Women Shining Magazine Women Shining Spring 2018 | Page 21

I applied and they were silly enough to hire me
(chuckling)I - I walked in the door and sat down
and felt like I was home. I have had zero regrets.
Interviewer: You mentioned something that
grabbed my attention - you stated that helping
the women ‘rewrite their story’ can you explain
a little more about that?
Charlene: You know, sexual violence is one of
those things that I think in our culture we kind of
give people (I am going to speak sociologically)
this idea of a master status. For example, once a
victim always a victim, or once a survivor always
a survivor. Once broken always broken.
We see people walk in the doors, we get those
phone calls through SART. It is trauma. It is hard
not to become that. What we see here and the
role we play I think is just giving people a glimpse
of how they can reshape and rewrite their story.
We do not do the hard work - they do.
Sometimes women come to the door numerous
times before they walk through the door. Heads
down, usually pretty ashamed to be here. Over
time you see them walking with confidence, like
it is ok that they are here. They walk in with their
shoulders higher - things start to change for them.
You can see when they leave they have gone
from that of victim to that of survivor. They
get to define what survivor means. For some
that means - that is part of my past. For others,
survivor means that happened to me and you are
damn right I am a survivor and I am going to be
an advocate - or I am going to use my own voice.
We really do see people rewrite their story and
how they view themselves within that trauma.
To me that is the reason we are here. That is
the reason I am here. If you ask the counselors
they will tell you that is the reason they are
here. We have counselors who have been here
20+ years.
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