A Brief But Spectacular take on caring for survivors of domestic violence

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• Laura Barron-Lopez:

  Lul Mohamud is the executive director of a nonprofit organization that supports survivors of domestic violence. The daughter of Somali immigrants focuses her work on helping those from the African immigrant and refugee community around Washington DC. Tonight, she shares her Brief But Spectacular take on the power and promise of person centered care.

• Lul Mohamud, The Person Center:

  For our survivors who are often retelling stories of violence of times that they don't want to reflect on, they don't want to repeat. It's already exhausting to do that. Then imagine having to worry about the feelings of the one who is listening to you. It makes it that much harder to disclose violence, it makes it much harder to reach for help.

  I was blessed to be born into the Somali immigrant community here in the DC area. My siblings and I, we were very service oriented at a really young age. Domestic violence is a long continuing global pandemic. I actually volunteered for The Person Center after my first year of college, and I met the founder and executive director then Amelia Missieledies.

  The Person Center is a small community based nonprofit that serves African immigrant survivors of domestic violence in the DC area. What she wanted for me to do was to learn a really important skill, which is the power of listening, we had to call the survivors and talk to them about their experience. And all she said was your goal here is just to listen. And it was the hardest thing to do.

  We are too often judging, policing and dictating how others emote, and live their lives, instead of putting the responsibility on us to listen accurately, and to listen empathetically, and if we're unable to listen, then we're unable to care for the people who need us most.

  After that summer, I knew that my focus needs to be on those who are most desperate to be heard, and who deserve to be heard. And I tell our community all the time that as an organization made by them, our priority is to make sure that they are part of the process from beginning to the end. And in order to decolonize domestic violence response, we have to center and value and trust the voices of survivors from the very community that we say we want to serve.

  Violence in the context of families and interpersonal relationships has existed since the dawn of time. The experiences that our survivors have had to hold on to the challenges they experience in receiving care are challenges that I recognize and I experience in my own life. Because I come from the same background, same community, when leaders, policymakers, researchers don't come from that community, and don't have a personal tie to the challenges that the survivors are experiencing, it's very unlikely that they'll be able to find the solution.

  My name is Lul Mohamud. And this is my Brief But Spectacular take on the power and promise of person centered care.

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