Sherrie: What finally made me leave
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.
In this final episode, we meet Sherrie, a survivor of intimate partner violence who has so much wisdom to share. Her story is one of family, faith, and what can happen when the institutions we trust fail us.
Sherrie and her four children suffered control and abuse for years at the hands of her ex-husband. She attempted to leave the relationship many times, eventually doing so after two particularly difficult experiences involving her children and the final realization that her ex-husband “won’t lift a finger to help me, not even when I am in serious need of help. He would let me die.”
Now free, she uses her experience to power her life’s work supporting immigrant and refugee women in Winnipeg impacted by violence.
Her biggest message: there are many ways we can offer support, but we can’t force someone to leave an abusive relationship. That decision is always for the survivor to make.
Transcript available here: https://canadianwomen.org/blog/new-po...
If you need support, go to signalforhelpresponder.ca and click on “Get Help” for links to services and information. Thank you for listening.
This project has been funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada.