Clothesline project

Have you ever heard of the clothesline project?

Right after my divorce before I had started therapy I was at work. I worked at a residential facility for teenage girls. They were there for a number of reasons. Many of them had been abused in some way.
I went into work for the day and I found out we were headed to the Clothesline Project at UVSC (now UVU.) I didn’t know what it was and away we went.

As you walk in you are told that the different colors of shirts represent survivors of different kinds of abuse. Anyone who has been in an abusive situation could pick up a shirt, write what they want and add it to the shirts that were already there.

I was walking through with the girls and was so moved by the stories, words and power written on these shirts. Several of the girls I was working with had picked up shirts and started to write on them. Then it hit me like a truck. I had a story. I was one of the people who could write on a shirt.

With tears running down my cheeks I picked up a shirt. I wrote on it. I don’t remember the words I wrote. I do remember the strength I felt by acknowledging publicly that I hadn’t just been in an abusive relationship....... I had survived an abusive relationship. I was a survivor.

http://clotheslineproject.info/about.html

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