Dr. Nicole Bedera

Since they've given you one, I'm going to take one off.

I think about that a lot as something we can do in so many different ways that a lot of the time when survivors ask for help, they're told no, because it's just not the way things are currently done.

But there's so many ways where we can just say yes.

Thinking outside of a college, because I know a lot of listeners probably aren't faculty at a university, I would think about things like if someone is being stalked and coming into work at 9am on the dot every day is the time when they are most likely to encounter their perpetrator because their perpetrator knows they're going to be there, letting them work remote.

letting them have flexible start and stop times for their day, letting them have a little bit more autonomy and control so that they can handle the violence in the best way that they know how instead of you being the barrier to them.

That's really at the core of it.

When you're thinking of a formula of how to do this, it is about looking at the burdens that are in your power to take them away.

And it's about giving survivors autonomy and control, trusting that they know what will work best for them.

And studies find that survivors tend to be right when they think about those types of things.

It's really simple and it's more of a framework than like a here's a one, two, three things that you can do exactly where you are right now.

And then in terms of a simple thing that everybody could do right now that would just be helpful is the entire support system that survivors have depended on for safety for decades is being dismantled by the huge defunding of places like rape crisis centers and domestic violence shelters.

These independent spaces where survivors can go to for help.

A lot of them are closing their doors.

And so one of the things that you can do, especially when you're saying, I don't know what to do, find one in your local community, not a national one, one that is specific to the organizations within your community.

And if you have some money to send their way, please do.

I'm on Blue Sky at at nbedera, B-E-D-E-R-A.

And then I also just have my personal website, NicoleBedera.com.

I'm very open to receiving messages.

And if you work within an organization and you really do want to be able to make that organization safer, more resilient...

to perpetrators to keep them from getting in and hurting people.