 Welcome to Serving Locally with Me, your host, Michelle Dynas, the podcast where we spotlight service in the Longmont and surrounding communities. All right, let's connect here with Brenda, your Mrs. Frederick 2024, and she's here to talk to us about, um, domestic violence, awareness and education. So just who are you and what is your platform and just a quick little overview? So obviously you already know my name and my title. Um, I am a mother of five, a wife of an amazing husband, um, and a two-time domestic violence survivor. When I first got involved with, uh, the Mrs. Colorado, um, uh, association, let's call it. Um, I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do and like, what does this mean? And so it wasn't until my second year running that I really decided I wanted to focus in on domestic violence, being a survivor myself. Um, there's a lot of people out there that are going through domestic violence and they're not sure that that's what it is because there may not be physical. Um, it may only be mental and emotional, but sometimes mental and emotional, most cases is the worst that you can get. Um, and so what I want to do is I want to take domestic violence, awareness and education and put it out all over the state of Colorado and beyond if I can, um, and just educate and bring awareness to this as this, as I feel this is, uh, a pandemic like COVID was kind of hidden. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. Um, can you just give us a little bit of background about your, your life and what got you into doing this? Into doing Mrs. Frederick. Yeah, that too. Yeah. So, um, so into doing Mrs. Frederick, I was, uh, first nominated by somebody in my local area and I was like, no, that is not for me. That's totally me. Like what is this? And you know, I went into it thinking, um, I was, you know, just from what I'd seen on TV previously, Oh, I'm going to need to be a size zero and I'm going to need to, I don't even know, but I went into it and I found nothing but friendship and supports and everybody is there for their own reasons and is passionate about it. So with that being said, I couldn't help but go back is every year that I go back, I feel like I win. I win because it keeps opening up more doors for me to get the word out about domestic violence, awareness and education. I, as that, as a survivor, again, um, I survived to situations and, uh, are two abusers, I should say. And here I am today with, uh, my three times to charm husband who adores me and I adore him right back. That's awesome. Um, so what's your focus as you want to go? Do you want to talk more about your background then? So my background, um, so some might think, uh, when I was younger, when I was six years old, um, I was sexually abused for two years in that also time span, my father passed away at the age of seven. Those things being said might lead you to believe that I was a candidate. I was, um, almost born to be a domestic violence victim. Um, but that's not true because the one thing I wanted to get across this domestic violence doesn't discriminate. It doesn't discriminate against male, female, whatever your, uh, preferences, uh, for a partner. Um, and it doesn't discriminate against age either. Not at all. Um, so getting out and speaking to everyone from the ages of, I believe, even middle school, all the way up to, um, seniors in a senior citizen, um, community, um, a lot of the senior citizens actually went through domestic violence from what I've found so far. Uh, but didn't see it as that. They saw it as I was being subordinate to my husband. I was doing what I was supposed to do. And when I didn't do that, these things would happen. And, uh, a couple of the ladies that I've spoken to have come out to me and said, wow, thank you for bringing light to what happened to me because I just thought it was normal. And now you're bringing light to this and what is normal. So that's, that's really where this comes from is, is trying to get in front of as many people as I can from all ages, ethical groups and so on and so forth. Anybody, yeah. Cause you can see it, you can maybe, maybe, you know, somebody that is maybe going through it and they just can't see it themselves because like you said, it's normal. So I like that you have on here the warning signs that, and I'll post this on there too of just what to look for in it's as a victims and abusers. Yes, exactly. You know, the other thing too is when I first left my abuser for the first time, I called my mom and I said, mom, I need you to go pick up my kids and I need you to take them home. I need you to get your house ready and I'm coming there. And she told me she had been waiting on my call. She knows that she knew for eight years, she knew what was going on years. She knew what was happening to me, but didn't have a clue as to how to even help. Didn't even know where to go for resources. The only thing she could do is sit back in and watch these things happen and hope that I found a way out or, or she prayed that, you know, things would change and unfortunately it didn't, but