Content Disclaimer: This episode contains discussions about intimate partner violence that some listeners may find disturbing or difficult to hear.
SARAH: This is At the Core of Care, a podcast where people share their stories about nurses and their creative efforts to better meet the health and healthcare needs of patients, families and communities. I'm Sarah Hexem Hubbard with the Pennsylvania Action Coalition and the Executive Director of the National Nurse-Led Care Consortium.
This episode begins our two-part series on intimate partner violence, or IPV. You'll hear from Kalena Brown, an IPV survivor who's navigated custody disagreements, endured systemic failures, suffered physical and psychological trauma, and grappled with the societal emotional and financial fallout. Kalena's story, including her perspectives on persistent institutional problems, and efforts to address them, is powerful, and reclaiming her voice to tell it has been hard won.
IPV is prevalent and persistent, though statistics vary depending on several factors, and of course, don't capture the many victims who don't report. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, found that a third of women and a quarter of men report experiencing severe physical violence from an intimate partner. 20% of women and nearly 8% of men report violence, and 14% of women and 5% of men experience stalking.
As you'll learn, IPV isn't limited to the impact of physical violence on survivors, and it's important to note that we're bringing you these episodes during Mental Health Awareness Month. Very often, IPV also manifests psychologically and emotionally, not to mention financially and otherwise.
Before we begin, we want to let you know that this episode contains discussions about intimate partner violence that some listeners might find disturbing or difficult to hear.
KALENA: Hi, my name is Kalena Brown. There are many different titles that people would give me. I'm entrepreneurial. I have an all-organic baby food company. I’ve published three books myself. Two are children's books, one is a devotional, I will definitely say IPV expert for sure. I have spoken on podcasts before. I have done different interviews with different hospitals in Philadelphia. There are organizations that I have come into contract with that I speak with. I've spoken on panels, doctors and different healthcare professionals have asked my opinion in some things that concern health with mothers and giving birth, or domestic violence and relationships prior to giving birth or after birth.
It's been nine years now since I left my abuser, and from the nine years till now, my voice has been something that I now use to help other people get out of situations, whether they think it's abuse or not, where there are certain signs that you may not think is abusive, because they may not specifically harm you physically, but there are other ways that you can be abused that a lot of people aren't aware of, and some of my testimony and story alone is enough that helps them see like, Hey, I did think that this was healthy, and now hearing your story, I realize that it's not.
The father of my oldest two sons. We grew up together where we were younger, and we dated. My mom thought that us dating at my age was too young. So, she's like when she's 18, you guys decide that you want to get together, then you can. It wasn't until I turned 20 where we reconnected, and I always thought of him as the younger version of who he was, or who he once used to be. You know he's a good person, that he has good qualities, that you know, he's a caring person, that he's loving, that he's a protector. And it was when I was pregnant with our oldest son that I realized this isn't the person who I thought he was. And one of the things that was the biggest for me was infidelity. He would say I'm crazy or I'm thinking something that isn't true, trying to kind of what we consider now, gaslighting a situation, to make it seem as if what I'm thinking or what I know to be true isn't really true at all. And it was me, I was the problem where a lot of times, an abuser will make it seem as if you're crazy. You're the problem. You're thinking too much into things. There isn't anything going on. And that's how it initially started.
I left and I went, and I stayed with my sister, and that wasn't a really good place, either and that's what he began to pray on. Your family doesn't want you there either. The only person that cares about you is me. Where you feel dependent upon them, because all the other people around you may not seem as if they care, because they're not as there for you as you would want them to be or present or even like the fact that you are with this person. So, a lot of times, family will voice their opinions and make you feel as if they don't want you with him, and they will push you toward that person.
So, he kind of played on the relationship that I had with my sister at that moment to say, come back with me. You'll never be in harm's way here with me. And you know, when you're pregnant, you have hormones that are up and down, highs and lows, and you are at your most vulnerable state. So for me, I wanted to go back and try to make my family work.
