As focused as Moonie is on finding all the joy and color and music and sweetness and shine our world has to offer, even my nude little dude is aware that bad things happen and people feel pain.

Today was one of those days. October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and a local gender equity group brought the Domestic Violence Clothesline Project to the college campus Moonie and I work at in order to raise awareness. Each piece of clothing represents one of the 32 Rhode Islanders who died as a result of domestic violence between 2003 and 2012. The clothesline project is a visual display to bear witness to each of these acts as well as to countless others that don’t result in death, or aren’t reported, but that damage lives nonetheless.

In September 1995, the AIDS Quilt traveled to the campus of the college I was attending in Vermont at the time, and I remember awe falling over me like a wool blanket as I encountered each square decorated in honor of someone who’d lost the battle to that terrible disease. I felt like I knew them all personally by the time I reached the last piece of quilt. Visual displays have a powerful impact, and the Clothesline Project had one on Moonie today. It was the quietest I’ve seen him in months.

He wishes he could hug each and every victim of domestic violence. In the meantime, a Facebook friend just posted a great way to help other victims, and Moonie and I plan to follow this link and put together a care package. We can only make our world better if we pay attention to injustices and find ways to let people know they are loved.

Moonie is already asking how we can package up “a million Moonie hugs,” and we’ll be working on that, too.