Good Eve, everybody. Welcome to the show. Got a really important show tonight because October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

Not always a happy topic, but an important one because a lot of forms of abuse and violence, as I've talked on the show before about, have been normalized.

And yes, we want to identify it in other people and in our relationships, but we first

want to identify it in ourselves.

Are we an abuser?

And what forms might we be engaging in abuse?

And it's a health, it's a difficult, difficult form of self-reflection and self-awareness.

But as I say on the show all the time, mental health is really considering the impact

we have on other people and considering the impact other people have on us and making decisions about who should remain in our lives.

Who has earned the right to be a part of our lives based on how they treat us?

We deserve respect from anyone who's relating to us.

And just because someone's been in our life for a long period of time and

domestic violence centered, just because they're a husband or our wife or a boyfriend or a girlfriend or

whatever it might be, doesn't excuse it. And it's gendered. Some people think, ah, male out male,

you know, abuse. That's not domestic violence. Yes, it is. Female and female. Yes, it is. Even female towards male. Yes, it is. A female hitting or slapping a man is

assault. That's physical assault. That's illegal. That's abusive. That's violent. So it's not gendered. A

female to female, male to male, female to male, that is domestic violence, that is physical assault and other

forms of assault. Because when we talk about domestic violence, it's not just about the physical.

It's also about the emotional, psychological, the social and sometimes even the financial.

And as I said, some of this is normalized. Do all parties have access and control and awareness over the finances?

Awareness being where the money's going, what the money is spent on. If you don't,

start making that a priority in your relationship. Ask questions. I cringe when I'm working in

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