Episode 41 Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM): Breaking the Cycle - How to Support Survivors of Domestic Violence with Ann Perkins, Executive Director of Safe Harbor of Eastern Kentucky

 Donate directly to Safe Harbor HERE

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One in three. That statistic isn’t abstract—it’s our friends, coworkers, neighbors, and sometimes ourselves. I sat down with Ann Perkins, executive director of Safe Harbor of Northeastern Kentucky, to talk frankly about what it takes to move from fear and isolation to safety, stability, and self‑determination. Ann’s team runs a 24/7 continuum—emergency shelter, transitional housing, and permanent supportive apartments—wrapped in case management, court advocacy, and counseling referrals. The approach is simple and rare: no shame, no expiration date, and no closed doors.

We unpack the hardest truths: why survivors stay, why leaving can be the most dangerous moment, and how power and control can be nonphysical yet devastating—financial coercion, threats to kids and pets, digital blackmail, reputational ruin. Ann traces the biology behind the cycle—adrenaline and love‑bombing rewiring the brain like addiction—while making the case for patience and practical help: IDs, school enrollment, meds, rides, rent, and steady routines that let the nervous system recalibrate to a calm life. We also zoom out to culture and policy: prevention that works (bystander training, school education, public awareness), the lifesaving impact of visibility, and the real risk of defunding shelters and advocacy centers.

You’ll hear a success story that proves what opportunity can do: sobriety, a good job, a safe home, a proud child, and a future that felt impossible. And you’ll leave with clear steps: ask “Are you okay?” and “What can I do to help you?”, believe the answer, share resources, donate to keep beds and case managers available, and welcome survivors back without judgment—every time they’re ready. If you care about safer families and stronger communities, start here and take one action today. Subscribe, share this episode with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help more people find life‑saving support.

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This month, Girls Who Recover is dedicating every episode to raising awareness, sharing survivor stories, and highlighting the organizations and women leading change — beginning with Safe Harbor of Eastern Kentucky.

If you’re asking, “What can I do?” It's this: Donate directly to Safe Harbor HERE to support women and families heal and rebuild their lives after abuse and violence. Whatever the gift, big or small, will help provide safety, shelter

Hey gorgeous.

I love you.

I'm so proud of you.

And I believe in your ability to create a life you absolutely love.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Girls Who Recover podcast with Dana Hunter Fradella, where incredible women just like you, go to transform life's biggest setbacks into your most powerful comebacks so that you can live a life you. Love. I'm your host, Dana Hunter Fradella, transformational coach and founder of Girls Who Recover, and my mission is to pull back the curtain on our mistakes, failures, shame and personal disasters, and light the way for how to use those to create your biggest and most gorgeous comebacks. Follow the show now. Grab your iced coffee and turn up the volume for girls who recover. Let's light it up. hello, gorgeous and welcome back to the Girls Who Recover Podcast. October of this year is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and I am so excited and deeply grateful to present to you a conversation with one of my favorite people in all of human history, and that is not exaggerating. She is the executive director of Safe Harbor of Northeastern Kentucky. She's been. Serving in some capacity with them for over 30 years, 38 years. And her work in the world is a light that has been a healing balm, sometimes a kick in the ass, sometimes just an invitation to look, to see, to support, and to alchemize the landscape of domestic violence and the survivors in the world, specifically in the pocket that you serve in Northeastern Kentucky. And she is a personal friend and mentor of mine for the whole of my existence. So I'd like to welcome you to the conversation, Anne Perkins. Thank you so much for being here with us today, Dana. Thanks for having me. I it's a blessing and a pleasure. Of course. I've, I feel like I've known you before you were born. You did, just because. Because I've known your family that long. For you to be in this capacity and for me to be able to have this conversation with you is really an honor for me to be able to take this time to talk with you and your following of survivors and all your wonderful, beautiful girls who follow you. So I'm just glad to be here. I'm so grateful that you are. Let's dive right in. Tell us about Safe Harbor. Tell us about your work with Safe Harbor. Tell us about the mission and where it started, where it is now, where it's headed. We were started actually about 41 years ago by, an organization, which is called Pathways, and it's the mental health comp care provider for the five coad district. So I cover five counties in eastern Kentucky. We're right on the Ohio River. We cover Boyd, Greenup, Carter, Lawrence and Elliot Counties in eastern Kentucky. The very north, most northeast part of the state. There are 15 of me in the state of Kentucky. So in every ad district the legislature in my opinion had the great foresight to develop laws. So we're in the KS and KRS of Kentucky that says we must provide domestic violence services in every ad district in Kentucky. The, the downside of that is they gave us money to get started, but it wasn't nearly enough money to get started. So over the years we've evolved in we actually get a lot of federal money and state money also. So we're a mandated service in Kentucky. We have to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We've never been closed. And Ashland I have a 60 bed emergency shelter where they can pretty much come in and stay for as long as they want through the emergency phase. And once we get them through that emergency phase, if they need to stay longer, we've developed a 30 bed transitional housing program for women who may have extraordinary, what I would call barriers. That maybe prohibits them or disqualifies them for maybe getting housing through hud if they've maybe walked away from apartments in the past without paying, old bills or electric bills or rent. Do those kind of things. Or if they have substance abuse issues that need to be addressed or if they wanna go to college get a job or whatever. So in, in totality, we have 90 beds available for women and their children, and we serve men, but there are very few and far between men who come to our program and say, we need shelter services, but we have, we do help them and we have helped them. On top of that, about 15 years ago we took over the old TB hospital and developed, we did a four and a half million dollars renovation of the old hospital that was built in 1946. All of our