I did find a way out. And here I am today to speak about it. To not know resources or where to go to for her even to help get you help. Um, that's a big reason why I'm doing the podcast is so people know about resources of, of any situation that they're in, make it be, you know, as it is in, is there, if they're homeless, if there are no people or whatever. So, um, that makes me sad that, that, um, because, because we've been in that situation where I'm just like, we need help and I have nowhere to even, you know, I don't even know where to start or, you know, who to go to, because it just seems like it's, it's hidden because it's, you don't want it to be, oh, I need help and start asking around because it's embarrassing, we're shamed into, you know, well, you need help, why, you know, or whatever. And like you said, it's embarrassing. So, um, yeah, that's great to get the, to get the word out of, of where to get help and what, what to look for and, and where to even just start. Yeah. Yes. I also believe that there should be, um, some new laws passed, um, we have, um, sex offenders and people that go out and commit, um, felonies and crimes and things. When they do that, they have to register as a sex offender. They have to check in with somebody every month. Um, why don't we have a system like that for domestic violence abusers that they have to register as a domestic violence abuser. So potentially if somebody is getting, um, started with that, starting to date that person and they want to look into them, they could look at that and say, wow, um, that's not something I want to be a part of. Not to say that abusers can't change. There's not enough therapy out there. There's not enough, um, resources. That's why that's why starting at such a younger age and speaking to people, speaking to kids, even about it, because the kids learned from what they see in their homes and, uh, if, if they're seeing this in their home, then they're going to, they're going to come out of this and thinking, Oh, well, this is normal. So I'm going to treat my spouse like this. Yeah, it's very hard. Yeah. So what would you say your focus is? My focus is helping safe houses currently. They need more resources. They are helping over 500 families a year and having to turn families away because they don't have enough resources. Um, the woman's play safe house, uh, that I, that I directly work with, um, or indirectly, I don't work there, but, um, they're the ones that I support when it comes to their needs and I share a lot of their posts. Um, but they have them there and I hope that I'm got this right, but they, they can stay upwards of, I believe it's one to three months and then they help them get their own places and provide financial support, uh, clothing, food support, all of those things to those families, getting into a new place and restarting their lives along with therapy, which is super important. Um, and there is not enough resources. That's why they're constantly running drives around Christmas time, um, running drives throughout the year. Um, the woman's play safe house. I'll try to get the link for you actually, you can go on via this link and see exactly what they need and purchase it. And it goes directly to them. So I'm not the middle man. I'm just the person sharing them, sharing this brain. And in some other cases, I've ran drives and had people bring stuff to me and, uh, delivered it to them. That's awesome. Yeah. So that would be my main focus is kind of helping the safe houses, but my very, very next close focus is getting the word out and speaking to as many people as I can about this, about how I'm going to be able to, you know, about the awareness and, and not to feel embarrassed or ashamed and to ask for help for themselves or other people that they know. Well, I left my situation in 97, my first one. Um, and I realized I had never told my story and last year was the first year I actually told my story. So I've been walking around with shame and, um, you know, I was raised, um, to divorce is not an option, things like that. Um, so I, there was a lot of shame in that for me. I married, I had children. I was trying to be the perfect wife, the perfect mom. And still it wasn't working. Um, so I've, I've lived with a lot of shame for a lot of years, um, but now that I started telling my story, I'm actually healing inside. And I feel like the more I healed the more I can help. Yes. Yes, exactly. Um, was it that you're, you're either here or there's somebody, there's somebody that's either right ahead of you and your story or right behind you, and you can get help from those people and you can help those. And that helps all of you guys heal going up the chain is what I've found out doing this through, through every, every conversation that I've had. So that's awesome that you're able to now heal from, from talking about it and helping other people. And I'm, I'm so happy for you. Thank you. So that's a long time to hold on to something like that. And, um, I feel for you. I get stronger every day. I get more, I feel like I get more and more