Onward, Upward, and Further In

I have been wondering why I am so interested in the increasing violence I am seeing in North America. I realise some of my friends may find it’s a strange thing to give my attention to….  But cyclical violence is very familiar to me.  It has touched me and even deeply scarred my life.  I have grown up witnessing the cycles of abuse. I am intimately acquainted with how that abuse has impacted my own heart. I was in danger of becoming abusive because I was abused. Would my abuser have abused me if they weren’t first abused themselves? I am a firsthand witness to abuse, and how this pattern of behaviour gets repeated from parent to child, parent to child, etc. The abuse I experienced inflamed my own rage, and it took years of work, repentance and self-control to unlearn that natural response of anger. I live with fear even to this day that it might yet take hold of me, and make a ruin of me and my daughter and her future children. Anger and violence in the home are not so di...