buildings here are the old TB hospital complex. We've built 34 apartments and they are, we partnered with the City of Ashland with HUD housing. So they are project based Section eight apartments that are actually permanent supportive apartments. So we provide case management for women while they live here and their children, and we are their support system. So that's who or what we do here. But the other part of this is you don't have to be in shelter. They receive our services. So we will go into all the courthouses in all five counties and provide services for emergency protective orders. We will help do counseling. We will do pretty much whatever a victim needs in order to leave a bad or violent relationship. So our mission is to help prevent and educate and intervene for all services for domestic violence in Eastern Kentucky. Yeah. Wow. I'm curious about, let's go there, prevent, educate, and then the third is. Intervene. Yes. So what does it look like to, because this is a bigger question I've gotten you over the course of your whole lifetime, I'm sure have heard so many stories. Not just stories, but seen it in real life of. The impacts of domestic violence. I've just had the pleasure of holding space for a few this month, and it's a lot, Ann, and the big question is like, what is, it's a lot, and a lot of women come in feeling very isolated. Like it's just them, like it's their fault. And I, the bigger question is like, what's in the water? What, let's go to the mouth of the river. What is in the water and how can we, what needs to be done? What can we do to prevent this on a social level? Oh, one, one in three women and children are victimized. So that's millions and millions of people. I can tell you, just for Ashland and for our agency, we have housed 20 over 20,000 women and children and men in our shelters since we opened 20,000 people. That's more than the city of Ashland's population. So is this an issue? Yes, it absolutely is an issue. And we're not a very big community. We're the metropolitan area for Eastern Kentucky because of who we are and where we're located. But, Louisville, Lexington, bowling Green, all of those are much bigger, areas than even I are, but they don't have nearly as many beds. The the thing that I think is. Most discouraging is what you just said earlier. So many victims are so secretive about the issue because there's so much shame involved. Yeah. Especially if you're dealing with women who have lots of education come from well-to-do families. That's never happened in their family. How could it happened to them? But you also have that same kind of shame in especially women who are generational poverty, generational substance abuse, generational mental health. All of those things are burdens that they, a lot of women carry pretty much the same amount of shame as the woman who has a million dollars in the bank. So it really cuts across. Every race, every gender, every socioeconomic pro, position that you hold in the community, and another thing is. A lot, there's a lot of victim blaming when it comes to domestic violence because a lot of people really who've not experienced it, don't understand it. Or you have people who say I left. Why didn't she leave? Yes. And we, we say to people all the time, there's a million reasons why women stay. And it's, it could be because they have children. It could be just simply because she loves that perpetrator. In spite of him beating her to a bloody pulp. Because you, and you know this too, especially in substance abuse, there's a honeymoon stage for violence. And so when bad things happen, what usually happens that the perpetrator will be so remorseful, this is what we call the, the flower stage where they come and beg forgiveness and I will never do that again, and blah, blah, blah and all this, when in fact it will happen probably over and over again. And as some relationships escalate over years it's such a subtle kind of thing that happens in a lot of relationships. In other words, the night you get married and sometimes that switch flips that night. Sometimes that switch doesn't flip for, 10 or 15 years or when catastrophic, what I would call catastrophic issues happen, like job losses or horrendous health issues, those kind of things. Those can all be triggers for some people as far as domestic violence. And it also is some triggers for substance abuse and mental health issues. So wrapping that whole issue, all of those things around. An individual who's a victim can make a very complicated, sticky issue. And those are a lot of the reasons why women stay, that maybe they've not worked in a long time, so they feel like they can't make it on their own. They don't wanna move out of their beautiful house or their apartment that they've worked really hard and that's their home. Maybe they've told, maybe the perpetrator told her that he would kill the, their dogs and their families and their cats and their children. And sometimes they do that and follow through. But just the thread of those things happening are all reasons why a lot of women don't, don't leave or they do things that make them vulnerable to going to jail. Maybe they record, sometimes without their knowledge their sex acts or whatever, and that's blackmail. Yeah. Or they get someone to start using drugs with them. So there's codependency there and they use that as a weapon, or they bring them into what I would call breaking the law and helping be part of the deal if they're dealing drugs in order to support their, their addiction. So there's all kinds of things that happen in relationships that make women just say, it's not worth walking away for. It's not worth the threats and looking over your shoulder and being stalked or having your tires slit or. Going to your workplace and causing a ruckus and you get fired or going to where you live and causing a ruckus, and then you get evicted from your housing. Those are all, every day, what I would call ways that perpetrators, create acts of violence against their victims. It sometimes it's subtle and it's not overt. Sometimes it's not physical, it's verbal and emotional, or it's financial. There's a million ways to what I would consider perpetrate power and control and violence, whether it's real or imagined, it's very real. Meaning it's ha, hands and words and imagine being threatened and subliminal. Yes. And sometimes women will say he never laid a hand on me. But he had a gun to my head when we had sex. Or when I tell you of the sexual assault that so many victims go through that it's what he would perpetrate on somebody just with mere threats. Yeah. So it's very hard to understand unless you've been there, done that. And we know that a lot of women have, and like I said, there's a lot of shame that goes with it. I tell people all the time, the most dangerous time is the moment she leaves. But it's also the most heroic time for them. To be able to think that they have to walk away because that took a lot of courage and strength that most of them feel like they, that they don't have. But how many people will literally throw their hands up in the air and walk away and leave everything that they've ever known