powerful every day. Um, this is a little off subject, but you know, I'm a massage therapist. I just recently got my real estate license here in the state of Colorado. Um, and so doing all of those things is making me step out even more. So because I was told for so many years that I would never be anything. I can never amount to anything. Um, or I would never be able to make a difference. You know, um, and there's so many ways that I'm going to be able to make differences moving forward. Right. And I'm excited about that. Right. And having the title, it helps. It gives you something. It gives you that. It boosts of a confidence that, um, that it sure, it gave me, but yeah, I got to get out of the house and, and do things and make a difference in how, how healing that is for things that even, you don't even know that you're healing from. Yes. You're just like, Oh, hey, I'm doing so much better. Uh, so that's great. Um, yeah. Um, what, so who, I guess, who are you trying to reach? We've kind of already gone over that one. Um, so what makes your work with awareness and education different than other similar serving organizations? So I'm not so different from them because they're out trying to do the exact same thing as I am. The more and more people that we can get on the street to do this, the more and more we can make a difference, the more and more we can be heard by those that, um, are empowered that can make these, um, decisions and change these laws. And provide more education even for the police department when they go out on these calls, um, and therapy for them as well. When they go out on these calls and they have to see these things just two days ago, um, man in Jefferson County killed his wife and, um, turned the gun on himself. This is two days ago. Yeah. Um, there was three children involved in it. One of the children was shot in the middle of it. It's, these are things that I can't imagine a police officer having to go in to this and not being affected by it. I believe there needs to be an advocate, um, on every single call. That means, um, that we need more people to volunteer to be advocates and be trained and understand what's going on. And, and these places, all of the police departments, all of your local police departments have a domestic violence, um, uh, section, let's call it, uh, that they will put you through training. It's a 40 hour training and then you have to be available, um, I believe it's somewhere between six and 12 or I'm sorry, three to six days a week, a month or something to remain active, um, just to go out and be able to advocate for these people. And so if this is speaking to anybody, I hope that, that you'll look more into it because the more and more people we can have out there, the better. Even like you said, what did you say? Three to six days a month or whatever. Yeah, that's not a horrible amount of time, but you can always be looking out for it. Maybe you, you help somebody that you don't even realize I've noticed that with the Stephen ministry, the Stephen ministry training that I have, it's taught me how to listen to people and to respond and active listen and, um, how that helps in everyday life has been crazy to me. Just how much I use that little bit of training. So get trained on stuff, you know, just to help, help whatever. Yeah. Your heart feels pulled to, to serve in. That's awesome. Yeah. Sometimes I'm being pulled in more directions than I can keep up, but you know, we get there as long as I can continue to have dinner with my family every evening and everything else can just roll around and I'm good. So what are your greatest needs? So the greatest needs I have are, um, if you have in an organization that I can get out and speak to, I'm looking for speaking engagements, volunteer opportunities, um, anywhere that I can get in front of people. That is my biggest need right now. And, uh, the other than, other than that, my biggest need is to help the woman's play safe house. Yeah. Collect donations. Awesome. Do you have any events or volunteer opportunities? I know you're looking for opportunities to go volunteer also. Yes, I am. I'm looking for as many opportunities to volunteer being either with senior citizens, uh, volunteering in the safe houses, volunteering, um, anywhere that allows me to reach more people. Yeah. It's funny cause I usually have people that are looking for volunteers and you're like the first one that's been like, I'm a volunteer besides me. This is kind of the flip side. The flip side of it. Yeah, that's good because, um, yeah, there are people that want to do things that we're just looking for those, those places to get connected into and that's, that's the whole point of this. So that's great. Um, so how can people contact and find out more about you and your, um, your platform? I know I'll have your, the women's safe shelter link in my QR code as always and in the show notes and everything and any, all the ways to get in contact with her, but I'll let her share some of that too. So you can contact me, uh, directly at my email, Mrs. Frederick, Colorado 