Designed Sustainability

Wrists, eyes, ribs.  When you're the victim of abuse, your abuser might have bruised any of these things and more.  Sometimes you think it'll never stop, or you're not sure what will set him off and start it again.  He's charming, funny, probably really sweet when he's not hurting you.  You tell yourself he means it when he says he's sorry, but deep down, you know that it'll happen again.

And it will.  One in four women will experience violence at the hands of a husband or boyfriend, and more than three women every day are murdered by a husband or boyfriend.  Chances are, the murderers are also their abusers.

But violence isn't always physical.  Yelling for little to no reason, name-calling, criticizing, all of these are symptoms of verbal abuse.  When a man keeps his partner from seeing her friends and family, whether it's through irrational guilt trips or outright threats against her safety, despite her need or deep desire to see her loved ones, this is also abuse. 

Verbal abuse is one of the most insidious and underreported types of violence against women.  It leaves no physical scars, it's difficult to document, it's easy for others top dismiss as moments of anger, when he just didn't think before he spoke.  It's something that many women find nearly impossible to talk about, because the pain never really goes away.

Why do women stay after they've been abused by a partner?  Because they feel they have nowhere to go, that maybe it'll stop for good, or that the act of leaving might enrage him more and push him into totally uncontrollable violence.

Shelters, friends, hotels, and family are places where victims of abuse can find refuge in most cases.  But when the local shelter is full, friends and family have turned away because they don't believe the victim or they've been distanced from her because her abuser kept her from them, and the victim can't afford a hotel, what can she do?

Shelters need help.  They need funding to expand - they need to be able to house and counsel more women, especially in low-income areas.  Households in the lower ranges of income are more likely to be the scenes of domestic violence, so it stands to reason that the need for 24-hour, high-security, full service shelters is higher in areas where the median income is at or below the average.

But finding funding for facilities like this is hard, especially in our current economic climate.  Finding a way for existing shelters to create their own revenue stream is one way to help them become self-sustaining and give them the opportunity to grow into the type of full-service shelter that might do even more good for more women.

Heart, psyche, sense of self.  These are the things that a sustainable women's shelter might help heal, things that victims of abuse can learn to protect when given the tools to do so.