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I just finished Nancy Isenberg’s White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, and I need to be honest: it took me nearly two months to get through. This book was, quite frankly, a slog. There were moments when I had to remind myself why I don’t usually gravitate toward non-fiction—particularly dense, academic non-fiction…
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Understanding the Roots of Violence Against Women Week 1 of Crisis Intervention Training at the Center for Community Solutions I sat in the training room on the first night of my Crisis Intervention Training, watching the presenter click through a PowerPoint slide that traced reproductive rights history in the United States. The timeline marched forward:…
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Can’t focus anymore? You’re not alone. Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus explores why our attention spans are collapsing and what we can do about it. As someone preparing for victim advocacy work while struggling with post-COVID brain fog, I found this book both enlightening and frustrating. Here’s my review—and why reclaiming our focus matters for survivors, advocates, and…
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Content warning: This post discusses collective trauma, violence, and vicarious trauma in advocacy work. I keep returning to a question that has no easy answer: How do we do this work—how do we bear witness to suffering, how do we advocate for justice—when the world feels like it’s burning around us? This morning, I watched…
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I dream of libraries almost every night. Not the bright, modern kind with floor-to-ceiling windows and café corners, but the old ones—dim, wood-paneled, smelling of aged paper and possibility. In these dreams, I’m always studying something. Sometimes it’s a literature class where we’re dissecting symbolism in a novel I’ve never actually read. Other times, I’m…
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I have some exciting news to share: my application to volunteer with the Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) at the Center for Community Solutions has been approved! After navigating a couple of rounds of interviews, I’m now preparing to begin the formal training that will equip me to support survivors during one of the most…
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I finished Isabel Wilkerson’s “The Warmth of Other Suns” weeks ago, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. I closed the book, set it on my nightstand, and just lay there staring at the ceiling for what felt like an hour. Six million people. Six million Black Americans left the South…
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Last week, I explored public speaking as a tool for victim advocacy and confronted my complicated feelings about sharing my own story of intimate partner violence publicly. This week in my journey toward becoming a certified victim advocate, I’m taking that exploration a step further: activism. If public speaking is about using your voice, activism…
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In Week 3 of the OVC TTAC Pathways in the Victim Services Field training program, I explored a path I hadn’t fully considered before: public speaking as a form of victim advocacy. This week covered how survivors and advocates can use their voices to educate communities, influence policy, motivate change, and provide hope to others…
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In Week 2 of the OVC TTAC Pathways in the Victim Services Field training program, I learned about the different career paths available for aspiring victim advocates. This week covered systems-based versus community-based advocacy, essential skills for victim advocacy work, and how trauma-informed practice can transform the legal field. As someone coming from a legal…