The Women We Carry

Domestic Violence Awareness Month isn’t just about statistics or purple ribbons; it’s about what comes before, during, and after. The long, quiet work of learning to live in a body that remembers everything, of raising children while re-raising yourself, of loving the versions of you that got you through.

This reflection is for every survivor who’s ever looked at her life and thought, “I should be further along by now.”

It’s for those of us who are still carrying our younger selves with us, angry, brave, funny, fragile, brilliant, and trying every day to turn survival into something that feels like peace.

We all carry a small crowd inside us.
Versions of ourselves built in the fires we had to survive.

There’s the warrior who swung back.
The ghost who couldn’t.
The dreamer who built her exits out of stories.
The quiet one who mistook disappearing for safety.

Survivorship isn’t a straight line out of the darkness.
It’s a long walk through shifting light. Past doors we’ve locked behind us and memories that still whisper our names in the dark.
Every version of us trails along, sometimes holding hands, sometimes tripping us up, and sometimes refusing to go any farther.

Some mornings, I can feel them all stirring before I even open my eyes.
The girl who connected breathing patterns and subtle facial twitches to danger levels.
The young woman who mistook invisibility for devotion.
The mother who learned how to laugh again, but still checks every shadow before turning off the lights.

They often war over who kept us alive.

And the world around us argues, too.
About how survivors should heal, how long it should take, and what we should have done.
As if survival were ever neat enough for rules.

People love a tidy redemption story,
But they rarely want to hold the mess that comes before it.
They want the headline, not the homework.
They want strength without the shaking.

So we learn to hide the harder truths.
The fear that looks like efficiency,
The exhaustion that passes for dedication,
The panic we wrestle into competence.
We try to smile in ways that make everyone comfortable.
We shrink our grief into something polite.

But healing was never meant to be palatable.

Hyper-vigilance. Perfectionism. People-pleasing.
Words that sound clinical until you remember they were survival skills.
They taught us to sense danger, to anticipate chaos, to stay three steps ahead of pain. They built walls to protect the soul while the body was being ravaged.

They once saved us.
Now they sometimes keep us tired.

Healing asks us to retrain those same instincts,
to let the sentry rest,
to teach the fixer that not everything is broken or our fault,
to tell the people-pleaser she can stop earning her right to exist.

Loving the women we used to be is hard work.
We blamed them for too long, for staying, for freezing, for not screaming loud enough.
But those versions of us were geniuses of survival.
They built something out of nothing.
They kept the heart beating when the world tried to stop it.

While others judged from a safe distance,
We were doing the sacred labor of staying alive.

So now we practice gratitude for the grit that got us here.
We keep their skills, but we rewrite their purpose.
The watcher becomes the boundary-keeper.
The peacemaker becomes the teacher of calm.
The overachiever learns that rest is also resistance.

Mothering, working, loving, it all sits on top of that history.
We raise children while learning to re-parent ourselves.
We build homes while still convincing our nervous systems they’re safe.
We hold our partners close while reminding our bodies that touch can be tender.

Some days, the old patterns win.
We snap too quickly.
We over-explain.
We disappear into busyness.
And still, we circle back.
We apologize. We repair. We try again.

I used to think healing meant becoming someone new.
Now I know it means seeing everyone I’ve ever been
And learning to love them all.

Every survivor I’ve met carries this same quiet genius.
To keep showing up, to keep loving, to build a life out of the shards.
We are mosaics, fractured, reframed, shining when the light hits us just right.

So if you are reading this and still wondering if you’re enough…
Yes, every version of you has always been enough.

That’s the work.
That’s the miracle.

And today, that’s what we celebrate.
Not just survival, but the sacred, complicated, beautifully human art of honoring all the women we carry.

Current Administration

I was 8 years old when the 1994 Violence Against Women Act (the first federal protections meant to finally protect women from violence) became law. In that same year, a boy on the playground pulled me off a swing, dragged me to the ground, and pulled my hair. That’s when trusted adults started telling me, “Boys pick on girls they like.” That was my first lesson in how this country lies to women about what violence is and what we’re worth.

Years later, those lies that love hurts nearly killed me. I’ve felt splinters of broken furniture in my back as his hands wrapped around my throat. I’ve stood in a room so thick with tension I lit a match just to get the explosion over with while my babies slept safely in the next room. I’ve seen hands, still split and swollen from beating my body, brush my daughter’s hair the next morning.

