WOMAN, DETERMINED
Creative Works & Advocacy
What DV Survivors Need
It’s probably not your advice
Can we stop averting our eyes
and pretending that survivors don’t really have it all that bad
and asking women to “just get over it” and “move on”
when the truth is that the conditioning and consequences from emotional, psychological, spiritual, and financial abuse, et al
<<< the bumps and bruises from physical violence heal so much quicker >>>
take literal years to process, understand, and counter the effects of.
And that’s just for the woman who gets a clean break from her abuser, who she never has to see or talk to again.
The woman trapped with her abuser in a custody agreement, no matter how much freedom implied because of the canceled relationship, is still shackled by coparenting
and lives a different kind of abused existence wherein the kids are pawns and she herself is still at high risk of manipulation and control.
This survivor, try as she might, much as she personally heals, cannot “just get over it” or “move on,”
nor can, as a reminder, she who gets the clean break.
Let’s stop making assumptions without knowing.
Let’s trust that each survivor is working her path, and that she does not need your advice, dismissal, or preconceived (and wrong) notions.
What she needs is your empathy, and room to do what she needs to do in her own terms, whatever that timeline requires.
WOMAN, DETERMINED 