This Is Woman's Work with Nicole Kalil - Love Shouldn't Hurt with Nicole Brown Simpson's Sister, Denise Brown | 441

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

Domestic violence doesn’t always start with a punch. It often starts quietly, with control disguised as concern, isolation disguised as love, and boundaries being chipped away so slowly that it can be hard to recognize what’s happening until the danger is very real. Denise Brown knows this in the most devastating way possible. Her sister, Nicole Brown Simpson, was murdered in 1994 after experiencing domestic violence in her marriage. For more than 30 years, Denise has dedicated her life to domestic violence awareness, victim advocacy, education, and helping women recognize the warning signs she wishes she had understood then. Her new book, For My Sister Nicole: Love Shouldn’t Hurt, shares Nicole’s story while giving victims, survivors, families, and friends resources that could save lives. In this episode, Nicole and Denise discuss: Why domestic violence is about power and control—and why it can happen to strong, independent women The early warning signs of an abusive relationship that are easy to dismiss or explain away Why victims may hide abuse to protect their children, family, friends, pets—or even their abuser The hope, shame, and fear that can make leaving an abusive relationship incredibly complicated How friends and family can support someone experiencing domestic violence without trying to control their decisions The importance of safety planning and working with domestic violence shelters when preparing to leave Why calling 911, documenting abuse, and creating a paper trail can matter The Domestic Violence Bill of Rights—and the reminder that everyone has the right to safety, respect, their own opinions, and the word “no” This is a hard conversation, but it’s an important one. Because love should never require someone to live in fear, walk on eggshells, surrender their autonomy, or make themselves smaller to stay safe. The National Domestic Violence Hotline has trained advocates available 24/7 at 1-800-799-SAFE, by texting START to 88788, or at TheHotline.org. Thank you to our sponsors! To see what Scribe could look like for your team, head to https://scribe.how/TIWW  and mention TIWW for your first month of Scribe Capture free on select plans Protect your loved ones without spying on them. Go to https://heypolo.com/work or use code WORK and get 70% off your first year Connect with Denise: Website: https://denisebrown.com/  Book: https://www.amazon.com/My-Sister-Nicole-Julie-McCarron/dp/B0FXYCGS99  FB: https://www.facebook.com/DeniseBrownToo  IG: https://www.instagram.com/DeniseBrownToo  LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/denise-brown-6644762  Related Podcast Episodes What Does a Woman Have to Do to Be Believed? Sexual Assault, Accountability & Double Standards with E. Jean Carroll | 363 High-Functioning Codependency: When Being “The Strong One” Is Slowly Killing You with Terri Cole | 341 What a “Good Divorce” Can Look Like with Erin Levine | 426 Share the Love: If you found this episode insightful, please share it with a friend, tag us on social media, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform! 🔗 Subscribe & Review:Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I am Nicole Killil, your host of the This Is Woman's Work podcast. And I'll be honest that every once in a while, I look around and see women leading companies and countries, building wealth, making their own choices, living authentically and courageously. And I think maybe we've arrived. But that feeling doesn't ever last very long because then I look around and see mediocre men chosen over qualified women for positions of real power. I see choices being limited or taken away. And, many of us are still taught to keep the peace, be agreeable, make ourselves smaller and prioritize somebody else's comfort over our own. And nowhere is the distance between how far we've come and how far we still have to go more devastatingly clear than in domestic violence.

Because there are a lot of opinions about love and marriage and partnership and what it all means, but here's what I know for sure. Love and fear should never coexist in a relationship. Love shouldn't control you, isolate you, threaten you, diminish you, or hurt you, period. End of discussion and you cannot convince me otherwise. And before anyone comes at me with some version of women can be abusive too, of course they can. I know that. And I do not advocate for women at the expense of men or any other gender. The only thing that I am against, the only anti-I-am is anti-asshole. And anyone abusing someone they claim to love qualifies as an asshole. Listen, more than one in three U.S. women have experienced sexual violence, physical violence,

and or stocking by an intimate partner during their lifetime. So today's episode is for those 43 and a half million women and the people who love them because one of the hardest questions is also one of the most haunting. What if we don't recognize what's happening until it's too late? Our guest, Denise Brown, has lived with that question for more than 30 years. Her sister, Nicole Brown Simpson, was murdered in 1994, and her death became part of one of the most public and widely covered murder cases in American history. But the domestic violence that came before it, was anything but public, which is so often the case. And her loss has shaped the course of Denise's life. She has spent the last 30 years raising awareness about domestic violence, supporting shelters,