just because of a horrendous relationship that they thought was, prince Charming and Mr. Wonderful. And he's so nobody would ever guess that he's a Ted Bundy behind closed doors. Yeah. Because he's so charming and well respected in the community. And sometimes. Sometimes that's the way it goes too. I can't ruin his life because I depend on his income for us to live. So you don't press charges, you don't get an EPO because he's the superintendent of schools, or he's the judge, or he's the chief of police, or he's a doctor or he's the, number one lawyer in town or whatever. There's, like I said, there's just a million reasons why women don't leave. So my, so after having held space for quite a few conversations, just in the last little bit, it seems like it's. There are these themes of shame and safety. And sa those two things, meaning a lot of different things. So shame of what will other people think. Shame of, maybe I caused it for myself. Shame of if I do anything different then what? Or if I stay, then what? And then this belief of I somehow caused this or deserve this or right. And have stayed so long, who am I to? So there's this internal battle, which of course there's other things involved, like substance abuse, like how else could we possibly stand that conversation. And then there's this second thing of safety and so external safety that you mentioned, the house, the job, the reputation, the children, and then also a biological internal safety of the nervous system. And so the nervous system's only job is to keep us safe. Alive, safe in quotation marks. And oftentimes it feels safer physically to keep doing what we know than it does to change lanes, especially when you're under threat of, in many cases, death. Death or violence or harm or some sort of fear. So there's this external factor, there's an internal factor, there's a biological factor, and it's so complex. And then the question that we hear, you just named it, that I wanna, I just wanna get up on a podium with a microphone and say, can we please stop asking this?'cause it misses the point is why. Why doesn't she leave? That's the wrong question. It's very easy. Yeah. It's very easy to be critical and it's very easy to be judgmental. It's very hard, in my opinion. Not to be critical and judgmental because it's a normal, natural thing for us to look at something at face value and we determine that they're all, they're a piece of crap apparently for staying or that she's ignorant or she's, just she's trying to hurt her kids or whatever your blame is. It's easy for us to blame victims than it is to give them grace and say, I've not walked in your shoes. I don't know what your history is. Because, a lot of times and I think, I'm sure you've talked to women who've ended up being very seriously mentally ill from trauma. Yes. And very serious addiction issues or substance abuse issues. I've known women who used substances almost their entire adult life. And the minute she walks away and leaves them, she lays them down because she wasn't an addict. She was just coping. Yeah. And those are the lucky people who can walk away from substances and not be in a total addiction dilemma on top of being a victim from domestic violence on top of being a sexual assault victim, on top of being bipolar from trauma. Or even from, hereditary issues. It is so complicated. I know people who have PhDs in social work who really don't understand domestic violence and sexual assault and who've also experienced it. Dunno how they, and you've also experienced it, right? Because those people aren't exempt either. Exactly. I don't, alcoholics and drug, former drug addicts who become very judgmental. From everybody else because I quit. Why can't you? Yes. I'm not using anymore. Why can't you? Yes. So like ex-smokers, there's a lot of ex-smokers who are very judgmental of smokers right here. I'm just like, I, whenever I smell smoke, I just feel so much compassion. Not only for the person,'cause I know how addictive it is. I know it'cause I experienced it. Exactly. And then also compassion for myself for needing that for so long. For, do you know, for whatever part. Version of me needed. Needed that. So I'm hearing you say that there's a general lack of empathy and compassion when really, Ann, if we got, like I do, I get up close and personal. You actually do have something that's similar. It's why you can't stop eating. It's why you can't stop collecting that stuff that you have in the garage that nobody wants. It's why, it's a different variation of some sort of thing. Gambling that is out of your control. Yeah. Gambling. Yes. Yeah. And then also there's the, there's the brain chemistry of addiction, whether substances are involved or not. That there's this, yeah. The brain produces chemicals that become addictive, adrenaline. Cortisol the chemicals of fear. And then there's the balance by this love bombing. Forgive me if there's like a different word you use the flowering period where it's, I'm so sorry, I love you. Here's a ring, here's a, this, here's a that we'll go on a trip or we'll, I'll never do it again. And so there's the dopamine, there's the serotonin, there's the good chemicals. And then now your brain, just like heroin, becomes addicted to the high, to the low, to the high to the low. And what I know about humans and addiction is it's like they're zombies. People that are on drugs, first of all, it also crosses. Lines socio all the lines. And then once it has them, it's like they're not even there anymore. Which is why it's almost impossible to help somebody that has an addiction, a chemical addiction, drug addiction, unless there's some sort of breakthrough, whether it's a bottom or a spiritual awakening, like literally we can't help'em because they're not even there. And so I don't know that it's the same, but in terms of the chemistry, it's similar. The highs and the lows, and the highs and the lows, and then the nervous system calibration to this is what feels safe. This is still what feels safe to me. There's a lot of women who are only, in my opinion, addicted to perpetrators. They go from perp to perp. And I tell people all the time, I think a lot of victims have victim written across their forehead because there are so many perpetrators who can zero in on our victims. Like they know exactly what to say, how to say it, to lure them into this web of, abuse. It's a, like you say, it's a real dilemma, I think for people on both sides, whether you're the perpetrator or whether you're the victim. And that cycle of violence will go through generation to generation. And how dysfunctional that family is, in my opinion. The hardest to serve because there's so many, like what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Do you get sober first or do you go get your psychiatric meds first or whatever, whatever all the co-occurring issues are. Yeah. That go with domestic violence and sexual assault. It's a lot. It's just a lot. And most people can't do it alone. I think there are some people that have done it alone. But it's, people are so reticent to ask for help. And you know that one, I will tell you this story that I heard I heard this speaker