Family and community violence can be very difficult for an adult to deal with and even more traumatic for a child.  In choosing the individuals for my interviews in this course, I knew I wanted to talk to an adult who worked with families affected by violence as well as a child who had been on the front lines.  I was able to connect with a caseworker that works directly with families and helps them navigate through their difficult situations.  My second interviewee is a young man who, as I said, was on the front lines, a child directly affected by family violence.  To date I have a learned quite a bit from both individuals and in talking with both of them they confirmed my decision to not become a case worker because I am way too emotional.  It has been very hard not to break down when listening to them talk about their work and their lives which has been my biggest challenge during the interviews.  At this point in the process, I feel confident that I have learned a great deal not only from my interviews but also in the research process.  The interview that has had the biggest impact on me is with the young man I've been talking too, hearing his stories of what it was like to grow up in his household and the things he witnessed.  At one point his situation came to a head when he had to make the decision to leave his mother's house rather than put his hands up to defend himself at only seventeen years old.

As I wrap up my interviews I feel as though I have a good start on my project although I'm still working to narrow down my focus to complete the paper.  I don't really have a question just a thought...how do we ignore children that are truly screaming out for help when they are faced with such horrifying situations.  Friday was yet another example of a truly traumatic event in the lives of so many children around the world.  In some way, we were all affected by the situation and I won't go on about it but how do you explain what happened to a child?