I’d like to say that I fell into prevention the way I fall into most things:  head first, with a big splash!  I’d like to say that I really got it – right from the start!  …that I jumped in with both feet and swam like a champ.

But that would be a lie.  I didn’t jump right in.

I actually put my baby toe in, just like I did months after the face dive on the water skis:  frozen, dazed, and confused.

Imagine telling someone who’s seen, heard, and breathed in a humming, screaming, and sometimes silent yet angry sea of women and children enclosed in a secret society just for victims of intimate partner violence…that a creature called violence prevention exists??

Yes, I stumbled in.  Trying to look smart.  But of course everybody knew I was clueless.  I couldn’t understand that a mystical place existed – one where the use of force, threat, intimidation, and harassment never happened in the first place.

A world where I didn’t have to get into a heated moral or constitutional debate over a woman’s, or a man’s, right to wear six-inch heels with a two-inch skirt…

…because it’s prevention, the violent act didn’t occur in the first place.