For an astoundingly large number of women- a number that increases annually- home is not a safe place; the number of women who suffer abuse by intimate partners is staggering: one in three. However, despite how the size of this number, it is still a problem that is virtually invisible. The role social media has played in raising awareness about the prevalence of violence against women in the modern western world is significant, but it has done more than just raise awareness; for women in abusive situations, widely accessible social media provides life saving opportunities that on-the-ground organizations cannot: it provides a supportive community, it gives women back control of the situation, and it is relatively safe and easy to access, and as a result, …show more content…
I was dead set against telling anyone I knew in real life, sure that they would make me do something. I felt so out of control already- the last thing I needed was to be forced to take steps about him that I was not ready to take. I turned to the internet, and I truly believe it saved my life. Here, online, I found a community of abuse survivors who were supportive but not intrusive, and I found websites with anonymous online counselors. It was these online communities that eventually gave me the courage to leave, through a mix of gentle love and stark, terrifying facts about what happens to Women Who Stay. It was these women who talked me through telling my family and asking for help, who answered my questions about the legal side of things, who shared their own harrowing stories with me. It was them who stopped me from going back. And whenever it got too much, whenever they pushed me too hard, I could make it all go away with the click of a button. That support, control, and accessibility gave me the strength to start the hardest process of my life- the leaving