It wasn't until I was pregnant with my second son that it went from mild to the worst thing that you could possibly think you can get into. I found I was pregnant. It wasn't something that was planned, and I was, I think, a month postpartum, and I just had a gut feeling that something wasn't right. And he was asleep one day, and I went through his phone, and I saw that he was talking to someone. He told her, I was the crazy one. I didn't have any family that cared for me. I just needed a place to stay. I wasn't with him. I'm saying all these things because I'm bitter because he told me that he didn't want to be with me anymore. He wanted to be with someone new, which none of those things were true.
I also was getting my degree online, and I decided at that time to go back to school in person. So, the plan that we had was to put our kids in daycare. Now I found out there's someone that he's seeing. I'm ready to go back to school. We're going to put our kids in daycare. The plan was, since he was bringing in the money, he would buy all of the things that they needed for school, and I would still take care of the household things. He no longer wanted to pay for, any of the things that he needed for daycare to hinder my growth in school till that I didn't progress in graduating with my degree. His family was more helpful at that time that mine was mainly his father. He gave me what I needed to make sure that our kids were able to go to daycare.
SARAH: Kalena says Not long afterward, the abuse became physical.
KALENA: My brother was the one that tried to grab us out of the relationship, but I didn't see it as abuse, because no one ever said, this isn't healthy. Everyone wanted me to leave, but where are we going to go? Us leaving is good and all, but what will happen once we leave, if I don't have a stable home? Will he try to call and get them taken from me and put them in his custody? Will he then try to make it as if I can't see them anymore because I don't have a stable home and he does. I came to CHOP, the Karabots Center in West Philadelphia, and I spoke to my kid’s pediatrician. Prior to me telling her, whenever I would take them there, I would see the sign that they would have up in the room. Do you feel safe at home? Are you being abused? And I will always look at it and wonder, should I take it? But a lot of times that I would go, he was there with me. So, for safety, I chose not to take it. But I always thought about calling the number that was on the flyer. And when he didn't go with me one day, was then when I said it to her, like, hey, I want to talk to you about something, but I don't know how you'll take it. And when she shut the door and she realized it was a serious matter, and I told her. The person who name was on the flyer was the one that the doctor introduced me to that day, and she came in the room, and she sat there, and she's like, if you don't want to talk, we don't have to talk. If you do want to talk as much or as little information you would like to give. And we came up with a plan to try to get me to leave. How much money does he give you where you'll be able to save some of that to plan and escape? If you leave, where would you go? If we find you placement somewhere? How would you get there?
SARAH: Kalena says these conversations with her children's pediatrician, Dr Sarah Winters were instrumental in leaving her relationship.
KALENA: One of the first things that I did ask her was, will you take my kids? Will the state take my kids? And one of the things that she said to me, that kind of gave me comfort in telling my story, was, as long as the kids aren't being abused, then we don't have to share it with anyone, but I do want to document everything in their chart. In case this goes to court, you'll have documentation to show everything that happened in the relationship, including me, seeing the bruises on you, and I can also note them in their chart as well. We did like a three-month plan from the time that I told them until I wanted to leave. We came up with this entire plan, and we thought that it was the ideal plan that will work to get us out of the home. My plan was to leave while he was at work. That way, there was no interference with him coming home and finding me packing and leaving. She was one of the most empathetic. In that moment and like I'm getting emotional now, because she's literally a saving grace for me. And if all providers could be how she is when it comes to the empathy, when it comes to the level of care for her patients and their parents and their caregivers, I believe that a lot of people that have been in my situation would not have been in it as long as they were if, when we did tell our providers, they were able to act as quickly as she did. In terms of, what do you need me to do? We have someone here right now that can help you. I'll be right back, and she's still that way to this day. Hey, Mom, we're here. You know, she knows I just was with her last week. Are you okay? How are you? It's not always about our kids. It's about us as well. We're not well, our kids can't be well.
SARAH: Ultimately, Kalena called the social worker she'd met through Dr. Winters at CHOP.
KALENA: She was able to get me a cab to go get my kids. And I took my kids to his aunt's house. We stayed there. We were supposed to leave that night to go to a shelter. The shelter didn't have room for us, so they were going to put us in a hotel. So, we were waiting for a cab to come to the house to get us. We were waiting for a long time we went to a hotel here in Philadelphia.
