Survivors with the grassroots nonprofit led community conversations in Deer Isle, Brooklin, and Blue Hill
DEER ISLE — Courtney Davis shared with attendees at a Finding Our Voices event at the Deer Isle public library what that community did and did not do to support her when she was a child growing up with a violent father in that town.
Davis, who now works as a hairdresser in Rockport, was one of five survivors with the grassroots nonprofit coming from as far away as Scarborough to break the silence of domestic abuse across the Blue Hill Peninsula last week on Oct. 15 and 16.
Survivor-led conversations were held at the Chase Memorial Public Library, Friend Memorial Public Library and also at the Blue Hill Co-op where Finding Our Voices talked to shoppers from a table in the entryway.
Finding Our Voices CEO and Founder Patrisha McLean, who had a house in Castine for decades, explained how the group is filling in the gaps for services and programs for the far too many domestic violence victims across Maine.
Mary Lou Smith, an 85-year-old retired first-grade teacher, drove from her home in Scarborough to bring hope and understanding around domestic abuse to peninsula residents. She started and ended the library events with her poems. “It” was written two months before she escaped 45 years of physical abuse and psychological terrorizing by her college professor husband, and “Tranquility” was written on the 20th anniversary of that escape. Smith said that she was “humbled and thrilled” about a compliment about her poetry by an attendee of the Deer Isle event, Stuart Kestenbaum, upon finding out he was Maine’s poet laureate for five years.
Finding Our Voices is the grassroots nonprofit breaking the silence of domestic abuse across Maine and providing meaningful resources for women survivors of domestic abuse and their children including Get Out Stay Out funding, online support groups and access to free dental care. The group is behind the “Into the Light!” festival that brought together 125 Blue Hill Peninsula and Midcoast Maine businesses in July donating all or part of the proceeds of sales of special yellow menu and store items to benefit domestic abuse survivors. For more information about Finding Our Voices visit https://findingourvoices.net.