Men Talk About Abusive Fathers Nov. 28 at Camden Public Library
Finding Our Voices presents:
Men Talking
Growing up with abusive fathers & breaking the cycle
Panel Discussion moderated by Jon Wilson
Finding Our Voices board member, founder of JUST Alternatives and WoodenBoat
Tuesday, November 28, 5:30 to 7:30 PM
Camden Public Library
Free & Open to the Public
Facebook Event & Event flyer below
Published November 9th, 2023
Scott Denman and Jory Squibb will talk November 28 at the Camden Public Library about growing up with abusive fathers. Jon Wilson in the photo on the right is facilitating the Finding Our Voices discussion. Photo by Finding Our Voices
Men will talk publicly about growing up with abusive fathers and breaking the cycle at the Camden Public Library on November 28 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The Finding Our Voices event is free and open to everyone.
Residents of Waldo, Knox, and York County will share some of their own stories, and then participate in a community conversation. Topics will include how their childhood experience with domestic abuse shaped their relationships with their mothers, impacted them as parents and intimate partners and also professionally, and the process of healing and breaking the cycle.
Facilitating the discussion is Jon Wilson of Brooklin, a Finding Our Voices board member, founder of WoodenBoat, and founder/president of the nonprofit Just Alternatives which supports victims of violence and violation.
The event caps the two-month “Let’s Talk About It” Finding Our Voices tour of libraries from Millinocket to York. The previous seven stops featured a panel of women survivors.
Patrisha McLean is the founder and CEO of Finding Our Voices. She said, “with more and more men confiding in me about growing up with abusive fathers, and that includes emotional as well as physical, I felt it was important to bring this topic out in the open, and get people talking about it. My hometown Camden library is where Finding Our Voices first launched four years ago as a photo exhibit of my photo portraits of survivors. So I was thrilled when the library director Nikki Maounis said YES to once again hosting a ground-breaking, survivor-powered domestic abuse-awareness event." She said bringing light between Thanksgiving and Christmas to how domestic abuse impacts children is perfect timing, with "holidays a particularly miserable and dangerous time when you are living with an abusive family member.”
"Camden Public Library is excited to collaborate with Finding Our Voices once more to bring this important program to our community," said the library's Executive Director Nikki Maounis. "It's an honor to provide a space for sharing these stories and we are proud to be a part of the movement to break the silence on domestic abuse. We hope the audience comes away feeling both empowered to share their own voices and feeling more connected to one another.”
Scott Denman, director of a national environmental phlianthropy, is one of the three panelists. “The ‘Breaking the Cycle’ part of the title is very important,” he said. “The thing that children so hate—seeing their moms hurt by the father or significant other—can be used as a catalyst to show them how they can and must break the cycle, watching for the tendencies in their own relationships to replicate what they experienced growing up.” Another panelist, inventor and retired boat captain Jory Squibb, said “So much of my own earlier behavior was a puzzle to me and others at the time. Sharing my story now has been central to understanding it at last.”
Sponsors of the Finding Our Voices library event include Gartley & Dorsky, Leslie Curtis Designs, Rickey Celentano, and Stephen and Helene Huyler.
Commissioner of Corrections Randall Liberty was the November guest of McLean’s WERU-FM radio show talking about how as a boy he felt helpless when his father, who served jail time for domestic violence, brutalized his mother.
Republished by:
The Free Press
Men talk About Abusive Fathers at Camden Library Event
November 9, 2023
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