Summary of article in Billed Bladet #12, 2016.
Written by Marianne Singer.
Recently Mary went to Odense to visit partners who co-operate with and who utilize Affording Life, which is a project under the Mary Foundation, aiming to provide economic assistance and help to women who after a time with abuse wish to start a new life on their own. (*)
Here she visited a crisis center and a center under Mødrehjælpen - Help to Mothers, which aims at helping women with children who have social issues of various kinds.
One of the women Mary met was Katrine Khadijeh Farzin Wirenfeldt, who expressed her feelings in a poem she read to Mary.
Afterwards Mary leaned over the table and took Katrine's hand: "That was a very beautiful poem. Very touching. Very honest and as she said herself, it's very important to put words on the feelings she has, because it helps her to move on".
Mary stayed for a couple of hours at the center under Mødrehjælpen (**), some 45 minutes more then scheduled, talking to those who come at the centers and the volunteers who work there and afterwards she said: "I'm very impressed with all the women who are willing to step forward and tell about the difficult situation they are in and have been in. It's enormously strong and courageous to stand forward and for that I'd like to thank them. It helps break down the taboo about domestic violence".
(*) Women who in most cases have had their self-confidence beaten out of them for years or who come from another country, don't know the language and haven't got the faintest idea about how to open a bank-account handle bills, let alone establishing a new home, with all that entails. Immigrant women constitute IIRC some 60 % of the women in crisis centers.
For these women the prospect of fending on their own is even more frightening than the daily abuse.
(**) No press at the crisis center I guess, which is understandable.