advocating for victims, and teaching the rest of us what she wishes she would have known back then. Her new book, For My Sister Nicole, Love Shouldn't Hurt. What to Know About Domestic Violence is out now. Denise, thank you for being here. And I want to start by acknowledging that the world knows Nicole's name, but most of us only know her through the story the media told of her death. So I want to start by asking you to share what we may not know about who she was and maybe even how she changed over the course of her marriage and her relationship in your eyes. Well, first off, Nicole, thank you for having me. And it's so funny to say, your name, and it was always Denise and Nicole, Denise and Nicole. So, hey, Nicole, we're sisters from another mother. I love that. But I really, I really appreciate being here. And, you know, people, they really lost Nicole. Nicole was lost through all of that. And that's the sad part

for me, because she was a whole person. She was a fun-loving, happy-go-go-old. lucky person. Nicole and I, we were both born in Germany. And so we had our own little language, because we didn't speak English. Our first language was German. So, you know, I mean, we had that little, that closeness. We were less than two years apart in age, but we had that closeness also, because when we came to the United States, I was six, she was almost five, and we didn't speak a word of English. And my mom said, as soon as I put you into school, three, who were, weeks later, you girls were speaking English. You know, little kids' brains are like sponges. I mean, it's so incredible. Even though my father did, you know, speak a little bit of English to us, he spoke

German. So, you know, everybody back in Germany was always speaking German. So that was our first language. So that was our secret language. And that's what Nicole and I had, like, really in common. because if we would like somebody, we would start, you know, talking to German. Oh, isn't he cute? God, look at that wave he caught. Oh, my God, isn't his friend adorable, you know, like doing little things like that? Because we were just girls. We were girls that were crazy about boys that loved boys.

And, you know, we'd go to the beach and we just had a wonderful, wonderful life. My father always provided for us. My mother always, she was always there for us. and the one thing that my mom always wanted was for us to have all of our friends come over to our house. She always said, she says, if your friends come over to our house, I know where you are. I know what you're doing. So we always had a great time because we had a pool, we had a tennis court. You know, we lived a really wonderful life.

And so all our friends wanted to come over because my mom was the cool mom. there's a lot of things that are interesting in there. And I think what keeps jumping out at me is how often we think people who are in abusive relationships or who are a victim of domestic violence, that there must be something broken or wrong with them. And what jumps out to me with your story is how, and I'm just going to put in air quotes, normal of a life and an upbringing, how loving the environment you were brought up in was. And that really anyone can find themselves in a situation like this. I said it in the intro, one in three women

has experienced this. So how did she fall victim? From your perspective, how did that happen? Well, you know, it's interesting because domestic violence is about power and control. One human being needing to control another human being. And I can go through the cycle, the verbal, the emotional, the psychological abuse, the put downs, the chipping away one self-esteem, the throwing up against walls, the hitting, the kicking, the punching, and the honeymoon phase. Of oh, baby, I'm so sorry, it's never going to happen again. Well, we were not raised in a controlling environment. We were not raised in an abusive environment. We were not raised with our parents screaming. me or are yelling at one another. And I truly believe that when Nicole met her boyfriend slash husband

slash ex-husband, she did not know anything about domestic violence. She did not know anything about evil, mean people because an abuser does not come to your front door, ask you out on a date, comes and picks you up, and you open up the door and he punches you on the face. It doesn't happen that way. happens very subtly. And so there's a lot of warning signs when it comes to domestic violence. But for Nicole to have fallen victim to domestic violence is something that I will never, well, I do understand it because I've learned about it now, but I will never understand it. I could never have understood it back then because she was such a strong personality. She had such an outgoing, strong character that I would have, and I was the first one to come out and say,

no, my sister is not a battered woman. Because I did not believe that she could have fallen victim to something like this. And since it's a learned behavior, and we did not learn it in our house, looking back in hindsight, I do know that he learned it in his house. So when you have somebody that has a controlling personality that needs to control everything, first they're extremely charming and you kind of, they get sucked in, victims get sucked in, Nicole got sucked into his charm. First of all, everybody in this country and beyond love this person and put him up on a pedestal.

