Saving Grace/Mary’s Place
As a board member of Saving Grace, I proudly support all the domestic violence services that we offer to the Central Oregon community—but I specifically wanted to highlight the value of Mary’s Place and ensure that community members know about this program.
Mary’s Place offers supervised parenting time and safe exchanges for families coping with issues of intimate partner violence, sexual assault, stalking and/or child sexual abuse.
We are fortunate to have this national best practice model program available in Central Oregon, the only one of its kind east of the Cascades, as most regions across the nation don’t have a similar resource. In communities without a Mary’s Place, survivors must conduct exchanges in parking lots, church lobbies, or even at their own front steps, bringing them into immediate contact with the person who has harmed them and their children. Exchanges at Mary’s Place protect the safety of survivors by ensuring zero contact between parents with policies including separate parking lots, entrances, staggered arrival and departure times.
All services at Mary’s Place are provided by professional facilitators with a deep understanding of domestic violence and the risks to adult survivors and children post-separation. Supervised visits are offered in a child-friendly environment and promote positive and healing relationships between children and their visiting parents. Last year alone, Mary’s Place facilitated 1,136 safe exchanges and supervised visits. Access to safe parenting time post-separation is a critical need that Mary’s Place provides for Central Oregon’s at-risk families. For more information, please visit the Saving Grace website at saving-grace.org.
—Robin Meiners
The Political Roller Coaster
A prominent psychiatrist has labeled Donald Trump the epicenter of a mental health crisis that is contagious and spreading.
At first I believed that this applied only to the many people backing president-elect Trump but after the election I have realized that both sides of the political divide are equally involved. The affliction is an obsession with politics and political news.
There seems to be a daily stream of attention-grabbing political news. I call this the political roller coaster. The news stream goes round and round, up and down, up and down. Does this sound familiar?
The day after the election I decided to take a break from the roller coaster. I’ve glanced at headlines but I haven’t read or listened to political news since that day.
The roller coaster doesn’t care. It still goes round and round, up and down. But my mental health has improved significantly. It’s like those summer days when we’ve been breathing wildfire smoke for weeks and suddenly the wind direction changes and we get a day of really fresh air. I think you know what I mean.
So I invite everyone, from both sides, to take a break from the news cycle. Take a pause from talking politics with your friends. Take a mental health day, or week or month. The roller coaster will still be there, running round and round, if you decide to get back on. I’m hoping you don’t, at least for a while.
—Paul Miller
Contraceptive equality
The New Yorker just provided an article entitled “Rushing to the Doctor Before Trump 2.0.” Basically it listed incredible statistics showing that orders of the emergency contraceptive pill Restart have risen 9,600% in the week following the election. Planned Parenthood quoted nationwide appointments for IUDs increased 760% after 11/5, and birth control implants rose 350%. In 2016 after Trump’s election percentages also increased — but by 21% — planning and thinking women are well aware of what their futures might look like. And that’s fine. Any person of reproductive carrying ability knows at the end of the day that a baby could be living in their uterus, and if the timing is not right for them would impact their lives forever. What the article did not report was how men were preparing for changes in the reproductive world. I don’t have to go into a lecture of why this is, we are thinking people that KNOW why this is — unplanned pregnancies fall under the responsibility of the carrier, not the participant. But I also have to hope that there are men in this country who know that shouldn’t be the case. That understand they are 50% of the problem of an unplanned pregnancy, that hopefully will take their share of the responsibility to help. And I shouldn’t have to ask why they aren’t filling the carts on Amazon and Wisp for Plan B and other alternatives — but I am. This is a call to men to show they too can be proactive in preventing unplanned situations, that their support shouldn’t be “just” to their partners, but the responsibility they have to solve a solvable pregnancy that they caused. So in this time of holiday gifting, please think about a box of Plan B under your tree or your pile of Chanukkah gifts for your young man, and his friends! Equality isn’t just for women, it is also for the men to step into for reproductive responsibilities.
—Melinda Halpern MS, LPC PC
Letter of
the Week:
Thanks for the reminder about these creative and useful holiday gifts, Melinda. Come on by for your gift card to Palate!
—Nicole Vulcan
This article appears in Source Weekly November 28, 2024.
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