2021 at gmail.com. That's, um, all spelled out. Sorry, lots of typing. Um, you can also reach me on any of my social media pages. You can find me under Mrs. Frederick, Colorado on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter. And I think that there's, uh, there may be, uh, next door, next door, next door, I'm under Brenda Curran. Um, that's where I do a lot of, uh, advertising and put out the stuff that we're looking for. I need to do more with next door. I have it, but I don't do as much with it, but I think it's amazing. It's amazing. You know, there's just like any social media platform. There are, unfortunately, the trolls and the negative people, the negative posts. Um, but what I did to turn that around and something I would encourage you to do is I created connections over coffee. Um, so I post that on my next door app so that if anybody in my, in my community or even beyond wants to go have a cup of coffee with me, let's get to know each other as people, not as what religion are we or what's, what we, what politics we believe in. The one post that you saw that you didn't like. Yes. I want to get to know people for who they are. I want to, I want to know them inside. I love that idea. So I did that. I started that and that's brought some positivity to next door. And the other thing that I do weekly is I do a weekly riddle every Thursday. I put up a riddle and then every Sunday is the answer and some riddles are silly and, and very easy to answer. But gosh, I try really hard to find the hardest ones I can. Um, but I do that every week too, just to bring some fun, some fun and engagement and engagement and not take away from all of this negativity. Yes. Our world is there's too much. Our world is really crazy right now and it's very scary. And I don't know where it's going and, um, but everybody is being affected by it in some form or fashion. So bringing positivity and bring some love, bring a little loneliness. Yeah, exactly. Little riddles. That's awesome. I didn't know that. I'll have to look for that one. Sometimes social media is weird because some things come up on your feet and some things don't or it's like four weeks later, it comes up and you're like, oh, they're like, what do you mean that happened four weeks ago? So I don't know, it's weird. I'm, I'm learning, I'm learning all of this still, you know, so there's a lot to learn. I'm learning so much to do. I'm trying to figure out how to blog right now. That's a need for me. Anybody knows how to blog. Anybody knows how to edit these. That's what I need. So I need to do this for myself. Wonderful. Is there anything else that you'd like to add or just talk about that maybe I missed or you just feel passionate that you just want to talk about for a few minutes? That's. No, I don't think so. I think that we've covered just about everything. You know, if one thing I wanted to talk about, it would be statistics. OK. When it comes to domestic violence, one in every three women, one in every four men, one in every two LGBTQ are victims of domestic violence. Wow. One in every three, one in every four and one in every two. It's insane to me. Eighteen to twenty four year old girls are three times more likely to experience domestic violence or stalking behaviors currently in there in our lives. Um, if you ask why they stay, that's a code for saying it's your fault. It's their fault. I had somebody ask me that time. Why did you stay after the first time? Well, because the first time was the first time he was physical with me. He'd already prepped me and made me feel as though he was allowed to do anything he wanted to me. There was never a point that he got down on his knee and he proposed to me and saying, now I'm going to start physically hitting you. I've I've honeymooned you up to this point and I've made you feel low enough to where I feel like I I can hit you now. There wasn't a there wasn't a proposal for that. You didn't see it coming. And there's always an apology and a reason why if you hadn't if you hadn't reacted the way you did, I wouldn't have acted. I wouldn't have hit you. So it was always a way to turn it around. Leaving an abuser is actually scarier than staying because of the threat of being killed. Seventy percent. Wow. Seventy percent of victims are killed by leaving. Let's tell you a quick little story in regards to that. My ex-husband, the father of my children, still had rights to see his kids. And there was one time he saw the kids and he my mother was to go between my mother was to drop off and to pick up. And there was a point in time where he wouldn't let my mother pick up my kids. He said until I came, he wouldn't release the kids. That night, we called the police and had the police go and I was in the back of my mother's car waiting to get my kids back. The police went in and took my kids. And from what I remember, because that was a pretty horrific time for me, he was planning on killing me that night. That's insane. So because I because I had my mother and I had that support, not everybody has that support. Not everybody. It's it's