So what's there to think that, oh, my gosh, she's in an abusive relationship. You would never, ever have thought this. When she became a victim of domestic violence, and I don't know when that happened in their relationship, I truly believe that she hid it because abusers usually threaten family members. They threaten their children. They threaten their pets. and this is the, for a lack of a better word, ammo of an abuser.

And so during the documentary, I know I'm jumping around here, and it may be a little confusing, but during the documentary, I asked a good friend of Nicole's Ron Hardy. I said, Ron, I said, did Nicole ever talk to you about abuse that she was suffering?

And he says no, and I go, why do you think that is? And he says, because I think she wanted to protect her friends and her family. And I truly believe that because everything that I have heard from victims of domestic violence around the country, they have all said the same thing. They wanted to protect their friends and their family because they were threatened. They are the only ones, a victim of domestic violence, they are the only ones that know how dangerous their abusers can be. Yeah.

Well, and I think there's something in there. Yes, they're often threatened and controlled. they often have a desire to protect others, including sometimes they're abuser. Right. There is the fear about whether or not they'll be believed. Like if we think about often charismatic or things that happen subtly over time and often privately, there I think often is the question, will I be believed? Will somebody ever think that this person is capable of that?

And then add on to all of that, the feeling that you don't have a lot of options when you're in it, I feel like one of the things abusers do is they really narrow what you can see as available options to you. What are your thoughts and reactions there? Well, you know, my mother and I, we went to a shelter because somebody had said your sister was a victim of domestic violence. I said, no, no, no, she's not. So my mother. and I, we went and we took the diaries that my sister and my father brought home. And I went there and I said, okay, Vivian, this was a human option down in Laguna Beach, California, where we lived, I said, what is this all about? And so she started educating me. She started giving me a foundation about domestic violence. The thing that a lot of people don't understand is the hope, the shame, and the fear of a victim of domestic violence that every single one of them had in common that I have spoken to across the country. Every time I go to a different area of this country or the world,

I always want to go and talk to the victims, the domestic violence that are in the shelters. Because for me, that is my education. That is how I learn about domestic violence. That is how I kind of can weigh the, okay, is it getting better? Is it getting worse? What? do we have to do, what still needs to be done. And there's a lot that still needs to be done when it comes to domestic violence. Because you're quoting one in three women. When I first started, it was one and four women. Then it can go down to one and three women. And I just talked to a few executive directors in Texas and they said, Denise, we're closer to one and two women. Yeah. Yeah, my stat was for 2024. That was the last. Oh, my goodness.

reputable stat that I could find. What I want to say is about putting somebody up on a pedestal, you know, thinking that they are so charming. And putting somebody up on a pedestal that you don't know. And our society tends to do that with a lot of sports figures. I've never really been that into sports. You know, I don't really know the games that well, and I never knew anything about football. When Nicole first asked me, she says, I want you to meet my boyfriend. He's a football player.

I said, oh, okay, I didn't know anything about football. We were four girls. But the thing is, is that when you put somebody up on a pedestal and you don't know who they are, and you have no clue except that they can throw a ball, shoot a basket, hit a ball, how do you know what they're really like? You don't.

And when society truly believes that, hey, this person can do no wrong, they feel like they're above the law, and they can get away with anything. And, you know, in my sister's case, I truly believe that she feared, hey, he threatens to take my children away from me. He truly believes that he is going to take my children away from me. And that she was not going to have happen. Right. I ended up talking to her.

And I did say all the wrong things. Why don't you just leave? You got to divorce him. Oh, my God. You know, over a 30, well, over a 17-year span. It's been 30 years since she was murdered. but over a 17-year span since I met him, there were times when, yes, I did say the wrong thing. And looking back, I remember being in Cabo-San-Lucaz.

And I told Nicole, I said, listen, you've got to get away from him. This is really not safe for you. This is really not good. Did I think he was going to kill her? Absolutely not. somebody living in your, as a part of your family for 17 years, do you ever, do you honestly believe that they are capable of killing someone? No, but he did. And that's what I truly believe.

And he took my sister's life. But what she said in Kavo was, I will not ruin his life. He is the father of my children. I am not going to do this to him. Not that he was a provider. That didn't even come into the picture. But that he is the father of my children and I cannot ruin his life. That I heard over and over and over again, Nicole.