What I didn't know now is that some organizations have connections with some hotels, where, if shelters don't have room for anyone in there for domestic violence relationships, they'll put you in a hotel with the alias name, so that if anyone looks for you, they can't find you. And that's what they did for us. You don't tell anyone your name until you leave here. You cannot let anyone know where you are. You cannot let anyone come pick you up from here. No one is allowed in your room. The only people that are able to stay in here with you is you and your kids. Do you understand that? For your safety and other people's safety who are also here, you're not allowed to share any of this information with anyone. Do you understand? I told them yes.
Someone from the organization came down. They ordered us food. They gave us gift cards. We left so abruptly that I wasn't able to get much of anything. A couple of days later, his aunt helped me move majority of what I could out of the house, and that's how we left. We stayed at the hotel for a while, and then we received the call from the shelter. You have to leave. Now we're going to give you this address, it wasn't the actual one, but they needed to make sure I wasn't followed before they actually let me into the vicinity of where the shelter was. And we had like curfew. We had different rules that we had to follow in order for us to stay there.
SARAH: Kalena got a temporary protection from abuse order when she went back to court, her case was dismissed due to lack of evidence, and eventually a custody agreement was worked out.
KALENA: I started to heal, but that started to crack a little bit when he came back. It took a lot for me to realize that physically, I'm free, but emotionally and mentally I'm still bound to these different events that have taken place, and I had to go to counseling to find healing for all of those things. There are different factors that played into me speaking up, and it took a while, because I had to find my voice again. It was quiet for a long time. I felt like even speaking to my family about it, like, Hey, you knew these things were going on and you did nothing. It took a long time for me to forgive them also. So, I had to really dig deep and do the inner work in me first, to even sit down with my parents and say, let's talk real about this. Let's not walk around it and make it seem as if, oh, if the kids weren't there, I would have did this when you knew what were happening and you chose not to do anything. I had to really learn how to let all of that stuff go. And it took a lot of crying, it took a lot of prayer for me to get to the point where I was able to look at them and not feel hurt and not feel rejected.
So, once I was able to get through all of that was then when I was able to speak on it, and that was something that took a lot of coverage for me to do, because people could take sides, and a lot of people did take sides where they felt like I went too far by calling the cops. He's not to blame for also calling them, but it's only because he was arrested, and I wasn't that you guys feel like I ruined his life. I was to blame because I was the one that called the cops. And then in the black society, one thing that they say is we don't call cops. He didn't go too far by putting his hands on me or threatening to unalive me, or any of those things like that. So, once I no longer care what anyone thought, especially him, or how they felt about me speaking up, it was then when I said, I don't care what platform I use. I don't care who here. I don't care who listen. I don't care what they say, and I'm going to continuously speak on it and use my voice to help other women and men who are in abusive relationships, to let them know I don't care who tries to silence you don't allow your voice to be silenced any longer. And I also speak up because of that because doctors and nurses and judges and mediators need to know these things when it comes to custody and the background of it is domestic violence. You're putting victims and survivors back in situations that make them have to reheal from traumas. When you go into the courtroom and you try to tell them these things, and they shut you up. When in moments where you feel like you want to say some things, you have to be quiet, because then it makes it seem as if you're continuously being disobedient to the law and feel like your voice isn't heard yet again, because the system continuously fails you.
SARAH: Today, Kalena tells her story on panels in university classrooms and elsewhere, hoping to reach as many people as possible to educate them about intimate partner violence.
KALENA: I'm out on social media outside of TikTok, so that's the one that I feel is the most beneficial. Where I do like spoken word. And a lot of times other people would chime in and say, hey, you know, I'm going through the same thing, or I went through it, or I didn't think it was possible to get over it. Or it's 10-15 years later, and I'm still not past this. How did you get past it? Not so easily, but so in enough time where you felt like you were able to openly date again? Because even those things are hard learning that every person isn't your trauma, but you're so traumatized by these events that have happened in your life that you aren't able to identify what's good or bad anymore. So, it took a lot for me to get here, but for me, writing is the thing that helps. I love to write down what I'm thinking. I love to write down what I've been through and writing short stories, or even writing and spoken word, some of the events that have transpired in my life helped me heal. It helps me use my voice. It helps me feel like I'm able to release some of these emotions that I'm feeling. Ultimately, for me, is like I have to relive it, in a sense of speaking on it to help many other people to go through this or not go through this, or to live life, understanding that they don't have to stay or help them identify what's wrong with the healthcare system or what's wrong with the judiciary system. Or how to get out of relationships that they've been trying to get out of for years.
