One Woman Is Helping Fellow Abuse Survivors Start a New Chapter
Nancy Gonzalez knows that the struggles of domestic-violence survivors don’t end when they leave their abusers. In fact, some of their biggest challenges are only just beginning.
In 2010, Nancy gave up on a troubled marriage, leaving her home with her three children, a bag of clothes, and not much else. They spent the night at a friend’s house without even toothbrushes. “I thought, I can’t even look after my own kids,” says Nancy. Her memory of that difficult period lingered until one day in 2015 when she heard a preacher on the radio recite an inspiring Bible verse: “If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains.” Nancy took the message as a call to action. On Facebook, she solicited donations for domestic-abuse survivors; packed the toothpaste, shampoo, and other supplies into purses; and delivered them to shelters.
Later that year, Nancy turned her good deed into a nonprofit organization that would collect gently used purses, makeup bags, and totes and fill them with the essentials a woman might need in the first few days after leaving an abuser. She called the group Mustard Seed Bags of Courage. “Victims often reunite with their abusers because they don’t think they can survive on their own,” she says. “I hope these bags will give women a sense of independence.”
In the past four years, the organization, which Nancy runs out of her home in Clearwater, FL, has filled nearly 6,000 bags and donated them to individuals and shelters.
Inside each purse is a card showing Mustard Seed’s website and Facebook page, and women often reach out to Nancy to say thank you and sometimes to ask for help. Once Nancy coached a victim of domestic abuse through her first trip to the grocery store without her partner.
“Every time I help someone, I feel like it’s God telling me He’s not done with me,” Nancy says. “I still have so much to do.”
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