Bearing Witness to Violence Against Women and Girls: What's Mindfulness Got to Do with It?

Mindfulness is everywhere these days. Closing your eyes. Feeling your breath. Calm waters. Piles of arty looking stones. Serenely reposing beautiful humans at one with their life’s purpose. Perfectly contained. Still body. Eyes shut.

We’re so rushed and overwhelmed these days, the appeal of mindfulness-as-meme is immediate and almost magnetic – stop the world, get me off this treadmill and onto that nice firm cushion. After all, who doesn’t feel in the midst of endless bureaucracy and the relentless push of the machine that deep internal call to have nothing to do, nowhere to go, to be freed of having to be anything to anybody, to rest in being a witness to the self?

Last year saw the death of Bernie Glassman, a controversial pioneer of the American Zen movement who took a different view. Bernie believed in eschewing what he called “mannequin meditation” to confront the deep suffering of the human experience.

Zen Peacemakers International, one of Glassman’s ventures, is a global social action movement which includes retreats to places of unimaginable suffering. Since 1996, this has included an annual retreat to bear witness to the horrors enacted in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The intention behind this retreat is to sit with the reality of human cruelty  and, in a spirit of not knowing,  to ask deep questions about what it means to be a human in the world we live in.

How do we strengthen our resolve? How do we build bridges and alliances instead of walls? And in times of pessimism and confusion, where do we find clarity and inspiration to move forward?”

Here in Ireland, on the 6^th of January, Nollaig na mBan, Mindfulness Teacher Niamh Barrett inspired by the Zen Peacemakers movement, led a one day retreat to bear witness to violence against women and girls. The retreat bore witness in particular to the memory of the abduction and murder of 18 year old Mariora Rostas on the 6^th of January 2008. Newly arrived to the country with little English, Mariora was begging at traffic lights in Dublin with her brother when she was disappeared, presumed kidnapped. It would be four years before her body was discovered in the Wicklow Mountains, with Garda reports indicating she “suffered an appalling death”.

Some of my friends and family, it must be said, thought I was slightly nuts to be spending my Little Women’s Christmas up in the Capital thinking about domestic abuse – “why would you be doing that to yourself? Isn’t it better to look at the light and not get into the darkness, bring more positivity to the day?” -  but  they supported my fundraising efforts nonetheless (it is traditional on Zen Peacemaker retreats to raise money to provide practical support and to highlight the issues being considered).  

And so, on a bright, cold, clear morning, six of us from around Ireland travelled to meet in the Mindfulness Centre in Dublin 2, bringing our hearts, minds and bodies to the witnessing of the reality of the violence that led to this young, defenceless girl’s death, and the deaths of a further 226 women and children between 1996-2018.

In the group, we began by sitting and doing some gentle mindfulness movement and body practices. We spoke some quiet words. After a time, we had the privilege of being joined by Margaret Martin, longstanding CEO of Women’s Aid in Ireland. Women’s Aid has been supporting women living with domestic abuse for more than 40 years, the span of my lifetime

Margaret spoke passionately and with deep empathy and compassion for the complexity of the experience of women who find themselves trapped in situation of domestic abuse. “People ask why women haven’t left,” she said “but many of them have”, speaking to the reality of partners, mainly men, stalking women with whom they may have even had only brief affairs.

For those in abusive intimate partnerships, Margaret was keen to highlight the very real risks to life that women may encounter when choosing to escape a situation of domestic abuse. While previous public campaigns have suggested to neighbours and bystanders that intervening is the right thing to do, Margaret cautioned from experience this may not always be wise, and can inadvertently put women at greater risk. “Women often have a plan when they speak to us. They know they can’t leave yet. But they have a two year plan, or a three year one”. The starkness of living in ongoing fear resonated in the room.  