and she is the number one trauma informed trainer in the United States. And she's got this if your readers or anybody's interested in looking up healing Neen, it's on, you can find her on YouTube. I'll put it in the show notes. She is, the breakthrough for her was a woman came into the pri, she had been arrested in prison like 37 times and had five children, and four of'em have been totally removed from her, and she doesn't even know where they're at. They've all been adopted out. Her last child was born the last time she was in prison, so she has custody of her, but she does not know even where her other four children are. But a counselor a psychiatrist, walked in, I think that the prison and was doing like groups in there, probably through the C, d, C, and sat down and looked at her and said. What can I do to help you? Nobody had ever asked her that question. In 30 years of her living, nobody had said to her, what can I do to help you? That one simple thing changed her entire life, and she ended up going to work for the Health and Human Services. She's the only person that was diagnosed by the CDC with all 10 ACEs. Okay? Yeah. So she was sexually assaulted as a child when she was like four years old. Her mother was an alcoholic and prostituted her to all the men in the community so that they would buy her beer. So she had been in jail. She'd been in prison like 34, 35 times. If you saw her today, you would have no comprehension that you were looking at the same person that she was, but it only took. That one person walking through her door and saying, what can I do to help you? And from that moment on, everything started changing for her. She got the kind of help that she needed. She got the psychiatric help, she got the substance abuse help. And she ended up getting out of prison and went to work for HHS. And she travels all over the United States, mostly training social workers and law enforcement. But if you look her up healing mean Yeah. Tony r Kane is her name. Tony. Tony Cain. And I'll put the link in the show notes for this episode. For sure. Her story is, it just changed my whole outlook on how we serve victims of trauma. Which anybody who's using substances or in a domestic violence. Or being sexually assaulted, everybody who has suffered trauma, basically it's applicable to, yes, and that's something that I've found. It's not it, I don't, and you would know this more than I do, but I've noticed a noticed of trend in, you mentioned. I'll use the word survivor. So I'm just gonna use survivors who could have the word victim on their forehead because they've experienced it repetitively with different humans, like they will leave, but then sync up with somebody who's the same. And I just had a conversation with a woman. Who said, I learned that path to love very early. So when she was a small child, her path to love was through an abusive stepparent who abused her, and she thought that was the path to love. So we're imprinted as humans in the first eight years. That's when the programming is set up. It's when the subconscious mind is just absorbing everything is truth as the way things are in the world. And so then at about eight we decide, okay, I've got all the information I need and my only job per the nervous system is to repeat what I know is safe forever. So in the first eight years, a lot of these women have had the stories of abuse, of trauma, of neglect, of abandonment, of some sort of not receiving love and care that they needed. And so it makes absolute scientific sense that we would experience that again and again because that's the programming. And unless we're awakened, whether it's by someone saying, Hey, sis. What do you like? How can I help you? What do you need? Or you have some sort of spiritual awakening or an, a suicide attempt or whatever. Every story is very different and beautiful and terrifying at the same time. But do is that, do you see that as well, where, not every time, but a lot of times there's something that's preemptive. It wasn't like we were in a vulnerable position, whatever that looked like. And then you said, use the word predators to lure them in. Almost like they've got a spidey sense for who's vulnerable enough to experience that. I laugh sometimes and say, I think there's only 10 predators in the whole wide world who really rotate through all the victims that are surrounding us. Because it seems to me sometimes we've had women, we've had two or three women in shelter at times who actually all had the same perpetrator. Okay. Which is mind boggling to me. It's just like, how in the world did all these people come in the same contact with the same guy? And I'm saying guy, because really probably 95% of all the perpetrators that we work with, it's men who are usually, oh, Anne, you cut off. Check your phone. Okay. I think I hit mute. Sometimes 95%, 95% are men. Are men perpetrators. But there are same sex, who suffer from domestic violence, sexual assault, all that too. And a lot of times they are even more vulnerable because of societal norms and the the kind of hate build culture that we have developed in certain, areas for, for same sex. So again it's such a hard nut to crack in my opinion, when you have such co-occurring issues. That creates such big barriers for people to be able to recover, survive, walk away that sometimes it takes victims maybe 20 years to make that final, they walk down this path. Like you walk down a path of sobriety for a while and then you fall off the ledge after you've been sober for five years and then that whole cycle comes back to you. But being sober for five years, usually, in my opinion, a lot of times, shows you how good your life can be. Yeah. And you want to go back to that. A lot of times we say recovery ruins your next high. Because how good it can be. A lot of times you. You realize that it's something that you can accomplish because you've been sober for a year, you've been sober for, and it, your relationships can be the same way walking away from a perpetrator. For some people it takes that distance. So the longer you can go without looking for another boyfriend or girlfriend, the better chance you have in what I would consider recovery from abuse. Yeah. It follows the same pattern like substance abuse or staying on your meds for depression and staying on your meds for bipolar and staying on your meds for schizophrenia. The longer you can have that calm everyday smooth kind of life, I think. You realize that it's out there for you. You just have to get back on the horse and try it again. So I have a lot of women who, as they get older, sometimes they just get tired. And sometimes being tired was the biggest instigator for them, not looking for the next perpetrator, not trying to get the next tie. And that's a sad thing too, because you feel like you've walked away from your youth and all of a sudden you're 60 years old and you say, okay, I'm done. I'm not doing this anymore. I'm too tired. I can't do that. So it's being patient as in my opinion, service providers that we are, that we always welcome them back to. Trying to be able to live violence free, substance abuse free, keeping their mental