I have always found Valentine’s Day weirdly performative. The idea that a prescribed day could be dedicated to expressing your love. With flowers. Or chocolate. Or champagne. Or diamonds. Yuck.

Reclaim the Night is happening in Lismore this evening (Thursday 24 October).

As the Greens move to declare violence against women a national emergency, Greens candidate for Richmond and community advocate Mandy Nolan will hold a vigil for victims of violence and has called on Northern Rivers Labor MPs to back budget funding to tackle the violence epidemic.

I feel trapped. There isn’t a single time I attend where I don’t check my proximity to the exits, or imagine what I’d do if there was a fire, or worse, a shooter. The sense of being enclosed is unnatural, I can’t tell what time of day it is, I lose my sense of direction. It’s designed to be disorienting. It feels otherworldly. And never in a good way. They are designed to make you stay longer. They are by design, disorienting.

When I was six years old my father was killed in a car accident. By then I had witnessed countless incidents of domestic violence. I had seen my father physically and verbally abusing my mother. I had been locked in a room for safety, only to have the door smashed in with a chair. I’ve seen my mother pushed. I’ve seen her punched. I’ve heard her crying and begging. I’ve felt the fear. I’ve heard people whispering about me. I’ve felt the shame. 

On Monday we marched around this country to say ENOUGH. We called for an end to sexual abuse and violence against women. We called for an end to the privilege of a patriarchy that has seen our integrity questioned, and not our perpetrators. We will not let this conversation waver.

Supporters of the annual Valentines Day One Billion Rising event turned out at Byron Bay's Main Beach on Friday to dance in a spirited show of solidarity against violence often faced by women throughout the world.