Ruby: If I can help just one person
Welcome to Signal for Help, a special podcast series from the Canadian Women’s Foundation and award-winning women journalists, Media Girlfriends.
We know that gender-based violence is a problem, and we want to support survivors in our lives, but there’s a lot of stigma and silence around gender-based violence in our society: too many people who experience abuse are shamed, silenced, and stigmatized, and too many people don’t feel confident and competent in supporting them.
Featuring interviews with survivors and experts, we’ll explore how everyday people can better support survivors of gender-based violence.
This podcast includes stories of gender-based violence. Please listen with care.
This week, we meet Ruby – a strong advocate for the work of the Canadian Women’s Foundation.
Ruby is based in Toronto, with a young daughter, a loving family, and strong ties to her South Asian community. She is also the survivor of physical, emotional, and “all forms of violence” experienced at the hands of her ex-husband while living with him and his family.
She describes her ex-husband’s family as complicit in the abuse, which left her feeling isolated and helpless even though she was surrounded by people. She describes the shame she carried – for her “choice” in the relationship, and for the times she left and returned. And, she describes her final exit alongside her family and the court systems, all motivated by her fierce love and protection for her daughter.
Now that she has experienced support and accessed resources available to her, she wants others to know that there is hope.
Transcript available here: https://canadianwomen.org/blog/ruby-i...