health in a steady, component or way of life that allows them to have a normal relationship with their family and their friends and be able to maybe work a steady job and keep their apartment for more than six months. The longer those, the longer you go, the stronger you get. And so us as providers, in my opinion, need to allow them to have that opportunity to be able to come back and ask for help when it's the 12th time that they've been back to the shelter or called the crisis line or. Went to AA and recovery or whatever. So us being able to say, oh yes we're always here for you. All you have to do is give us a call. And your doors are always open and your arms are always open, and you welcome them back and say, I'm so glad you're here. You don't browbeat them, you don't, make them feel stupid. Or you know it. Why did it take you this long? It might have been not available. We're unavailable for shaming. Like we just, we know you've had enough of the shame on the outside. Yeah, we don't have any to offer here. No shame here. No shame here. So that's probably some really important things that I think we have to teach a lot of our advocates and women who work with survivors and people in recovery is, be happy that they wanna be there. Yeah. Praise them for having the courage again for the 10th time, so each time they go back, hopefully they're getting stronger with each chance for recovery or each chance for being safe and not putting their kids at risk and all that. There's so many things, mentor of my. Go ahead. I'm sorry. A mentor of mine. So I love this about our shared communities is because in my experience, and this might not be everyone's, but my experience being in the recovery community is that it's like we know you've suffered on the outside and we are so happy to have you come back. We know what it takes to walk through the threshold of the door. It's a lot. It's basically everything. You've got to come back. And so our mission and our goal here is to welcome you back and make you feel like number one, you belong. Number two, you're loved. Number three, there's hope. Let's do this. If that takes a hundred times, we will welcome you back a hundred times because it is hard to understand if you haven't walked through. But that doesn't mean we can't try. And also why it's important to have shared stories that another theme for the podcast, but specifically this month is shame and how do we dissolve shame? We speak our truth, we speak the story. And what that does is it hear another woman says, I didn't think that I could, but I heard your story and now maybe I can. And that's enough. That's enough to dissolve shame, but okay. So I have two broader questions and I want you to pick one and run with it. I love your program. I think it offers a very holistic healing approach to the survivors that walk through the door. And if you would like to talk about the services that you offer, the spectrum of services and how that's evolved, and I think a bigger conversation I wanna come back to is Ann, what is in the water? Like what is it? Because yes, we can dissolve the shame and yes, we can talk about our experience and yes, we can get the supports we need, but one in three of us. Are experiencing some form of mental, physical, financial, sexual abuse. So I have to take a little bit of a bird's eye view here and say what is happening? And also it's a huge question because like you said, your facility's been around since there were, men were crushing grapes. So it's not like a modern day issue, although perhaps it's been exacerbated, but, so you have two questions. Pick the one that's your favorite and then we'll come back to the second one. I'll start with our services and just the majority of Kentucky, and I don't know about other states as much as I know about Kentucky, but our state has what we call minimum service standards. We learned a long time ago that giving a woman and her children a place to stay and filing for an EPO and setting her back out on the street was not helping her in the ways that were probably needed. So over the As Emergency Protective order? Emergency restraining order. Protective order, yes. Okay. Yeah, a restraining order. So we've realized that most of our families, especially the hardest to serve families that have co-occurring issues like substance abuse, mental health, domestic violence, sexual assault, when you wrap all that up, it's a pretty big package. So we know that those folks need way more than two weeks of our services to be able to move on. So that's how we came up with the transitional housing. So what we try to do is work through. The goal of that woman or that man when they walk through the door, what is it that we can help you with now? So we work through I need to get my birth certificate. I need to get my kids in school. I need to get a job. I need to get my emergency protective order. So we work through all that kind of stuff through the emergency phase. But most of our folks who I say are the hardest to serve are the ones who need us the most. They have no support system. And so those folks depend on us when. The car won't start when their food stamps run out, when they need a ride to the doctor. Those are the kinds of things that we do every single day. So we've become the support system and we wrap our arms around that family or that individual and help them literally do everything that they can or need to do to be able to walk away from that relationship. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. We have helped women for six or eight months, and you think they're ready to go and the minute they walk out the door, they've walked right back to the perpetrator. But again, we've always told them that door is open. So if they need a job, if they wanna go to school, if they need to get their GED, if they need to get into counseling as far as their mental health is concerned, if they need to be in recovery, we help them do everything they need to do to get back on their feet and for the hardest to serve, which are mostly what I would consider generational poverty, generational substance abuse, generational mental health. Those are the families who need us the most, but they are also the hardest to serve. Yeah. And the reason why is because they have grown up so dysfunctionally that they don't. They didn't get that way overnight and their recovery. And when I talk about recovery, I'm talking about recovery from trauma, substance abuse, mental health, the whole nine yards. Yes, that doesn't happen overnight. So patience and longevity are the keys, in my opinion, to a safe, happy, self-sustaining life. And so creating that continuity for that family, if you can stretch three weeks to six weeks, to 10 weeks to six months where they can really step back and feel, they can take a breath, they can see, they've got, they got a job. They've, they've got a beautiful apartment now. We help them move into their apartment. We help with subsidized housing. We help them with rents and utilities and medicine. All those things that have been barriers. Yes. For them to leave an abusive relationship, for them to get sober, for them to be able to get out of