The women we serve at New Phoebe House are often affected by domestic and sexual violence from a young age. The trauma of violence leaves many of the women with low self-esteem and a lack of self-worth, adding to their desire to self-harm and use drugs and alcohol. We recognize that many of the women can benefit from an ongoing support group to help them understand the impact of violence and trauma while gaining coping skills and building self-esteem and self-worth as part of our whole woman recovery approach.

New Phoebe House is excited to announce we now offer a domestic violence and sexual trauma support group for our residents. Using trauma-sensitive curriculum to further support the women in their recovery process, the group started this August by covering some fundamentals of understanding domestic and sexual violence and survivor reactions to such traumas. It is important to start with this foundation so each woman has an understanding of how domestic and sexual trauma can and has impacted her life.

The women can now begin working to empower themselves to build positive self-esteem and self-worth, self-sufficiency, resiliency, and move one step closer to their recovery goal. This group will focus on building skills and knowledge that will enable the women to better understand and deal with the results of the trauma they have faced in the past. Art, music, a variety of discussion topics, and self-help curriculum will be used to promote the goals of the group.

Other important components of the group include working on: understanding and building healthy relationships, managing feelings and thoughts in healthy ways, expressing self in positive ways, and identifying positive people in one’s life to help in overcoming the effects of violence. The women will also work on ways to protect their children from such violence in order to break the cycle of domestic and sexual violence.