Some of the red flags and signs that I would say is isolation from family, because that's what he ultimately did when he broke my phone, no one was able to contact me. Make you feel as if no one loves you but them. That's what he did when situations arise with my family, and they weren't there to intervene. He made it seem as if no one cared but him.
Physical harm, where at times, they will hurt you, and then apologize. I'm sorry. I was so angry. I will never do it again. Will buy gifts after to try to make up for abusing you. Speaking down on you, making you feel as if you're not enough because they may have more money than you. Try to make you stop going to school or going to work so that you aren't able to have education or money or both, to get out of that relationship.
I'll continuously tell my story. There are a lot of different factors that play into why I continuously tell my story, but for me now, one of the biggest is to help the healthcare providers and the healthcare system understand that there also are signs that they're missing when they see their patients, our kids, when they're in the room. A lot of providers aren't able to screen and see and identify factors that are happening, even in waiting rooms while we're waiting. That if they were educated on these things, they would be able to identify some things that are happening.
I went back to become a postpartum doula to help mothers with their postpartum phase from relationships that they're in, or if they're not in the relationship, but they chose to keep their child and they're going through that postpartum stage, helping with that. Also lining in with eating healthy, with the organic food and knowing my story, and if they've been through that, helping them with that process as well.
We're trying to come up with the implementation plan to help with screening processes. We get screened for everything else. We get screened for high blood pressure. We get screened for all family history and everything that runs in your family genetically. We get screened while we're pregnant for all of these things for our kids, but we never get screened for IPV and relationships. Why is that happening? Where are the resources here to help?
If we speak up and I tell you, you know, I'm being abused at home, and you're my OBGYN, what resources are you going to give to help me? If you give no resources and I feel like what you've given me is going to help, and you just give me a pamphlet, and I have to call the number, I'll just go home. And a lot of times that happens where resources are available, but they're limited. We don't have room in the shelter. I'll just stay home.
I feel like that's a big problem, and I think that's why we now are trying to come up with the plan to help find resources, and even get funding for different resources to help with finding different things and different ways to help where the numbers are true and accurate now, and not just something that we think are theoretical, where, when you go into your screen, you screen everyone, not just the ones that you think or if you see it in their history, you ask is this the same partner? Or is this person abusing you?
I think sometimes the providers are scared of the answer, but we're afraid of our lives being taken. So which one is more fearful? You being afraid of a yes, this is happening, or you being afraid that by next week, you'll hear that your patient isn't alive anymore because you chose not to answer or ex a simple question. And that's ultimately what it boils down to. A lot of times they are afraid because they feel like that's too personal. Where, I mean, it may be TMI, but how much more personal can it be? Rather it's an OBG, rather it's a primary doctor, it's a kid's doctor, the emergency department. Do you feel safe at home? Those few words can save so many lives and could also help the judicial system see where they're lacking in empathy and insight on what's going on.
SARAH: Many thanks to Kalena Brown for taking the time to share her story and perspective. And stay tuned for the second installment of our two-part series on intimate partner violence. We would also like to thank our partners at CHOP Policy Lab and Vanguard Strong Start for Kids, for their support on this work. You can find the latest episodes along with all the rest At the Core of Care, wherever you get your podcasts, or at paactioncoalition.org, on social media. You can stay up to date with us through our handles at PA Action Coalition and at Nurse-Led Care. This episode of At the Core of Care was produced by Emily Previti of Kouvenda Media and mixed by Brad Linder. I'm Sarah Hexem Hubbard with the Pennsylvania Action Coalition and the National Nurse-Led Care Consortium. Thanks for joining us.