bed.'cause that some of them have been in bed for six months because of depression and couldn't, just, couldn't function, just can't function. So those, when you put all that together, that's a process for most people. And being patient as a provider of services is probably sometimes the hardest to do because you feel like I've, you've repeated yourself 50 times and they all look at you and shake their head and yeah. And then they. Turn around and two weeks later they're, right back to square one. But that's okay. Let's reel'em back in and let's start all over again. So as far as services are concerned, we don't provide every service, but we link them with every service we don't provide, whether it's medical or educational or jobs or whatever. Tho that's been an evolution for us because we were three hots and a cot in the very beginning, and I'm talking about most places in the United States where three hots and a cot. Yeah. And then you just set the person down and said, oh, you patted them on the head and say, good luck. Call, call us if you need us. So again. When people don't understand people's real story, it's hard for a lot of people to have your arms opened up and say, I've helped her three times. I'm outta here. Yeah, she's just gotta go figure this out by herself. We can't do that, I don't think. And be true to our mission question. It sounds like you're here to hold on. I just, couple thoughts. Okay. And then I actually have, I have a bonus question for. So what I hear is the evolution is, oh, we realize that this is a holistic problem. So we're gonna offer a holistic solution and we're gonna make it individualized. We're gonna triage in the emergency phase and decide how many kids you got, what do they need, what do you need? Are you eating? Do you have food? What are you suffering physically? Do you need a, what is it that you need immediately? So that's tailored and customized to the human who walks in the door. And then the more expansive extended approach is, okay, now we've got what you need to take and take one deep breath. How are we gonna support you gradually to get connected and dissolve the barriers that could be preventing you from feeling. Ready to leave or able to leave. And then you mentioned counseling. So a lot of the work that I get to do here on the podcast and also with coaching is to ask those big questions about, okay, who are you in the world? So it's an identity expansion and question. And so yes, we can solve all the physical problems. And then you mentioned therapy and counseling for the spiritual or the mental. Both of those things are the same thing, crisis that's happening internally. And so that leads me to my next, my bonus question is, Ann, if you had more money than you knew what to do with, what additional resources and services would you offer at Safe Harbor? I would be, providing more individualized case management in permanent supportive housing. I don't have enough staff to travel five counties to their apartment in Grayson or their apartment in Sandy Hook, or their apartment in Greenup County or South Shore. I don't have the, I don't have the staff to do that follow up work in the outlying counties. I am full every day. I have 150 people a day on this property. That means all my beds are full every single day, if you would've told me 25 years ago that we would be in every crevice and corner of this entire facility, I would've called you a liar because we started out in one facility and I had a cardboard box as my filing cabinet, and we were all in one building, which was building number one. And we had, we had 20 to 40 beds, but most of the time we only had 20 people in shelter because we always kept it a big secret where we were and what we did. When you keep everything a secret, nobody knows who you are, what you do. So opening up our program to say. We're at the old TB hospital. We do provide this, and we did talk about what we do. That's really the most important thing that we could expand on. So I would spend money on being on TV all the time and doing advertising and say, our services are out here 24 7. You're not alone. All you have to do is call us. We will, we will help. People don't realize, for some folks, we're the opportunity of a lifetime at Safe Harbor for them to walk away with us holding them up on both sides and walking them down that road. There's hardly any, there is no agency in the Tri-state area that does what we do. There is nobody that does what we do. So you're talking about, like I said, you're talking about 500 families a year. Walk through our doors. We prop'em up and put'em on their feet. And we do help them walk through every, all the basics, the infrastructure of their lives, to set them up and keep them up. It's that follow through that I probably had the least amount of money to, make that phone call once a week. How you doing? And what can I do to help you? And that kind of thing. So that's probably our biggest need is that, but also probably our biggest need is to do prevention work that we're so focused in on. There's so many people that need intervention that the prevention side has just been hanging out there. There's so much more work we could do on prevention. Look how many people's lives we've saved because we passed laws for seat belts. Look how many lives we've saved because we have driving laws now that we never had before. Those things have made huge impacts on our lives. Look what our smoking campaigns have done for, and we still have a lot of smokers, but who would've thought Kentucky would get rid of their number one crop, which was tobacco? We literally got rid of our number one, crop. So you can make a difference in my opinion. It's just everybody getting on board to understand the impact of, and the prevalence of domestic violence and sexual assault because all those other issues, like I said, substance abuse and mental health issues. Again, what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Usually that trauma, it starts that ball rolling. And if the trauma starts when you're four years old or the trauma starts when you're 12 years old, I can tell you most of the time how old someone was when the event happened in their life, that changed everything. So it's a big deal. And our country, look at the Epstein files. Look how we've treated that. We swept all that under the rug. Our country and our leadership swept that under the rug. So that is such an accepted it's just mind boggling to me. It's my that we don't give a hoot about those. Vic, nobody's talking about the victims. Nobody. Nobody's talking, or when they do, it's an accusatory kind of conversation. She, they wore this or they did that, no, they were victims, period. Yes. Period. So we've got, right now we've got an administration that actually victimized outwardly victimizing women and not, and on a mass social scale, almost every person who's the top cabinet members in this administration of all had sexual assault charges against him. It's mind boggling to me. Yeah. I thought maybe that was one of the requirements for being a cabinet member was having sexual assault charges, because almost half of his cabinet. So how are we going