Violence Unsilenced- A survivors' blog

I stumbled across this pretty amazing website through a facebook friend. It is a blog for women who are survivors of violence. The premise of the site is really quite simple. It is a place for people to share their stories of violence and abuse in a safe and supportive way. This site was created to be a safe space for a person to write down their experiences in black and white, sometimes saying it out loud for the very first time. It is a place to get supportive comments from other survivors or just people who care. It can often be difficult to explain the complexities of abuse to friends, family members, or current partners and this platform can give someone the power to share with an audience who doesn't know them personally but can still understand their feelings and emotions. It is also for people to understand that they are not alone.


Working in the women's refuge, it is part of the re-housing process that the women write down what we call a personal statement. This is where the women write down their stories of their relationship and the abuse that they experienced. This is a way for the women to share their experiences and ultimately the reason that they are now homeless without having to answer questions from housing officers which can be very stressful. The writing of the personal statement also becomes a therapeutic tool with the very act of reflecting on what's happened to them in order to write it down. In seeing how well journaling and writing work in the recovery process, I could immediately see the importance of a blog like this.

This website also has resources for survivors of violence including helpline number and statistics of abuse for survivors or people who are still working on getting to safe place.

As a bit of a warning, if you're going to have a look at the blog entries they can be emotionally intense. They are people's person stories of sexual, domestic, emotional, and mental abuse and it is never easy to hear about someone else's pain. The real importance of this site is getting the word out about abuse in general as well as letting the survivors know that this resource is out there.

Violence Unsilenced: http://www.blogher.com/frame.php?url=http://violenceunsilenced.com