them.

Where in time do we make the mistake of letting the young women of the future believe that they could ever be deserving of such treatment? Where do we not emphasize enough how valuable they really are? Abuse – whether physical or sexual, carries with it always, a deadly dose of emotional toxicity. With every act, there is a swipe at a woman’s psyche.
Have we neglected the teachings of self-worth for the teachings of self-depreciation? You are not valuable if you are without (enter preconceived notion of value here).

To all the little girls of the world, all sugar and spice and everything nice – I say – you are valuable.  Just as you are.

But that’s not really enough, is it?

These days it’s hard to commit. Even for the committed.  We’re always looking for a new interest, a new cell phone plan, a new house so we can make money off of selling the one we’re in, a new job that’s better and more fulfilling than the one we have, better husbands, better wives.

In a world where it is so hard to commit, the first step in changing that world is…well…the first step. For the women who have yet to take theirs – we can all take one of our own.
We can get involved. We can educate ourselves – be it in domestic violence, hunger, poverty, illiteracy or even matters of health. We can become advocates in whatever way possible. We can take the hand of a young girl and walk her out of her room into a world as safe and as engaging and as secure as possible.

We can take a stronger interest in their education. Fill their rooms with books and when they get older – explain to them the definition of self worth. Teach them that to be controlled, blamed, threatened, told that their love and their compassion is the root of someone else’s problem – is wrong.

We can nurture them to become the type of women who set out in the world to help others who have been held down. We can watch them become the business owners who generate dollars and – change.  We can’t break a male cycle of violence. But maybe we can break the cycle of acceptance.

We can give each other the chance to fall. Because the fall is just the pre-game. The getting up is when it gets good. And no woman should be deprived of that.

In that support – we are the railing to that first step. A step toward something that only they can know.  There are so many opportunities for that first step. Recently a list of organizations that facilitate opportunities to help women was compiled for a likewise themed Oprah show. It’s worth a look. So if you’re ready to take the step, if there is someone in your life worth taking the step for: get educated, get involved and jump on over to www.oprah.com and click on the “For All Women Registry.”

Because the first step is the steepest. It’s all uphill from there.

Jessica Sieff is a reporter for the Niles Daily Star. Reach her at: jessica.sieff@leaderpub.com.