After talking with Beth Morrrison, CEO of HAVEN, for just a few minutes I could see what a lovely fit she is for our Connection issue. With warmth, compassion and commitment she has followed a life path built on connection - connection to family, community and true self. In her 29 years of working in the field of human services and more specifically with domestic violence and sexual assault, she has worked to help victims of abuse to find connection first with safety, and then with their own self- empowerment.
As she spoke, it was impossible not to get a sense of her passion and deep commitment to helping the people who reach out to HAVEN. Asked if she knew where this commitment to helping others may have come from, she thought for a minute and offered that it may have a lot to do with her upbringing. “I grew up the youngest of five children in Hillman, MI, a small northern town about half way between Gaylord and Alpena, on the east side of the state. My parents owned a small grocery store there and I saw how involved they were in the community and with helping others. “
Beth was the first in her family to graduate from college and when first starting off was sure she wanted to pursue a career in school counseling. “I went to a very small high school with a graduating class of seventy-five and the counselors there functioned mainly to fill out paperwork and help us with college applications. Friends and other students with problems like teen pregnancy and substance abuse were left to seek out favorite teachers to go to for guidance and help.” Beth saw the need for trained counselors to be there to help students deal with these and other issues and thought that this was the career path she would follow.
In her second year at Central Michigan University however, a professor recruited her to volunteer at a new Domestic Violence Center opening in Mount Pleasant. The experience left a lasting impression as she became aware of a problem little understood or talked about at the time and her life took a diverging path. “On my first night volunteering at the Center, the police brought in a nineteen-year-old woman with her two very young children. She had been severely beaten and was obviously traumatized.” Her attacker was not a stranger on the street but a domestic partner. “The police were so grateful to have a place to hide her. At the time there were no services or even laws in place to help her find safety. Her abuser could be arrested but would probably be out of jail and back in the home in a day or two.” The injustice of this and the realization that there were countless women around the country facing similar situations with no place to turn for protection, touched Beth’s innate sense of Justice. “The woman was bruised and bleeding and the best we could do was hide her? Why should a woman (or a man) have to hide? Where was the support she needed to find safety for herself and her children?” Home, the one place we generally equate with safety was anything but for these women.
Also unsettling to her was the fact that she was the same age as the woman brought in by the police. “It made me realize how naïve and vulnerable I had been.” As she reflected back over her childhood she remembered the homes of friends where they were never invited for sleepovers and the quiet whispers of her parents and other adults. She realized that the problem of domestic abuse surely existed even in her own small hometown. With little or no awareness at the time among neighbors, friends or people in general there was no one to reach out to help those being victimized. She knew she wanted to be part of the newly forming systems gradually being put into place to provide education and address the problem. “I just really fell in love with the issues and felt a passion for being a part of it.”
Beth started working in the field of Human Services even before getting her Masters degree from the University of Arizona, and in twenty-nine years has seen many changes. She notes that ironically, many of the laws now in place, the improved services available to victims, and the education of the public about their availability has created a different problem for victims. “It has created a lack of tolerance for victims among many jurors in court cases. They want to know why, when there are shelters available, would a person stay in an abusive situation? Why didn’t she get out?” Beth now speaks to many groups and is very aware that any one of the people attending could be a potential juror. She sees it as part of her role as CEO of HAVEN to help raise the awareness that “domestic violence is a very complicated issue, individual to each victim and that there are many possible reasons that a person may stay, just as there are many reasons why people batter.”
In her position as CEO of HAVEN, Beth now sees one of her functions as Ambassador for HAVEN. She works primarily with other systems, also involved with the issue of Domestic Violence, such as the police, courts, probation and clergy. She regrets that she no longer has day-to-day and face-to-face contact with the many people who seek help from HAVEN. This connection is very important to her so she volunteers time when she can, manning the Crisis Hot Line and volunteering at the 45-bed Safe House.
As passionate as she is about her work, it was just as evident as we talked that she feels the importance of never losing her connection with self, her family, good friends and self-nurturing creative outlets. During our time together, she talked often about the support and encouragement she receives from her family – parents, four siblings, husband Charles and seventeen-year-old son Colin. Beth laughs at the quizzical looks she can get when she tells people that she met her husband through work. Actually, she was working as a co-coordinator and therapist at a rape crisis center in Tucson, Arizona when Charles, a police officer at the time, went through her volunteer training course. Since their marriage, he has supported her career moves first from Tucson to Gaylord, MI and then to Lansing. Then on his fiftieth birthday he learned that he had passed the Bar and Beth decided that it was time for her to be supportive of him. When he took a job in the thumb they moved to Oakland County to be closer to his work, which also brought her to HAVEN.
Having these close family connections and nurturing creative outlets “all help me to avoid burnout and deal with the frustrations of work.” She says that one of her goals is to maintain a healthy balance between her connection and passion at work, and the personal connections that she finds so self-nurturing. From the time we spent talking together, I would say that she is achieving her goal.
HAVEN has five Oakland county locations offering a wide range of services addressing the issues of domestic violence and sexual assault. Please visit their web site at www.haven-oakland.org for more informationor call 248.334.1274 the Crisis Support Line or 877.922.1274 the Toll-Free Crisis Line.