Margaret spoke too of the Women’s Aid helpline, a Freephone service available 24/7 365 days of the year on 1800 341 900. Ringing is untraceable and the service is completely confidential with no records kept of any contact. Women who later receive ongoing support from the organisation have revealed they sometimes rang this line again and again in silence, unable to speak. Volunteers encounter this many times, and trained volunteers sit on the end of the line, reassuring callers of their presence, asking them to tap if they just want someone to sit and listen to their silence, for a time. Some women have reported to Women’s Aid staff that this accompaniment in their silence sustained them and gave them courage at a later point to find their voice and seek help, when they were ready to do so. Part of the function of the helpline, Margaret explained, is to allow women a space to hear themselves,  in words - and in silence.  

This is particularly important, as the nature of intimate partner violence and domestic abuse is one inherently rooted in shame, secrecy and silence. “The person abusing you knows you well, knows exactly what to say to you based on what’s most important to you. “ The destruction of trust and betrayal can be harrowing. Abusers will pinpoint areas of tenderness in a woman’s experience and target these as a means of maintaining  interpersonal control – attacking a woman’s appearance, her cooking, her mothering, even her pets.  What begins as something that seems loving and attentive can mask a destructive need for total control. We spoke of the “Too Into You” campaign, which provides vital information on signs of dating abuse and staying safe online, with a relationship health check that can indicate warning signs of risks of intimate partner violence.

Over the years, Women’s Aid has also been heavily involved in supporting legislative change to protect against domestic abuse, and instrumental in the inclusion of the new crime of coercive control – a pattern of intimidation and humiliation based on psychological or emotional abuse and manipulation - in the Domestic Violence Act 2018.  What’s important now, says Margaret, is that those working with and meeting women, including the Garda have proper training to understand the implications of the Act and respond accordingly. A lot has been done, and there is a lot more to do, in order to bring a co-ordinated and sensitive response to the suffering of domestic abuse.

We presented Margaret with the money we had raised - €900: half of this to be contributed to the Emergency Fund, which supplies women with vital practical supports, including shopping vouchers, money to have locks changed and phone cards. The nature of the Emergency Fund is so tangible it’s hard not to feel it in the gut, and to feel a sense of contrast and privilege to have freedom denied to fellow women.

After Margaret left, we travelled in two cars to a small area not far from where the body of Mariora Rostas was found. Standing in a circle, we read the names of the 226 women and children who have died violently in Ireland between 1996 and 2018. In 1996, I was 18 – just like Mariora.  We lit candles.  

And in the  quiet beauty of the Wicklow Mountains at sunset, suddenly, all things just.. were. 

This is what it means to bear witness – to allow clear seeing of all aspects of the human experience, to be willing to encounter in the imagination what it might have been like to be a young 18 year old girl in this place, about to meet a most heinous ending, there and then, and simultaneously, to be here and now,  alive and present and in community under ancient trees against a pink-tinged mid Winter sunset. 

I cast my mind in that moment to the hour between arriving in Dublin and entering the retreat, to my own little pilgrimage, which I have repeated many times.

Wandering down Merrion St Upper past the Museum of Natural History, I see myself, many years previously, stunned and injured after a violent and life changing assault. 

Around past the doors of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre on Leeson St,  I see myself and re-member many sunsets ago, what it felt to sit as a member of another group in dim candlelight as we, too, bore witness to the events that had brought each of us to sit in the circle: in words, and in silence.

I see myself loop around Merrion Square, where the birds are singing, the rain glistening prettily on the pavement, the air fresh on my cheeks. 

And in the circle in the foothill of the Wicklow Mountains again, I feel my breath, my feet in my boots, and, in the capacity to understand from the inside out the cruelty human beings so easily enact on eachother, find a space to rejoice: weeping into the still deep thanks my warm beating heart offers for all I have lived that Marioria Rostas will not. 

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

If you are affected by any of the issues in this blog, you can contact:

Women's Aid on 1800 341 900
or
the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre on 1800 77 8888

Women's Aid are running a fundraising campaign for the month of February to 50k for women. Learn how you can get involved to raise much needed funds here: https://www.womensaid.ie/support/fundraising/walk-for-women

If you are interested in learning more about Mindfulness, please see www.mindfulness.ie for details on courses and events.