Sarah Brown’s story - a woman affected by domestic violence

Women need lots of support after leaving a violent or abusive relationship. The Yoga Foundation aims to help women rebuild their lives through our research-based mind-body programs. 

Yoga Supporting Women Campaign June 2021

In June 2021 we ran an EOFY campaign called Yoga Supporting Women to raise funds to reach more women recovering from violence, abuse, coercive control and emotional pain. Sarah Brown was the star of our Yoga Supporting Women campaign and has an amazing story of resilience to share. 

Sarah Brown’s story

My name is Sarah Brown, I am a 35-year-old single mother to two children. My boy is Rory and he is 9, my daughter is Evie and she is 3. Both children have the same father and both were healthy full-term babies. The place that my children and I call home is a small 2 bedroom unit, and we survive predominately on a single parenting pension.  

These are my basic “stats” if you will. They are perhaps a little worse than some, but mainly far better than most. But it does beg the question, how did we come to define what is better or worse? Or even more to the point; who has a greater need for support and what should that support look like? 

You see I’ve painstakingly and at times unwillingly gained the knowledge that I, my individual self as a woman, am vastly more than these basic “stats”.

However, I am very much aware that the profiling and stereotyping that occurs when people are supplied with these “stats” can achieve an almost tandem effect of positive and negative outcomes. 

For instance, due to the limitations caused by my situation, gaining and securing employment has proved to be a hardship. My current qualifications are almost exclusively applicable to weekend and sometimes late-night work. This has proved to be a difficult barrier to overcome, especially with little to zero support or childcare at these times. It also has also painfully highlighted to me the value and importance of higher education and career orientated study. 

To borrow the old adages, if “knowledge is power” and “the pen is mightier than the sword”, I along with thousands of women, have unfortunately come terribly unprepared for the fight of our lives so to speak.    

So what is it going to take to prepare us? How are we going to rearm women that have lost and endured so much? I know from my experience, the path to power is paved by opportunities and tools, and betterment means grasping onto these and embracing them wholeheartedly. 

I am an avid believer in metaphorically seeing the ying in every yang and the yang in every ying. Meaning, that yes I may be a survivor or trauma and abuse, and yes I may have a damaged or diseased self-worth or inner dialogue; however because I have endured this, and because I am a woman existing in the gloriously affluent country of Australia 2021, I have been provided with and afforded opportunities that my international counterparts would only hope to dream of.

It is my basic “stats” that are used as a means to an end in order to present me with a myriad of support. So instead of perpetuating a constant state of victimhood, I wear my “stats”, my traumas, my experiences as a badge of honour. I gaze back at the road that I walked to get to here, and I stare lovingly at the path that has taken me to the door of places like, The Leichhardt Womens Community Health Centre, Banksia Women, Anglicare, St. Vincent’s domestic violence services, The Yoga Institute Australia and The Yoga Foundation Australia…to name a few.   

I could not possibly articulate the vast scope of what these centres and services provide, nor could I give accurate credence to the women that I have had the great fortune of encountering and working with. 

However, what I can say with sincere certainty is that there are many dynamic and multi-faceted tools and weapons offered to the women that they closely work with. Tools that myself and several women I have come to know, and now use in their personal arsenal as they rearm themselves and step back into the world.

Therefore, I am not merely my “stats” and I never will be. However, they have been my compass that has pointed to this path. 

Finally, it is with reverence and gratitude that I embark on the exciting chapters that lay ahead. 

I will forever be indebted to Banksia Women, The Yoga Institute and The Yoga Foundation for providing me with the tools I need to forge ahead and ultimately, give back to the women who are on the same path just a few steps behind me. 

Still surviving, one step closer to thriving. 

Sarah Brown