to overcome that kind of dynamic that comes from the very top of our administration? It's gonna be very, it's gonna be very tough. And all of our funding really right now, all of our federal funding right now is in total jeopardy. We all received letters in January that they wanted to defund every domestic violence, sexual assault, and child advocacy center in the United States. Yeah, that's all sexual assault and domestic violence in the United, they wanna defund it, but that's not worthy. We're not worthy of tax dollars. I totally descent on that one. To, I know what the value of our program brings. I've seen it over 30 years. Every day somebody comes up to me and says, oh my gosh, Ms. Perkins, do you remember me? I was there as a child and now I'm, like the principal of the school and I've got a beautiful family and blah, blah, blah. I hear that every single day. I hear those success stories every single day. I hear two things. One, maybe we'll have to come back and do. We've of course come back anytime we need four parts to this, but one is, okay. So there's clearly a social issue here as you've identified, and then current administration. It is egregious and terrible and fuck those guys. And sorry if you, you're air offended, but that's okay. And they're not the new they're just as sim in my opinion, they're as symbolic. Representation of what society is deeming as. Okay, society, meaning male leadership, male dominated. How dare you take away our sex. Our sex and our power, and our control of women and children? Because then who would we be? If you found out who was behind the great curtain of the Wizard of Oz? It would be Emasculating. It would be emasculating. It would be, okay, so number the along that same vein is. Why did we care about seatbelt? Like why are there seatbelt laws? We wanna protect lives or at least pretend like we care about. Same thing with we're humanity and health issues and Yeah. So there's a legal part of it. And I did some work way back in the day when in, I was in Nashville around passing legislature so a woman could be able to charge her husband with rape, which wasn't a thing. It's if you were married, no rape counts. Yeah. And so there's the legal part of it. Exactly. Then there's it from an education standpoint, it's, there's education to be done in the classroom, not just with the grown people, but with the young people to say, this is how you can spot domestic violence. This is what it looks like if you are experiencing that, or you see someone say something and we're gonna get you support immediately so we don't have to wait until we're grown women. It's called green dots. Oh, there is green dots. Okay. Beautiful. And and then bystander intervention. Bystander intervention. That's called bystander intervention. Yeah. And then like my girls who are five, eight, and 10, we've already had this conversation about the way that men were available for men to treat us. And if we see it, experience it, this is what we're gonna do. And as your mom and your sister, I'm gonna be all up in your business supporting you in many ways so that you. At least have the information because when people have the information, then they're in a situation and, but without the information, like I didn't ever, nobody ever talked to me about domestic violence. So when I was in a relationship that involved abuse, I thought it was my fault. I didn't realize that there's this pervasive this. So it was so pervasive. Okay. But the last thing, and I know I've kept you long. I wanna say to you something I heard you say, and then I would love for you to tell us a specific success story. You can change the name, but like one specific story that just makes you believe in the possibility of what, where we are right now. What you said at the beginning is that this can be generational. The cycle can be generational. And so when a woman even has the audacity to walk through your doors, she is a generational interrupter. No matter how time, many times she goes back or comes back, we've decided that we're interrupting this generational pandemic of violence against women of self-sabotage, of shame, of what it means to show our kids what it means to be awo. We're like, we're interrupting that, and maybe we won't be. The last maybe we'll take what it takes. But your legacy at Safe Harbor and the legacy that Safe Harbor provides is we're interrupting generations of trauma so that we can create hope and community and possibility for women and families for the rest of time. And so could you share with us an example of what you would call a success story as a result of the work that you've done in the world? I just had a client and I we usually call'em clients victim who approached me and said. That this was the best time in her entire life and that safe harbor gave her the opportunity to get sober, get a job. She's in her own apartment. She has her daughter with her. She got the most outstanding employee of the agency that she worked for, which has 5,000 employees. And she said, I've never in my life dreamed that my life could be this happy and this good until I came to Safe Harbor and I will never. Be able to thank you enough that you believed in me and gave me everything that I needed to be able to be where I am today. And actually I've, I hear that story. I cannot tell you how many times it's, I tell people all the time, I said, when a woman walks through the door, she's usually got her head down. She has left everything behind. She is so despondent and so traumatized, and so just devastated. But I can tell you that when you walk, watch her walk out the door, most of the time you don't even recognize her because however long it's taken for her. To overcome. It gives me cold chills even talking about it because I am telling you, I've seen it thousands of times. People just need an opportunity. And most of our folks have never experienced being given an opportunity. Those of us who had wonderful parents, successful parents who supported us when we were down, who helped us get through school, who helped us get our jobs, who helped us when the car broke down, who helped us, get over what, we, if we got arrested for something, they bailed us out. For those folks who have that kind of support system, it's like you hit the jackpot. And when you look at some of our families, it is the luck of the draw. Who you were born to and how you were raised. Yeah. And so for that family, for you to give that one opportunity of a lifetime. Totally. I am telling you, I see it every day. It has changed the whole trajectory of their life with one opportunity. And that's what we can do in our jobs every single day. And I tell people that every single day, every one of us can make such a humongous difference. Even if it's one person. If everybody had that opportunity to help one person to give them good advice or give them a hand up or pointed them in the direction of where to get a job or. How can I help you with your rent and deposit to be able to move into an apartment or whatever it could be. The simplest thing is, buying them a meal, but giving people opportunities for success there. There's not a better job in the