Reunion Online

At Joyful Heart, we know wellness can take many forms, especially for survivors and their loved ones. Tending to your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health are all part of the healing journey. This year we’re joining other organizations to recognize September 26 as National Women’s Health and Fitness Day, an annual event for women of all ages to celebrate different ways to stay healthy.

Jennifer Fox is an internationally acclaimed producer, director, writer, and camerawoman. The Tale is Fox’s first fiction feature film, which she wrote, directed, and produced. The HBO film is based on Fox’s own life story as the main character, portrayed by Emmy award-winning actress Laura Dern, re-examines her first sexual relationship and the stories we tell ourselves to survive as she rereads a short story from her middle school days.

Nancy Nesbitt is the parent representative on the Connecticut Governor’s Task Force on Justice for Abused Children. She applies her perspective and experiences as a mother of children who were sexually abused at a young age to her work. The task force serves to coordinate agencies in the investigation, intervention, and prosecution of child sexual abuse and serious physical abuse cases.

NPR called it the “assault epidemic no one talks about.” Each year, people with disabilities—physical, mental, intellectual, and others—face disproportionate rates of sexual and domestic violence. And too often, they do not receive the support they need.

Joyful Heart’s website now offers Spanish-language resources to make our educational materials about sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse accessible to those who speak Spanish, including the more than 40 million Spanish speakers in the United States.

Parents who suspect their child is in an unhealthy relationship may not know how to help. Parents can begin discussing healthy relationships and signs of dating abuse with their children before they even begin dating. Here are six tips on how parents can navigate having conversations about dating violence with their children.

1. Educate yourself.

Hope. Joy. Possibility. We were founded on these values and in 2017, they are at the heart of everything we do.

The volume on the conversation about sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse is up and getting louder every day as all eyes, ears, and hearts are turned toward these issues. The collective voices of survivors are powerful, strong, and undeniable. We are surrounded by meaningful change. And we aren’t going back.

It’s been an extraordinary year for our work at Joyful Heart.

Cases like this—and all that they represent—hit home for me in many ways. They touch me deeply as someone who has been immersed in these issues all of my life, as a survivor working to heal every day from the trauma of sexual violence, and as an advocate for my entire career.

I was pleased to join the work of 1in6.org as a new Board Member in June. In the three-plus decades that I have been involved in the anti-violence movement, I have witnessed the movement grow to reach new constituencies, and embrace new approaches unique to the needs of particular client groups.

In my experience, one path to true happiness and freedom is forgiveness, which is why I love writing about it.