And finally I just said, okay, what am I supposed to say? Yeah. What do I do, especially when I don't know anything about domestic violence yet? You know, I was just starting my education when all of this happened. You know those tasks at work that somehow only one person on your team knows how to do? So when someone new joins or needs help, the team ends up relying on that one person instead of having a process everyone can follow. Yeah, that's not exactly scalable, which is why I'm excited to partner with today's sponsor, Scribe. Scribe is a specialized intelligence platform trusted by 94% of the Fortune 500, and it automatically turns the work you're already doing into step-by-step guides.

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And, you know, there's so many more than this. But I like to read these because I think they mean a lot. And one of them is you have the right to love and be loved. You have the right to be safe. You have the right to be treated with respect. You have the right to be human, not perfect. You have the right to form your own opinions, express them, and to be taken seriously. you have the right to grow and change, and that includes changing your mind, and you have the right to say no.

These were just a few of them, but I thought these were really, really good ones for people to understand and to really take to heart, because it's about trusting someone. It's about respecting someone. It's about putting that person up on a pedestal because you absolutely adore them. Yeah. So I love that, by the way, that gets a hard amen for me, your Bill of Rights. And I think having those as firm beliefs, your signs or red flags are any time those rights get called into question. Because as you said, it's not going to start with a punch in the face on your first date. It's going to happen over time. And it's the string of chipping away at testing, pushing, against these rights that ultimately get to a point where, you know, now we're talking about physical abuse, sexual abuse, all of these things. So then my next question is how do those of us who see or love somebody who's going through this notice those same signs and have conversations

with people about it? You mentioned a couple times that you feel like you said all the wrong things. Right. And I think we're all afraid of that. realities we all will. Nobody's going to do it perfect. But what are some things that we should notice pay attention to or have conversations about with the people we love when we're saying stuff like this? For me, it's about learning about domestic violence. It's all about the education, awareness. There was a young man who at Brooklyn College when I was out there speaking. He said to me, during the Q&A, he said, Denise, he goes, I know my sister's in an abusive relationship. What can I do? Well, for me, it's about educating yourself. If you educate yourself first on the cycle

of domestic violence, on everything you possibly can, set that person down. Just look at them, talk to them as an educated person. person. Not as somebody that's going to go, oh my God, you should just leave, you got to divorce and you got to get out of this relationship. Okay, like I did. Educate yourself and then you can set that person down and you can say, listen, this is what I know and this is what I'm seeing. And what you're going to get is a lot of denial. No, no, no, this is not happening to me. But what you've done is you've opened up that door to communication. You've opened up that door, and I think if you talk from a place of knowledge, and I truly believe that knowledge is power, you have opened up that person's brain to accept the fact that this is not just about you wanting that person to get out of this relationship. This is coming from a place of love. This is coming from a place of knowledge.

This is coming from a place of, you know, care. And I always tell people, you know, you have to support that person because between seven and ten times a victim of domestic violence will return to an abusive situation. So be supportive, be there for that person, and don't isolate them. And Nicole, the interesting thing, when I was talking about the cycle of domestic violence also, there's things that I saw in the cycle of domestic violence that I focused on. Nicole was not isolated. Nicole was not financially abused.

She, not in the normal sense of being financially abused, of keeping every penny and giving you a dollar to go out to the grocery store or whatever, right? So I focused on that, and I focused on everything that Nicole was not. So that is something that don't look at just those. isolated things that somebody may not be. Look at the whole picture. It's interesting as you were talking. I was thinking about what I might do or what I might say. And I can tell you that I would most likely do and say everything wrong because out of love and care, I would want them to get away as quickly as possible. I would want to fix or solve or whatever. And what's ironic about it is

in some way, I really would be doing what's already being done to them, trying to control them and their decision, having judgment and telling them what to think and do, trying to make their decisions for them. And this is what I don't want people to do, because it is exactly that. You are controlling how they should behave, just like the abuser is controlling them on a day. daily basis. Behind closed doors, you never really know what's going on if you're an outside person. But you can bet that they are being controlled walking on eggshells every single day of their life. They may not be getting beat every single day. Nicole was not beat every single day