whole wide world, even if you're helping one single family or one single person, it's, there's nothing better. There is nothing better in life than being able to do that. Just, it's what we're supposed to do. It's what we're meant to do. It's what, if you believe in any kind of deity or God it's a life changing moment that some families have never experienced before of just the, having a kind word for someone. As you say all the time, Hey, beautiful. You know how many women have never had anybody say those words to them and mean it, generational legacy, multi-generational legacy because we don't have time to do the math, but like just play with me. Let's say we help one family and that family has a couple of kids and a couple of aunts and a couple of friends, and then they go get a job that has a couple a hundred people there, and then they go to church that has another couple of hundred people there. And if you do the math, one person helps every person and i'm gonna ask you to offer an invitation to someone who might be in the experience right now, or someone who might be loving on someone who's in the experience. Now, knowing that, I think sometimes it can feel overwhelming. I can't change the world on this, so I can't do anything. But it sounds like you can do something. The first thing you can do is financially support Safe Harbor. And so I'm gonna plug your organization and I'm going to put the link to donate and encourage you to put your money where your mouth is. So please, let's stop saying, I wanna help and let's actually help. Mother Theresa said it takes a check to change the world. Okay, so just in case you're wondering, I hope you know who Mother Theresa is, and this is the place where we're literally changing the world. I know. I'm just talking about my girl is listening on the other side. I'm giving her a little bit of a hard time. Okay? So we're gonna put our money. Where our intention is, and we're gonna donate to Safe Harbor. We're not even gonna donate. We're gonna contribute as our assignment as a human in the world. And then the other thing we can do is go love on somebody, one person, not all the people. That's safe harbor's job we're gonna love on one person. And so tell us, what invitation do you have for the woman who's listening, who's in the experience, and for the person who's listening, who loves her? My invitation basically would be, keep your eyes and ears open. If you have a gut feeling about somebody. Always make sure that you give that person the opportunity. Because you've opened the door for them. Whether it is having a, even if it's just asking those leading kind of questions, are you okay? How are you feeling if a lot of us know when we see somebody in distress, but don't shy away from it. Don't be embarrassed to ask them, because again, the greatest gift you can do is how are you feeling? What can I do to help you? Don't ever hesitate to call me. I give my phone number out all the time to people. I give them my email, whatever, because that one offer may be their only ticket that they've ever been given to be able to walk down that road and. You don't wanna miss that opportunity. So always be open to your family and friends because every single one of us knows way more than one person who's been down this road before. Literally. You can do the math one, 3000, like one in three. Let's just say it again. One in three people. Yeah. One in three women are victims. Sometimes somehow, some way in their life. And are we gonna, are we gonna be there for them when they need us? Or are we going to just say, oh, I don't wanna get, it's, that's their business. Because honestly, that what, that person, I can't tell you how many, especially men have said to me, that is a family issue and I'm not getting involved. Guess what? Then that's on you. Because in my opinion, that's all of our business. I always say all the time, are we are brothers keepers, and yes, we are. If we're friends and we're family, then if we can't help, who's going to, if we can't help somebody, who's going to, so my offer is, we're here 24 7. There are thousands of us in the United States. Every state has programs. I did hear on a TikTok the other day that Arkansas has closed all of their domestic violence shelters in Arkansas, but maybe six because of they've basically have defunded, most of our programs. So I if I lose my federal dollars, it'll be a million dollars gone out of my budget. Half of my budget is federal funding. So if anybody is interested in supporting us, we're more than happy. To put that money to really good use, and that is basically saving lives. If you're interested in saving lives, you can support safe harbor. Yes. Saving lives and then creating multiple generational legacy of women who are remembering who they are of communities that say, I am here to support, we are here to support each other, and that's our job and that's what we're gonna do. And then creating a legacy for every person that person touches, including their kids, which, remembering that one person is every person. And yes, this is your call to action. If you're asking the question, what can I do? The first thing you can do is go to the link in the show notes and contribute financially. And if you have, if you're not in the, if you're not in the Kentucky area, they can still reach out to you to find out what their, my nearest local resources, it sounds okay. Beautiful. Ann, I hope that you'll open your heart. And receive this from mine. I love you so much. I'm so grateful for you and your impact to my life and your work in this world, and I deeply believe in the mission and the community that you have created for all of these humans. And I'm so proud of you. Thank you for being a guest on Girls Who Recover, and thank you for changing my life, and thank you for having me, Dana. You're the bomb. You are the bomb receiving it. Oh, whoa. Did you just feel what I felt? There is a whole lot of that and more to help you create miracles in your life. On upcoming episodes of the Girls Who Recover a podcast now ranked in the top 5% of podcasts globally. If you've built a strong recovery foundation and you're feeling ready to break through life's glass ceilings, let's make it happen together. In the show notes, you'll find a link to book a free one-on-one conversation with me and in that conversation. We'll get clear on what next level success even looks like for your life. We'll create some powerfully aligned goals and a plan. We're gonna talk about the big thing holding you back, and you will walk away with a roadmap for how to create a life you are obsessed with. Because hear this from me, my friend. You deserve. Success and freedom and the full identity of a woman who knows what she's capable of and who she is. And I wanna help you get there. So book your free call in the notes. And if you love this episode, follow us five stars, write a review, share it with your best friend, share it with your mom. And in case you haven't heard it today, I love you. I'm so proud of you, and I believe in your ability to create a gorgeous life. You are madly in love with starting. Right now and I'll see you in the next episode, blah.