[erfZSgfea]

Thank you for that story. The people who run these shelters are angels.

My wife escaped her ex by seeking shelter at a battered women's place. I owe her life to them.

There my wife met women of a completely different background. My wife is white, at the time already well educated, and very type A [0]. Her only "disadvantage" was that she was a recent immigrant to the US, with all the difficulties of being a recent immigrant. So the shelter is the only place in the past decade where she met people you never meet in the US; the others. She has very powerful memories of the people she met there.

They have one fundamental rule: you don't tell any men where it's located. Although I'm filled with curiosity (partially lack of discipline, partially to send them a cheque), I've never asked her where this place is; I don't want to put her in that position. Not to the place to which I owe her life.

[0] It's funny. She's very type-A, very much in charge, yet it took her manager, a black man, to force her to seek help. He told her either to go stay at a shelter or not come to work the next day.

[utopian3]

Sounds like you can also seek out that manager and properly thank him over a meal! I'm glad your wife got to safety

[johnpowell]

Yeah.. That is pretty much rule #1 when a place takes you in. Don't tell anyone where you are at.

I have given about 50 old cell phones I collected to the battered woman's shelter here. Even if they don't have cell service they can still call 9-1-1.

[idoubtit]

> The people who run these shelters are angels.

I'm sorry if I misinterpret, but if only angels could handle such welfare works, there wouldn't be many shelters. I sometimes hear people say, in various ways, that a big heart is necessary and sufficient for these situations. It isn't. I believe a professional worker with little empathy helps more than most a purely nice persons. Even worse, some kind gestures can hurt precarious people. Of course, wonderful persons exist in the Welfare sector, either experienced or not. And even professional humanitarians can hurt more than they help, as it has been documented in Haiti or Thailand.

[nabnob]

This is interesting, it sounds like your wife went to an underground/unlisted type of women's shelter?

[docbrown]

> This is interesting, it sounds like your wife went to an underground/unlisted type of women's shelter?

If i’m not mistaken, I believe that most shelters attempt to keep a cloak over their actual identity and purpose. They’re often vaguely named and are placed in non-obscure locations. Nonetheless, whether it’s listed or not, I’m glad their partner was able to get the help they needed.

[nabnob]

I think this used to be more common when in the 60s and 70s, when shelters were basically run by small groups of women volunteers and relied on word-of-mouth to get the word out. A lot of shelters are now public, get funding, and have websites so women can find them easily. I'm not not really sure how common unlisted vs. public is nowadays.