that I know of. You know, the things that I witnessed were years apart. So when people read my book for my sister Nicole, love shouldn't hurt. I don't want them thinking that this is something that happened like every day. I want them to understand that this was over time. And not knowing anything about domestic violence is why I thought they were isolated incidences. And that's a lot of what people think. They think, okay, well, this happened once. Well, the excuses, okay, and these are excuses that are real, because it happened to me, I had too much to drink. You know, we were partying too much. And this is what happened when Nicole and I and her husband and a friend of ours,

we went out to dinner, we went to a Mexican restaurant. Yes, we were drinking fire water, the tequila, the margaritas. But then we went back to the house and he was making more drinks. And all of a sudden he said, Nicole, go get go get us some food. And I said, oh my God, I said, we just ate so much Mexican food. I said, why would you want to eat some more? And he looked at me and he says, Nicole, go get us some more food. I said, God, I said, you really take her for granted. Whoa, well, that was the wrong thing for me to say, because all of a sudden he ran from behind the bar. I thought, oh my God, what's he going to do?

He ran up the foyer, or up the stairs, excuse me, started throwing down pictures into the foyer, our family, mind you, went into their bedroom, picked up a bunch of Nicole's clothes, threw them down, through hangers down, through shoes down, through all her stuff down, ran back down. We're like going, oh, my God, what is going on here? He had her by the throat up against the kitchen door, six inches off the ground, and I went over there and I was screaming and yelling and pounding on him. Let her go.

Let her go. And finally, but owls I saw was black eyes pulsating. And I just thought, oh, my God. He let her go. He threw her out of the door. He came after me, threw me out. She ended up on her elbows and all bloody and everything. We ended up taking her to a hotel where all of us were staying.

We all stayed together. and the next day she said, Denise, I have to go and pick up some stuff. I said, okay, well, I'm going back with you. What am I going to do, right? I'm already pounding on him yesterday or the night before and thinking, okay, well, I'm going to protect my little sister. She said, no, no, no, no, no, she's not going to be there anyway. And I said, I said, no, I'll go with you. No, no, no, it's okay. So she goes, she goes, I'll be maximum two hours. You know, time to get there, time to get back, time to pack up some stuff. I said, okay. Well, back in the day, you have to remember, we didn't have cell phones either. So all of a sudden, one hour goes by, two hours go by, I don't hear from her, third hour goes by, I finally call the home phone. She picks up and she says, Denise, she goes, everything's okay.

I said, what do you mean everything's okay? She said, oh, he apologized and, you know, it was, we drank too much, and he used that excuse of the alcohol of drinking too much. I said, oh my God. I said, no. After that, we never talked about it again, but after that I got to thinking, oh my God, was it my fault? I caused this. I did this. So yeah, I mean, I felt horrible about it because I thought, wow, all of this stuff that went on, it was because I said, you take her for granted. And that was something that I've had to learn and it's something that I've had to live with. And I realized that you know what? It's not my fault. An abuser is an abuser is an abuser. And it's nobody else's fault. And besides being an abuser, he's a friggin narcissist on top of it. So, you know,

it has to be about him. It has to be about the control. And he had to control the whole situation. Did he tell Nicole that this is my fault? I don't know. He could have. God only knows, you know, totally manipulated the whole situation again. And, you know, it's as if she's apologizing for everybody else's behavior except his. The thought keeps coming up for me or the feeling keeps coming up for me that abusers do need help. But then the second thought is it is not the victims nor the people who love them's job to provide that help. they've got to go get the help they need. I think a lot of times victims and people who are in these abusive relationships think it is part of their job to help this person they love get better.

Yeah. How do we separate the, yeah, they need help. They need to go get better. But it's not our responsibility. Like you said, there is no your fault in that situation, not yours, not Nicole's. Right. The only person who was at fault was her husband. Yeah, was him.

Yeah, and he needed help. But it wasn't Nicole's job, your job, or anybody who loved her to figure that part out. Well, I truly believe that, you know, like a lot of these places around the country, they say, oh, they need anger management. I'm of, no, because angry people don't always beat their spouses or their girlfriends or their loved ones. They need a true batter-or treatment program. Well, first, they probably need jail. And then they need that. Well, they need to just go away.

Yeah. You know. I'm with you. I think that I truly believe that a batter-retement program, there was one, and I don't know whatever came of it, but it was a wonderful program out of Minnesota called Mesa. And a gentleman by the name of Kevin Curley, he had 70% success rate in his batter-or-treatment program. I talked to a man who was in it.

