HealBridge works with women and children leaving domestic abuse in Nigeria. Safe shelter, counselling, legal help, and a route back to work.
Parents often decide to say nothing, on the grounds that the children did not see much and will forget. Children almost always saw more than adults think, and what they do with silence is invent an explanation. The explanation they
Read MoreTwo opposite fears turn up in this conversation, often in the same woman. That she will never trust anybody again, and that she will walk straight into the same thing without seeing it. Neither is inevitable. This is what is
Read MoreThe most disorienting thing about the first months is not the practical difficulty. It is that the symptoms frequently get worse once you are safe, which nobody warns anybody about. Women describe it the same way: I coped for years,
Read MoreLeaving without documents is normal. People leave at night, or during a window that lasted four minutes, and a birth certificate is not what you are thinking about. The consequence arrives about three weeks later, when everything you need to
Read MoreAn account only you can see is the single most useful practical thing a woman in an abusive marriage can have. It is what makes transport possible, what makes a deposit possible, and what turns leaving from a leap into
Read MoreMost advice about rebuilding assumes a job. For a great many Nigerian women a trade is the more realistic route, and sometimes the better one: it starts sooner, it fits around children, it does not require a reference for a
Read MoreA great many women describe the same surprise. They coped for years, left, reached somewhere safe, and then fell apart. That is not a relapse and it is not weakness. While you are in danger the body holds itself together
Read MoreThis is where leaving most often fails. Not at the door of the house, and not at the shelter. Six weeks later, at the point where somewhere temporary has to become somewhere permanent. The obstacles are specific and they are
Read MoreMany women coming out of an abusive marriage have not worked for years. Not by choice, but because working was not permitted, or because it was made impossible by refusing childcare, refusing transport, or arriving at the workplace often enough
Read MoreA very large number of the women we work with stopped studying because of a marriage. Some were withdrawn from school for it. Some passed examinations they were never allowed to use. Some were part way through a course when
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HealBridge works with women and children leaving domestic abuse in Nigeria. Safe shelter, counselling, legal help, and a route back to work.
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