Safe Shelter by Lady Olive Monday

When I was twenty six years old, I had two children, a husband and a lot of demons from my past.  I had already done three years of therapy by then.  I had already walked the depression drug zombie walk.  I had already overcame a lot by a many standards. I still had a lot of anger though and a drive to do something with it.

One night quite by chance I read a posting for volunteers interested in hearing about the Women's Shelter procedures in my home town.  I was immediately intrigued.  The ad was placed by one woman and when I arrived at the meeting I was with 4 other women and one man.  We talked a lot about how women in crisis were managed in our community.  We talked about whether we thought that was sufficient.  Currently women in crisis and their children were being pulled out of the community and being sent to one of two other cities that were one and two hours away from here.  That seemed very counter productive to us.  We felt like uprooting these women and children after already being victimized left them in strange cities with no support systems in place and made them more likely to succumb to returning to a bad situation.

We decided at that meeting that we would move forward and do the research necessary to  find out what it takes to change the current procedures and locate a facility here in our community.  You would be shocked what it took.  The hoops we had to jump through.   But jump we did.  Those years were really a roller coaster of emotions for me.  It was both cathartic and gut wrenching.  As a child of domestic abuse it was incredibly hard learning so much intimate detail about such a personal and intense topic.  The stats added another layer on to the "insider " knowledge I already had. Learning how many cases of reported "officer attended" domestic violence cases there were each year.  Learning how many of those calls were repeat offenders.  Learning what the escalation statics were.  Every night those numbers jumbled in my mind with scenes from my child hood.  Every night I remembered thinking as a child "Can't anyone hear this yelling?"  I was driven by my desire to make sure that there was someone to hear them.  Someone to offer them a safe haven. There were several times when progress stalled and faltered but we drove on and in the end it became a reality.   A little over two years after that fateful first meeting we opened the door to a facility to house women and children   who were victims of domestic violence.  To this day the facility is operational and has a dedication plaque on it's wall with my name on it.

This is proof that one person can make a difference.  One person posted that ad.  One person was joined by others and we may not have changed the world but we made a big difference in a lot of people's lives, in the most vulnerable moments of their lives.

Those years brought up a lot of demons for me and it was emotional for me.  It left me feeling very raw an awful lot. I would not change those years.  As exhausting and draining as it was.  It is one of my most proud accomplishments.