I talked to his wife. and after they got out of the program, they would follow these people if they got together. They would follow them to make sure that everything was still okay. And God, it was a wonderful program. And I don't know whatever happened to it. But I truly believe that a batter-treatment program is what they need. It's not voluntary. They usually have to get arrested before they can go to a better treatment program.

And I just want women to understand that a 911 call is not the worst call that you can make, because that 911 call could save your life. I know that a lot of people are afraid of the police, and they think, oh, God, the police, they're not going to do anything anyway, or they want you to get a restraining order, and that's just a piece of paper, and he can come back and he can kill you anyway. You know, but what you've done is if you do get a restraining order, what you have done is you are starting a paper trail. Does it save your life? No.

But there is a woman that wants to pass a law, and it's called Carrie's Law in Connecticut right now, and she is working on, because they have the restraining order, they have it all across the country, the piece of paper. she is working on getting the ankle monitors for an abuser so they have to stay the 100, the 300 yards away, whatever it is, and it is being monitored. So she asked me if I would help them with that, and I said, absolutely, because I think that that is the only way that they are going to be able to stop these abusers from. from hiding behind a closed door, from showing up out of the blue, and all of a sudden, they murdered you. One of the hardest parts of this topic for me is the general feeling of powerlessness for everybody involved,

because the laws aren't strict enough, the process isn't swift enough, the people aren't believed enough, I mean, there's so many problems. And I imagine somebody being abused also add into that that they're trying to protect the people they love. They feel like their options are limited in. So calling the police is an option. Getting a restraining order is an option.

And there are so many available options. What are some other options that people who are in this situation may want to consider? Well, they say, do not call anybody that your abuser knows, okay? Because they will go and hunt you down. They will look for you because they are at that point, okay, this is the really hard part because when a woman, a victim of domestic violence leaves her situation, she's in 75% more danger when she leaves the situation. So I recommend every shelter that I have, have ever spoken to recommends putting a safety plan together. And this safety plan is, well, do we want to actually let people know what this safety plan is or call your local shelter so that you can get together with them and they can tell you exactly what that safety plan should be? Because I don't want abusers to all of a sudden listen to your podcast and say, oh, well, now I know her safety plan.

You know what I mean? So I recommend that they call their local shelters and ask them for help and ask them for a safety plan and it's the safest possible way to get out of their situation. Yeah. Denise, I feel like this is a topic that warrants hours of conversation and we barely scratch the surface, but I am so incredibly grateful for you.

being here today, having what I have to imagine is an impossibly hard conversation to have, and for writing this book and speaking for your sister when she can't speak for herself anymore. I mean, I feel like there are so many things to thank you for, but thank you for being here. Well, thank you for having me because my main goal for my sister, Nicole, Love Shouldn't her, is to save lives. And there's a lot of resources in the book. I am hoping that this will be a book of help, of understanding, of I tell stories because I'm not an education 101 type of person. So I hope that one of these stories in the book will resonate with you. You will get out of your abusive relationship and that you will have the resources to get help and to get out before it's too late.

That is my hope for everyone. And the book, again, is called For My Sister Nicole, Love Shouldn't Hurt. It's available wherever you buy books, but let's keep our local bookstores in business. Also, I want to mention that the audiobook is available as well. So that is an option. And you can find all the ways to find and follow Denise on her website, Denisebrown.com. They also have a link to the Lifetime movie, the Life and Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson there. So we'll put all of that in show notes.

Denise, thank you again. Thank you, Nicole. I appreciate it. My pleasure. All right, friend, if you recognize yourself or someone you love in any part of this conversation, you do not have to figure out everything today. You don't even have to be ready to leave. You can start by learning what your options are. Maybe that's calling your local shelter and putting together a safety plan. And also, the National Domestic Violence Hotline has trained advocates

available 24-7 at 1-800-799 safe by texting start to 88788 or at the hotline.org. And we'll put all those links and show notes as well. And if you're using your phone or internet could put you at risk, please wait until you can access help safely. One step, then another, you do not have to make the whole journey today because walking away from something that hurts us is woman's work. Supporting women who are trying to find their way out is also woman's work. And fighting for laws and consequences that hold abusers accountable, that is ab so fucking lootly, women's. work.