just a crazy thing. So statistics, I realized we're in going into 2024. But my current statistics I have are twenty twenty one. In twenty twenty one in just Colorado, there was ninety one domestic violence deaths, forty victims, thirty abusers and twenty collateral damage, collateral damage being strangers, friends or the kids. Those are huge numbers. Those are. That's I did not know. That's just here in the state of Colorado. And that was twenty twenty one. That's just one year, one year, one state. Yeah. So if I can make a difference that way and again, pay attention when when Michelle posts this about victims, warning signs for victims and abusers and how you can help victims and how. Just yeah, we might want to go over those because sometimes it's in the podcast and they don't see the the the video. So if you want to go through and and talk about those, then that would be good because. They might. Yeah, I post it up there, but they might not be able to see it. So warning signs when you have somebody you care about, whether it's a friend or partner parent, brother, sister, whatever it may be. Warning signs for a victim are sudden changes in appearance. A lot of times the abusers try to change your appearance, make you wear turtlenecks to cover marks or because they don't want you to look quote sexy in the world. Avoids contact with friends and family. They're not avoiding it. They're just not allowed to have contact with friends and family spends all of their free time with the abuser. Cries a lot and is super moody. Is very stressed and with physical symptoms. A lot of times when we go through emotional stresses, our body will start to respond with physical symptoms of of aches and pains and things like that. And sometimes it can actually physically make us ill and feel like we have the flu sudden changes in behavior and defends the abuser for his or her actions, meaning if you come up to somebody who you think is a victim and you start talking badly about the abuser, that's kind of one of the worst things you can do because that makes the victim defend the abuser, which then the abuser gains even more power. Yeah. So what can you do to help a victim? You can decide, decide that the abuse or decide the array of abuses too much. Tell someone you are, I'm sorry, what what can a victim do? I said that wrong. You can decide the abuse is too much. Tell somebody you are being abused to document your injuries, call a local helpline for help, fill out a personalized safety plan. And if you want more information about how what a safety plan looks like, I would be more than happy to go over that. Remember that it's not your fault for being abused. You didn't ask for it. You didn't deserve it. Now, warning signs whenever you're looking at somebody who could be a potential abuser is sudden and drastic moods, acts Mako or cocky jealous or controlling cruelty to animals and or children, history of battering. Again, that's where that we're having to have beyond a registry for it would make a big difference. Consistently checking on your partner, blames others for their problems. Friends and family, you can learn all you can about the abuse, teach your love, teach your loved ones about abuse. What is what does it look like? What does it sound like? What does it smell like? All of those things document injuries. You see, call local hop hotline for more resources. Listen to your loved one and most importantly, be patient because if you force somebody out of a situation like this before they're ready, they will go back. Yeah. And each time that they go back, it gets worse. On average, it takes somebody eight times to leave. So that's those are just some great things to look out for. I wish I had the hotline number with me right now, but yeah, put it on. Don't worry about it. We'll figure that out. Yeah, for sure. So yeah, if you're if you're listening to this, it'll be in the show notes too. So you can look up that information. Yeah. So well, and if if there's somebody out there that's listening to this that's currently some of these things are resonating with you and you're just not sure of what to do. Reach out to somebody, please. Call your your massage therapist. Call your massage therapist. I need an appointment and you can, you know, go just have a cup of coffee and talk about it and see what we can do to get you out of that situation. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Brenda, for being on today and sharing your story. And I'm so proud of you. Thank you for having for all that you're doing. That's that's wonderful. And I hope that this reaches somebody to to to help them or that they know of somebody that they can help and and get in contact with you guys and and help you out. Thank you so much for having me on. Absolutely. Thank you to my guests, my listeners and my supporters serving together. We can strengthen our community. Please like and subscribe. Do all those other things. You know, you got to do them because that's the easiest way that you can serve right now. All right. Now go connect with others and be a blessing.