Af­ter tak­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak with a group of teenagers about keep­ing safe dur­ing the hol­i­days, an­oth­er adult said to me he did not think of the is­sues raised but re­alised how much they need­ed to hear it.

Of­ten, we are so trust­ing of the peo­ple who en­ter our spaces that we do not think there is a threat among us. And if we have lived shel­tered lives, and have not been ex­posed to the ad­verse ex­pe­ri­ences of oth­ers, we act ac­cord­ing­ly, liv­ing in a bub­ble that says the en­vi­ron­ment in which we ex­ist is safe. It is of­ten not.

When I first asked the group of about 25 what Christ­mas meant to them, there were many an­swers about food, gifts, fam­i­ly, and such, the ex­pect­ed themes.

But hav­ing tak­en time to share that among my mem­o­ries were trig­gers and hav­ing ex­plored the emo­tions be­hind my Christ­mas, the next set of re­spons­es were deep­er.

For me, Christ­mas is a mixed bag. I re­call the joys in my ear­ly years but liv­ing in rur­al Moru­ga brought a lay­er of is­sues that have coloured my hol­i­days.

I shared how al­co­hol abuse im­pact­ed me. How drunk­en­ness seems to have been a badge be­cause out­side of the known abusers/mis­users, it seemed an en­tire seg­ment of the com­mu­ni­ty saw Christ­mas as a time to out drink one an­oth­er.

Now this may be un­fair. I wasn’t count­ing, nor was I able to fac­tor pop­u­la­tion per­cent­ages, so it could be that there were not as many peo­ple do­ing this.

The thing to note is that the ef­fect was am­pli­fied in my mind, whether or not the sta­tis­tics were re­al.

To this day, my first re­ac­tion to drunk­en­ness is a vexed spir­it. Then, on­ly af­ter the trig­ger has had its time am I able to be ra­tio­nal about the dis­ease that is sub­stance abuse.

Pub­lic health schol­ar­ship has helped me to wear a hat of com­pas­sion and tem­per my angst.

But al­co­holism al­so came with vi­o­lence: fam­i­ly on fam­i­ly, friend on friend and spouse on spouse. And as I type the lat­ter, I am trig­gered by the news of the mur­der-sui­cide in Mon­day’s re­ports.

I am sick to the core, lit­er­al­ly, but I am so dis­tressed about women be­ing killed in these vi­o­lent in­ci­dents.

On Mon­day as well, I had a con­ver­sa­tion with a health­care prac­ti­tion­er who spent time re­count­ing the cy­cle of vi­o­lence and how of­ten we hear sur­viv­ing rel­a­tives make com­ments like: “We told her to leave.”

She was talk­ing me through the dif­fi­cul­ty some women face in leav­ing and told of the re­solve oth­ers had, mea­sur­ing the dan­gers in their homes and leav­ing.

I’m bro­ken. I di­gress.

Look­ing back 50 years in­to my ear­ly teens gives me an im­por­tant per­spec­tive. I re­call the in­frac­tions in my youth and I shared some of those with my charges.

Look­ing in­to the beau­ti­ful, in­no­cent faces of this group, some from safe homes, some from homes with fam­i­ly dys­func­tion, some swirling in con­flicts, it was my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to put an­oth­er con­text to Christ­mas.

We spoke of bound­aries. Too of­ten, sex­u­al mo­lesta­tions come from with­in: the rel­a­tive who makes com­ments that make you un­com­fort­able; the one who loves to hug, es­pe­cial­ly in the drunk­en state, who makes “small er­rors” like “ac­ci­den­tal­ly” brush­ing your body in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly. The sober one too, whose creepi­ness seems to come alive in the “fam­i­ly mer­ri­ment” the sea­son pre­tends.

Speak to your chil­dren about speak­ing up. But since we most­ly know the lech­er­ous rel­a­tives—they are of­ten re­peat of­fend­ers and have of­fend­ed in more than one gen­er­a­tion—do not pre­tend to not know. Do not ex­pose your chil­dren to abuse.

If you feel com­pelled to be at gath­er­ings with these preda­tors (I won’t un­der­stand why, but know hol­i­day pre­tence is high), speak to your chil­dren open­ly, mak­ing them aware.

Pre-Christ­mas prepa­ra­tion al­so makes for some of the harsh­est par­ent­ing. The un­nec­es­sary stress of clean­ing and up­grad­ing are passed on to our chil­dren. I shared the sto­ry of a neigh­bour who cussed and abused her chil­dren for days be­fore my stress over­flowed in­to get­ting her in­to a con­ver­sa­tion to as­sess what the prepa­ra­tions were about.

Fam­i­ly, she said, so I showed her how she was de­stroy­ing hers.

From among the group, the re­spons­es be­came more tex­tured af­ter my ex­po­si­tion. We still loved food, but now we were con­nect­ing with deep­er emo­tions. Re­spons­es were about be­ing sad dur­ing the hol­i­days, pre­fer­ring to stay in the bed­room be­cause the sea­son be­comes over­whelm­ing, and more open­ness than I an­tic­i­pat­ed.

The young one who spoke about the bad dy­nam­ics in the home but hav­ing to go to fam­i­ly gath­er­ings and be­ing dis­ci­plined or coached in­to “ap­pro­pri­ate con­duct” of out­ward hap­pi­ness while they have been hurt­ing all year round, got to my core.

We talked about many oth­er things, such as nav­i­gat­ing parental dis­cord, sub­stance abuse or ad­dic­tions in the home, sui­cide and sui­ci­dal ideation, sex­u­al iden­ti­ty and the emo­tion­al tug of the hol­i­days, and even the un­cer­tain­ty about their fu­ture as they were com­plet­ing ex­ams.

We must talk to our young peo­ple and help them to re­main safe in the hol­i­days.