That is what domestic violence looks like. Not a headline. Not a statistic. It is waking up every day, one bad night or misstep away from becoming a fucking homicide case. According to the World Health Organization, more than 3 million American women experience this terror, and at least 324,000 of them are pregnant. Homicide by an intimate partner is the leading cause of maternal death in this country.

And the president of the United States calls that a “little fight with the wife.” not a crime

Let’s be clear: the most dangerous person in a woman’s life is not an immigrant, not a drag queen or trans person wanting to fucking pee in a public bathroom. It’s not a homeless “drug user” or any other caricature of danger politicians want you to fear. The most dangerous person in a woman’s life is her partner.

I am not saying that the system is without faults, but this administration of CLOWNS has gutted funding for domestic violence organizations and critical social services that keep survivors alive, making it even clearer that protecting women has never been your priority.

When the president dismisses domestic violence, he tells every battered woman, every terrified mother, every child watching their mom beg for her life: You do not matter. Your death does not matter.

Domestic violence is not a “silly little thing.” It is the epidemic killing millions in this country. And the blood is on the hands of leaders who laugh it off, and anyone who continues to support them.

I also want to say, directly to survivors. There are so, so many organizations and individuals still fighting for you. We will never give up on your safety. I will never give up on doing what I can to make this world safer for you and your children.

The Work Continues: Supporting Black Maternal Vitality & Resiliency

During my time at the National Resource Center on Domestic Violence (NRCDV), I had the privilege of leading a project that brought together a diverse group of survivors and public health professionals to examine the intersections of maternal health, domestic violence, and racism. This report, Supporting Black Maternal Vitality & Resiliency, is one of the outcomes of that work.

This report would not exist without the brilliance, courage, and dedication of the Black and Brown survivors and professionals who made these convenings possible. Midwives, maternal health providers, domestic violence advocates, social workers, grassroots leaders, and policy experts all gave their time and energy over two years to share their experiences. Their voices shaped every page. This body of knowledge belongs to them, and it is to them that we owe its truth and power.

Supporting Black Maternal Vitality & Resiliency is built on an undeniable truth: the health of Black women and birthing people in the U.S. remains in crisis. Maternal mortality rates continue to rise, and Black women are still three to five times more likely to die during pregnancy, childbirth, or postpartum than their white counterparts.

When layered with the realities of intimate partner violence (IPV), the risks are even more devastating. Pregnancy is one of the most dangerous times for IPV homicide, and Black women are disproportionately affected

This crisis is not just about health; it is about policy. The federal government’s recent decisions to slash maternal health and domestic violence research at agencies like the CDC and NIH, along with millions in survivor-serving grants, have devastating consequences. These cuts don’t simply limit research; they erase the very evidence needed to hold systems accountable. They shut down housing programs, restrict access to medical care, cut off food assistance, and dismantle frameworks that help professionals respond without bias and with real safety in mind. In effect, the government is silencing proof of harm while abandoning the very communities most at risk, leaving Black women and birthing people exposed to deeper systemic neglect.

And yet, there is hope.

The convenings that informed this report surfaced strategies rooted in community wisdom and practice:

• Integrating midwives and doulas into domestic violence response to ensure culturally grounded, survivor-centered care.

• Building strong cross-sector collaborations so that healthcare providers, advocates, and community organizations work as one.

• Centering prevention and empowerment, especially for youth, through education on healthy relationships, reproductive justice, and resilience.

• Investing in provider sustainability and diversity, so that the workforce reflects and supports the communities they serve.

• Expanding provider education on the complexities of maternal exposure to violence, ensuring that clinicians, advocates, and systems responders are trained to recognize risks, remove bias, and respond with safety and equity in mind

These are not abstract ideas. They are best practices already being piloted in communities across the country, and they work

The federal government has shown, time and again, that it is unwilling to protect women and girls, especially Black women and birthing people. But we are not powerless. Together, we can implement the solutions outlined in this report and other Black feminist movements. We can fund and scale community-driven models. We can hold systems accountable. We can uplift the expertise of survivors and providers who already know what works.

Check out the full report on my resources page or directly here.

This is the work that I have been doing for a decade, centering survivor voices to build bridges between advocates, providers, and systems so that survivor-led, trauma-informed, community-based strategies become the standard of care.

We cannot wait for federal leadership that may never come. Change is happening now, in our communities, and we are the ones making it possible.