National Domestic Violence Awareness Project

Violence is not limited to broken bones and bruised flesh and physical damage visible to the seeing (an ableist concept itself, so compounding the violence there).

It is words. Ask those fleeing persecution, read history, talk to survivors of child abuse and domestic violence and prison violence.

Words are just as physically damaging - and according to many measures more so, since the brain treats those words no differently than it treats the body blows.

It sends the chemicals out to the flesh and the organs and it sears synapses and it lasts long after the bruises and the broken bones have mended.